“I don’t give a fuck how famous you are,” he bit out. “I don’t care if you’ve posed for every magazine out there! I already knew you were successful at what you did because of that damn car you drive, but I didn’t know you were a fucking celebrity! Me being photographed with you, Oz… you… you…” He pulled back and ran his hair through his fingers in frustration.
“I what?” I asked as I wrapped my arms around myself.
Please, please don’t end this. Not yet. I’m not ready.
I managed to keep from crying as Jake took yet another step back from me.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he whispered.
“Then make me understand,” I pleaded. “I promise, I can fix this. Aiden can put out a statement that Laird’s on sabbatical in Sweden or Nepal or Timbuktu or wherever! I’ll spend the rest of the winter in our cabin, and you can tell the people in town I left or something. Please, Jake, I’ll do anything.”
“It’s not that simple, damn it! Now people know where I am,” he practically yelled.
Jake rarely yelled.
God, he looked like he was going to blow a gasket. He was normally so calm, even in the most stressful of situations.
Before I could ask him what people he was talking about, my phone rang, and from the ringtone, I knew it was Aiden.
Probably calling to see how I wanted him to deal with the mess.
“It’s Aiden,” I said as I reached for my phone. “Can you… can you please just wait here while I talk to him? It’ll just take a minute.”
Jake didn’t answer me, but he didn’t move either, so I took that as a yes and hurried to the hallway between the living room and the kitchen. I covered my eyes with my hand to try and stem the tears that were threatening to fall.
I was going to lose Jake over this.
I knew I was.
“Hello,” I managed to say, keeping my voice as calm as possible. But I gave up on the tears and let them fall as Aiden patiently began laying out all my options. I finally told him to do whatever he needed to in order to convince people I wasn’t Laird, then said my goodbyes. But I knew long before I entered the living room that Jake wouldn’t be there.
And I was right.
He was running.
I could feel it in my bones.
It was all I could do not to jam my foot down on the gas as I navigated the snow-covered road leading up the mountain. Jake only had a few minutes’ head start on me, so the likelihood of me missing him was slim. Even if I couldn’t reach him before he left the cabin, there’d be no missing him on the road.
But that wasn’t really the problem.
No, the problem was getting him to stay long enough to hear me out. To let me explain why I hadn’t told him about Laird and that as bad as the picture was, it didn’t have to be the end of us.
It couldn’t be the end of us.
Because I wasn’t ready.
And I knew I never would be.
By the time I turned the corner leading up to the cabins, I was a shaking mess. Sensing my anxiety, Boo had curled herself into a ball on my lap. When I saw that Jake’s truck was parked in front of his cabin, I let out a whoosh of air and dropped my hand to Boo’s head. “He’s still here, BooBear,” I murmured as I pulled the Jeep in next to his truck. I picked Boo up and got out. My next breath caught in my throat when I spied Jake’s duffel bag sitting on the front seat of his truck.
I practically stomped up the stairs and didn’t bother knocking on the cabin’s front door because all my fear had turned to anger. Once inside, I didn’t get very far before Jake rounded the corner from his bedroom. I gasped at the sight of the gun in his hand.
The gun pointed at me.
I froze in my tracks.
“Jesus,” Jake snapped as he lowered the gun. “What are you doing here?” he bit out, then he was striding back into the bedroom.
It took me several long seconds to catch my breath. Then the anger returned tenfold. “That’s what you have to say to me right now?” I barked as I stormed into the room, putting Boo down as I went. Not surprisingly, she stayed near my feet and let out the occasional whine.
“What the fuck, Jake?” I said as I stepped closer to his bed. Jake was jamming stuff into his backpack. The gun was now lying on the bed.
Something crunched beneath my feet as I moved closer to him. I looked down to see it was his cell phone.
In several pieces… like it had been stomped on.