But James Reyes had gone and proved me wrong.
He’d gone and done a really stupid thing.
He cared about a woman half-dead and wholly broken-hearted enough to dream about her.
To worry about her.
To scream in the dead of nightabout her…
No one was supposed to give a flying fuck about me, least of all some F.B.I. prick.
Agent James Reyes.
King of the fucking Underworld.
Now our story was messy with feelings that weren’t supposed to be there, and it was the least I could do to protect him from knowing me even one more second.
My phone vibrated in my palm, sending my heart skyrocketing up my throat. My mouth went bone dry as I glimpsed down at the screen, scanning the incoming notification. The digital words circled my head in a loop, and my heart decided to do that freakish thing where it hurt in a weird way.
Burning and freezing.
I didn’t have time to think about it though.
My ride was here.
Looking across at James, he was pouring a pre-packaged creamer into the steam rising from his cardboard cup with his back to me.
He wasn’t paying any attention.
Not to me or the door as I inched back towards it.
Cool glass chilled through my shirt as my back came flush to the door, carefully pushing my body weight back to open it. The chime hanging above the door felt like it was hanging above my fate too, but my movements were so snail-paced that when I made it all the way through, the chime was thankfully silent.
Briefly, I caught the eye of the dude behind the counter as he quirked a judgemental pierced brow up at me. My pointer finger poised against my lips, shaking my head. Dude behind the counter gave all of two shits and went back to not caring about his job or the people in his store, and I went back to sneaking away.
I did all the things a girl escaping was supposed to do.
I held the door so it didn’t make a single bit of noise as it closed.
I made sure the man I was running from hadn’t a clue what was happening.
I made sure my getaway car was parked and ready to run.
Thanks, Uber.
Then I did a thing a girl fleeing was never supposed to do.
I looked back.
And not just for a second.
Not just for two.
Not even one step away into fresh air, and I looked back at James inside the gas station for so many seconds, I think I could have totaled them up to nearly sixty.
I didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me, but I felt like Belle from Beauty and the Beast inall her Stockholm Syndrome glory.
I’d been fighting tooth and nail to get away from James all week, and now with freedom licking at my heels, I couldn’t move.