I nodded and let one sob escape. “I missed you too.”
He smelled like the red lollipops he loved and I imagined he tasted like them too. My body immediately heated and remembered just how much I desired him as I held him close. He felt solid, warm, comfortable, and safe. He felt like a home I’d missed and one I didn’t want to leave for a very long time.
I swiped at my face and pulled back, trying to right my emotions and myself at the same time. His arms rested on my shoulders as I looked up at him, and he assessed me. “Something’s very wrong.”
I cleared my throat. “It was a long two months. Let’s talk in the car.”
He nodded, threw his suitcase in the back.
“I’m driving,” he announced he rounded the trunk of the car. As I looked at him, I saw his confidence, how he was sure of himself again. The grey braided sweater he was wearing filled out across his expansive chest. He looked more solid, like he’d been working out but also like his body was finally getting used to a steadier lifestyle.
“Why can’t I drive?” I questioned him.
He scanned my face and his lips turned down. “Because you’re a terrible driver. It’s probably because you wear those ridiculous heels and you’ll be even worse when I make you relive whatever hell you’ve been in while I was gone.”
“I wasn’t in hell, I was…”
He cut me off. “Did I ever tell you about my best friend from back home?”
“Aubrey?” I questioned. I knew of her. I knew of her story and the fact that she married his brother. She was a beautiful girl who lost her mother in a house fire her father started. They took her in after her father went to jail and she fell for Jay’s brother. Their story made national headlines. “I know some of it from the news. It’s my job to pry into your life a bit.”
That was the truth, but I tried not to pry more than I needed. The balance we had between friends and coworkers was fragile. Most actors I represented didn’t want to feel like I was controlling them based on their history or what I’d found out about them. My friendship with Jay stemmed from an organic trust. I tried to wait for him to tell me some things.
I knew he was close with Aubrey. I also knew he’d adamantly denied having the intimate relationship with her that tabloids wrote about. According to him, she was like a sister and definitely a best friend.
Jay motioned for me to get in, and I glanced back at his rehab center before I did. “This it for you?”
“That’s it. I won’t be back.” His words held so much finality and his vibrant blue eyes held so much determination that I believed him.
“Let’s go then.” I folded into the leather seat and closed the door. He put the car in drive and peeled out of the circular driveway much faster than I ever would have.
I grabbed the dash and yelped. “What are you doing?”
“I haven’t driven in a month.” He winked at me with a lopsided smirk on his face. “I need to let loose a little, Meek.”
“Oh my God. You know how much the fountain probably costs and the brick paving? Calm down before you crash and cost us a fortune.”
He laughed and settled in as we traveled down the drive and wound round the hills back into the city. We enjoyed the silence and the breeze as he rolled down the windows. “I feel free,” he mumbled.
“I’m happy you do,” I replied and meant it.
“I want you to feel that way too.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked as I looked out the window, away from him, away from the truth he was about to put on me.
“You have the same look in your eye as Aubrey did the first time I saw her after her father beat her mother senseless. I didn’t know it then but I knew something was wrong. I’ll never forget that look, Meek. She looked trapped.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Little one, what cage are you locked up in?”
I set my chin in my hand and rested my elbow on the door. I didn’t look at him. “It’s just been a tough couple of months, Jay. I’ll get through it.”
“Okay.” His hand went to my thigh and squeezed it. “I’ll find the key and get you out even if you can’t talk about it.”
“Jay, I promise it’s nothing.”
He shook his head. “How’s Dougie? He a part of this?” He asked the question not one person had asked me in the past sixty days. No one would have ever guessed Dougie was hurting me. He was too reserved, too docile, too much of a pushover. But I hid our defects well. I hid my failures even better, and my relationship was shaping up to be one of those.