How to Fail at Flirting(79)
Jake whipped around, and his body seemed to grow taller and wider as every muscle tensed. The hands that had been stroking my back moments before balled into tight fists at his side.
Carlton stepped between the two men, putting a meaty palm against Jake’s shoulder, stopping him from lunging toward Davis, who stood ten feet away near Doug.
I didn’t recognize Jake’s voice. It was menacing. “You should think very carefully about what you say, because if you open your mouth again, I will finish what she started and break your fucking jaw.”
I couldn’t see Jake’s face, but something in his expression wiped the sneer clean off Davis’s, and he slumped against a tree, hand held to his injured face.
Jake wrapped me in his arms again, wordlessly.
“He’s not worth it,” I said into his shirt as he stroked the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair.
“You are.”
Forty-two
Thank you, ma’am.” The officer finished taking my statement, tipped his head, and walked out to the parking lot. They had Davis in the back of a police cruiser, but he would probably have a good enough lawyer that he’d be out in no time and spinning his lies. He’d continued to spout we’d been fooling around and that it had gotten out of hand.
I gingerly skimmed over the cheek that was tender and swollen. I could only imagine what I looked like, my face bruised and arms scraped, tear tracks on my skin. Someone had handed me a clean T-shirt, and I clutched it, anxious to get the bloodstained fabric off my body, but unprepared to be anywhere alone where I could change.
“Need this?” Carlton held out a blue ice pack and sat in a chair across the table from me.
I thanked him, pressing the cold plastic to my face. “I didn’t thank you for, um, for—”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry we didn’t hear you sooner.” Carlton and the others had been on their way back to the cabin to grab something when they heard my screams and ran. I gripped the ice pack as an involuntary tremor ran through me, remembering the moments leading up to their arrival.
“Is Jake still here?” I asked in a shaky voice. When the officer started to take my statement, Jake had stepped out of the kitchen. I wondered why he hadn’t returned.
“He didn’t want to leave you alone, but I made him take a walk before he did something he’d regret and ended up in jail himself.” Carlton was surprisingly soft-spoken, not at all the jovial front man I’d seen in the meetings. “Not that I blame him. If what happened to you happened to the woman I love . . . I don’t know.” He shifted his gaze to his wedding ring. It looked worn, the gold dull from years of wear.
“Oh, we’re not, um, together anymore.”
His eyebrows ticked up, a note of skepticism in the shift of his eyes. “I’m not sure that really matters.”
The president had canceled the rest of the retreat. I’d cringed when I heard, sure my colleagues would be angry that they’d come all this way only to go back home, but no one complained, not in front of me, anyway. The flash of taillights and the crunch of gravel came through the window as one of the vans departed.
I dragged my eyes from the glass to find Carlton eyeing me intently, concern in his gaze. “Jake will take you home in our rental, if you want. I can ride with Flip.”
As if on cue, Jake stepped through the door.
* * *
It took a little over an hour to travel from the retreat site to my apartment. Immediately after we pulled away from the site, he reached across the center console. I wondered if he might try to take my hand, but he froze midair and dropped it to the gear shift. We spent the drive in silence, listening only to the sounds of the road around us and the robotic voice on the GPS. I glanced at his profile; his jaw was firm and his eyes focused on the road. The space between us seemed endless as we drove, parked, and rode the elevator to my floor.
My fingers shook as I tried to unlock my apartment door, and Jake tentatively stepped beside me, taking my keys gently and unlocking the door.
He was so stiff and careful not to touch me, like he didn’t know if it was allowed. After the door was open, he fiddled with his watch and looked away from my face. “Do you want me to call someone for you?”
I shook my head without saying anything.
“Okay, then I’ll . . .” He rested his hand on the knob, then hesitantly stepped out the door and looked down the hall. That shift, that movement of his eyes, tripped something in me. Emotionally frayed and physically exhausted, I took control again, but this time to reach for what I wanted.
“No. Jake, wait.” I stepped forward and touched his arm. “Will you stay?”
He swallowed, and his gaze traveled over my face, pausing on the bruise on my cheek.
His forearm was warm, and the familiar act of touching him gave me more confidence. I reached for his wrist.
“Please?”
It took him a moment, but he slowly laced his fingers with mine and pushed the door closed behind him. His movements were still cautious and deliberate.
I didn’t break eye contact and stepped toward him, but it was Jake who closed the distance between us. He pulled my body to him, wrapping me in his arms again and blocking out the world.
“Naya,” he said in a ragged voice that unfurled from deep within his chest, his breath heavy over my ear. He kissed the side of my head roughly. “I didn’t know . . .” he said into my hair. “I was ready to kill that bastard, to wring his neck.”