Sweet Liar (Candy #2)(6)

Victor. Its hard, formal sound suited him. And he’d called Jonah “Jonah,” not Cooper.

On his order, the two strangers invaded my house, moving in different directions.

“Is this legal?” I asked. “Can you just walk in here and do this?”

Everyone except Jonah ignored me. “Stay with me,” he said softly.

While I watched, his father roughly pulled open the drawers of the dining room buffet, and I stood up with my hands clenched by my sides. I wanted to stop them, to tell them they had no right to do this, but what good would it do?

“He called you Jonah,” I said quietly as I stood beside him. “The license I found said your name is Cooper.”

A brief smile turned his lips. “My middle name is Jonah. That’s what I’ve always gone by. Only my mother called me Cooper.” He touched my arm and held out his hand. “Come on. You don’t need to watch this.”

I looked down at his hand like it might bite me, even though a part of me wanted to take it. It made no sense, but I felt safer with Jonah than without him.

When I didn’t accept his hand, he shrugged and started for the garage on his own. I followed silently behind him, wincing at the noise of strangers going through our things.

When we passed the hallway, I bent down and made soft kissing sounds. A moment later, Pumpkin came trotting out of the bedroom. I lifted him up, intending to take him with us rather than leaving them here with them. I knew he was stressed when he didn’t immediately purr in my arms.

Jonah looked at me as I ran my hand over Pumpkin’s back. “What’s its name?” he asked.

“His name is Pumpkin.”

“I didn’t know you could train cats to come to you.”

“I didn’t train him. When I first saw him at the shelter, he came right to me like he knew he was going to be mine.”

Jonah smiled. “I can relate.”

When my gaze shot to his, he looked away and kept walking. I bit my lip at the way his comment stirred my emotions.

“This door leads to the garage?” he asked at the end of the hallway.

My brow arched, and he shook his head at my silent insinuation. “My father’s been here. Not me. I’ve only been in the living room and the kitchen. With you.”

I remained skeptical of every word that came out of his mouth, but I nodded as if I believed he was sincere.

When he walked inside, he paused and looked around. Then he laughed softly. “This is the neatest garage I’ve ever seen. And it’s heated. Did your father put heat in for you? For your hands?”

I shrugged as I brushed past him and went to the folded lawn chairs in the corner. My father probably installed heat in the garage for my mother, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. After putting Pumpkin down, I unfolded a chair and set it on the concrete floor before lowering myself onto it. Once I was seated, Pumpkin jumped onto my lap.

Jonah was still standing just inside the door, watching me with an inscrutable expression. “Any suggestions on where to start?”

I snorted out a laugh. “You really think I’m going to help you?”

“Nope, but it was worth a shot.” He smirked and walked over to my father’s work table, empty except for a toolbox and a tire pressure gauge.

“You’re taking this pretty well,” he said, glancing at me over his shoulder.

I snorted out another laugh and he turned, his eyes sharpening on me. I wasn’t taking this well at all. In fact, I felt a little insane at the moment, forcing myself to sit still while leftover adrenaline pumped through my body, and I used all my self-control not to scream.

After looking at the workbench, Jonah moved on to a set of cabinets on the wall. Those were empty. My mother had used them as an extra pantry for canned goods, and the cans were long gone.

Absently, Jonah pulled open the doors, stared at the empty shelves, and closed them again. As he meandered through the garage, it felt less like he was seriously searching for something and more like he was distracting himself and me while the others worked inside.

As my eyes followed him, I kept thinking that none of this felt real. I was never supposed to see Jonah again. I’d accepted that fact, not grudgingly but thankfully, because it meant I’d never have to face him or the lies he’d told. Lies I believed. Now that I was here with him, I couldn’t help thinking of each one, sifting through every past conversation for clues or hints, but there were none. He was too good a liar.

Looking down at the Band-Aids on my fingertips, I recalled how adamantly he’d denied locking me in the freezer at the diner. It was one of the many things he’d said in the school hallway yesterday, including the revelation that he’d fought his feelings for me until he couldn’t fight them anymore.

“I already feel like you’re mine. All I want to do is take care of you.”

Yeah, right.

“I can see the questions in your eyes,” he said, surprising me as he watched me from across the garage. “Go ahead and ask them.” Jonah walked toward my chair and stopped in front of me.

Sitting up straighter, I tilted my head to look up at him. “You told me I should talk to your father, that you weren’t going to say anything else.”

He sighed, pushing his hands into his pockets. It was a move he was doing a lot tonight, even though I’d never seen him do it before. “I was angry when I said that.”