Lev raises his eyebrows. “Why don’t you seem worried?”
“Because I have a plan.”
I don’t divulge it, however. Instead, I turn back into the house and follow Jessa upstairs to my room.
She’s pacing nervously across the floor, her expression contorted into worry and fear and panic. She barely acknowledges me even after I shut the door and walk over to her.
So I step in front of her, blocking her path and forcing her to stop. “What do you hope to accomplish by working yourself up like this?”
She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. He is my best friend.”
“I understand that plenty.”
“No,” she snaps. “You don’t. He’s the only one who’s ever truly had my back all these years. He tried to protect me even when I was a bitch to him. He took care of me when my parents didn’t. He risked his life to keep your phone when I stole it from you, even though there was a fairly good chance he could die for it. And after everything he did for me, all I seem to do is break his heart and put him in danger. This is all my fault.”
“This is about Marina, not you.”
“I’m the one who introduced the two of them!” she protests. “I chose to trust her as much as my lifelong friend right from the start. Not once did I suspect she wasn’t who she said she was.”
I grab her hand in both of mine. “Why would you have suspected? The average person is not trained to suss out that kind of deception. You have no reason to expect it in your world.”
“It doesn’t matter. I should have been smarter about who I let into my life.”
I can’t argue with that. It’s a good rule for her going forward, too, but right now is not the time to say so.
“His parents, Anton,” she murmurs as a shiver runs down her body. “What do I say to his parents?”
“He’s not dead, Jessa.”
“How do you know that?” she says, dragging her eyes up to mine. “What if she’s chopping up his body as we speak so that she can send him back to me in pieces? I can’t stop thinking…”
She trails off, dissolving into tears. I grab her by the shoulders and pull her to me. Her whole body shakes and then she sinks into me. She twitches with sobs every few seconds. I ride them out with her, waiting until the front of my shirt is soaked through, and then I pull back so that I can look at her face.
“Do you trust me?” I ask quietly.
She blinks and another fat tear rolls down her cheek. “Yes. Of course I do.”
“Then let me take care of this,” I say. “You’re not used to any of it, I understand that. But this is the lifestyle I lead, Jessa. And you’re going to have to get used to it. Otherwise, you’re not going to survive.”
Her bottom lip quivers. “What if I can’t? What if I don’t have it in me?”
“You know who I am and what I’ve done, and you still stand your ground with me,” I remind her. “That’s half of the reason I fell for you in the first place.”
Her eyes go wide with shock as the words spill out of my mouth.
“You… you what for me?”
I laugh. “For a smart girl, you can be pretty damn slow sometimes.”
That almost ignites a smile. But she quickly stuffs it back down as though she has something to feel guilty about.
“I… hoped for it,” she says tentatively. “But I wasn’t sure if it was just wishful thinking on my part.”
“It’s not,” I say. “It’s real.”
“You can’t blame me for second-guessing my instincts. They clearly can’t be trusted.”
“We’ll work on that together,” I assure her.