Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“What?” I yank the paper out from beneath him so fast it rips. Tears burn my eyes when they roam over a name scribbled on a piece of paper that could correspond with anything. Jackson. His surname only shows the first initial, a ‘C,’ but the rest has been doctored from the evidence. It appears to be a short name, only half the size of his first name.
“It might not be him,” Caleb suggests, drawing me from my dark thoughts. “And that could mean anything. It’s a scrap of paper, not actual evidence.”
“But it also could be him. I often introduce myself as Tivy, so who’s to say Jackson wouldn’t do the same.”
He grips my arms when my sways reach a point of being unsafe. “Stop. Breathe. And evaluate. You know the steps, Tivy. Use them.”
While staring into his eyes that are almost identical to mine, I suck in a deep breath before slowly exhaling it. My panic could be for nothing. I could be searching for the negatives since I’m more a pessimist than an optimist, but before my heart can convince my brain of this, I lose the ability to maintain rational thoughts when it dawns on me that Caleb and I aren’t the only two people in our kitchen.
Jack is awake.
“Jack… ah… good morning.”
I move to stand in front of the stacks of paperwork I don’t want any man to see much less one I had an immediate fascination for.
When Jack looks set to swoop down and kiss my temple in greeting, I yank Caleb to my side then blurt out. “Jack, this is my husband… Stefon.” Caleb glares at me with the same disgruntled expression Jack is hitting me with. “I was just telling him how you had a little bit too much to drink at our work function yesterday and that no one would give you a ride home so I offered for you to sleep in our spare room.”
Caleb’s squinted eyes snap to mine. “Spare room? What spare room?”
I stomp on his foot, switching his whisper to a whimper before his words can reach Jack’s ears, then say, “Stefon was away on business. He… ah… left early to surprise me. Didn’t you, Stefon?”
Caleb looks sick when I cozy up to his side, but he plays the role of a devoted spouse well. “Of course. Anything for my little snookums.”
After clearing the devastation from my face, I devote my focus back to Jack. I shouldn’t have bothered settling my emotions because they surge to a never before reached level when I spot the anger projecting from him, but I play it cool as I’ve been taught. “So, I guess now that you’re feeling better, you’ll probably want to get going.”
Not giving him the chance to recant my statement, I shove his cell phone into his chest then pivot him to face the door.
“I—”
“No thanks necessary, Jack. What are friends for if not to sleep off a drunken haze?”
He shrugs me off him. It hurts even more than the pain in his eyes when he spins back around to face me. “I wasn’t offering you my thanks. I was going to ask if you could collect my wallet from the bedside table.”
When an interrogative bomb detonates in his eyes as he peers at Caleb over my shoulder, I suggest, “Why don’t you go grab it since you know where you placed it.” I shove him toward the hallway. “It will be safer this way.”
My comment is more for Caleb than Jack. Jack looks ready to tear him a new asshole, and I’m about ready to join him when Caleb pins me in place with a rueful glare a second after Jack storms down the corridor.
“You’re an idiot, Tivy.”
I snatch up the paperwork from the dining room table and stuff it into the moldy box while replying, “Says the guy treating the love of his life as if she’s nothing more than a friend.”
That gets his back up. “Don’t bring Jess into this.”
“How do you know I was talking about Jess? I could have been referring to anyone.”
He rams a bundle of paperwork into the box with so much force, there’s no chance in hell it will make the trip from the dining table to the broom closet intact before he pulls it in close to his chest. “Fix this, Tivy.”
My big exhale blows my sex-rumpled hair out of my face when I reply, “And how am I meant to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Caleb confesses, shocking me. He never admits he doesn’t know anything, even when he’s swimming in waters way out of his depth. “But I do know that this isn’t right.”
He nudges his head to Jack, who’s walking down the corridor, looking indecisive. I don’t know whether he’s torn on leaving or calling me out as the liar I am, but mercifully, he saves me from discovering the truth by dipping his chin and exiting without so much of a backward glance.