Cuff Me(50)

They hadn’t said a word since their heated exchange in the foyer, and Vincent held up a glass. “Truce?”

Jill rolled her eyes as she clinked her glass to his. “I don’t even know what we’re trucing over.”

He took a sip of wine and watched her. Get out of this, man. Take it back to safe territory. Fix it!

“How are you?” he asked.

Her glass paused halfway to her mouth, and her nose wrinkled. “How am I?”

Vincent shrugged, not really sure why he asked, and yet instinctively knowing that someone needed to ask her.

And that someone should be him.

“You spend four to five days a week with me,” Jill said with a little laugh. “You know how I am.”

“Do I?” he asked.

Do you? Vincent said the words to himself. Do you know how you are?

She blew out a breath, then took her wine to the kitchen table, where she folded one leg up beneath her and sat down, both hands cupped around her glass.

“I don’t know how I am,” she said.

He leaned back against the counter and nodded once, hoping she’d continue.

“I feel…” She glanced up. “I feel lost. I don’t know if it’s the case, or the wedding planning, or the fact that Tom and I are apart more often than we’re together.”

He withheld his flinch, barely.

Then she shook her head. “Actually, that’s not it. None of that is the problem.”

“No?” he asked.

Her eyes locked on his. “No. The problem is you.”

“Me.”

“Look, Vin, we’ve always been open with each other, so I’m going to lay it out for you. Since I’ve been back, you and me… we’ve been off. Horribly so.”

“I know,” he replied quietly.

“What the hell happened today?” Jill asked. “One minute we were interrogating a suspect, and the next we were interrogating each other, although I’m not even sure what about.”

He sipped his wine, then wordlessly turned his back, pulling two plates out of her cupboard, then two paper towels, before checking the pizza in the oven.

Vin was buying time—stalling—so that he could think, and Jill probably knew it, but she didn’t pester him.

The pizza wasn’t done for another five minutes, and he didn’t speak that entire time.

Only once he’d cut them each a hefty slice and sat across from her at the table did he finally speak.

“It’s the same thing I told you the other night. I don’t want you to go to Chicago,” he said.

Jill had just started to bite and choked, a stringy piece of cheese clinging to her chin.

She chewed as she wiped the cheese away with her paper towel. “I have to.”

“Do you?” he countered, taking his own bite of pizza. It wasn’t great. Typical frozen-quality with the crust only a shade better than cardboard, but it had everything but the kitchen sink piled on top, which helped a little.

She reached for her wineglass. “Tom’s job is there.”

“And your job is here.”

Jill’s eyes glanced to her plate, and he knew he’d struck a nerve. Or if not a nerve, at least he was voicing something out loud that she’d put plenty of thought toward.

“Okay, I’m having déjà vu,” she said. “Didn’t we just do this two weeks ago? And we ended up hugging in your kitchen, agreeing everything was okay?”

“Well, it’s not okay, Henley. It’s all f*cked up.”

She blinked a little, probably surprised at his forthrightness considering he’d been anything but direct with her all day. All month.

Vincent pushed his plate away, pizza barely touched, and he’d grabbed her hand before he realized what the hell he was doing.

The shock of her fingers in his rippled through him; the same surprise echoed on Jill’s face as she stared down at where his right hand rested on her left.

She didn’t pull away, but her features went immediately wary.

He didn’t know what he was going to say, only knew that he had to say something, had to convince her that she belonged here. In New York. With him.

That he couldn’t imagine what his days would look like without her.

That he didn’t know how to be without her.

“Jill, I—” The words got lodged in his throat.

And then they became permanently lodged there, because…

Jill’s phone rang.

They stared at each other for several long moments as the unmistakable sound of a vibrating cell phone buzzed from her purse.

For one wonderful, hopeful moment, he thought she might let it go to voice mail. That she needed to hear what he had to say as urgently as he needed to speak it.

Then her hand pulled away from his.

Jill licked her lips nervously, glancing in the direction of her purse. “I should get that. It could be—”

She broke off, but not before Vincent dropped his head in defeat as he silently finished her sentence for her.

Tom. It could be Tom.

Jill touched his shoulder as she passed, just briefly, and he all but batted her hand away. Her touch was the touch of someone who felt sorry for the other person.

Objectively, he knew it was meant to appease him. To ease his ache. Instead it made it worse.