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In choosing this risk, she might die and he would lose her forever.
When had his emotions gotten this strong?
One thing was certain, he would not be capable of remaining objective on this trip. He would be over-protective and jump at his own damn shadow out of concern for her. That made him a liability.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go,” he said slowly.
“What?” Her brown eyes grew wide. “No. You have to see this through with me.”
“Jess…”
“I won’t hear of you staying behind. I trust you. I need you.”
He couldn’t tell her no, so he pulled her to him, hugging her so tight that he thought she might protest. But she clung to him just as hard.
He’d have to figure a way around his emotions.
“Fine,” he said while he knew it was not fine. Not at all. Samuel had a very bad feeling about this. “How’s your head?”
She pressed the heel of her hand to her temple. “I should probably take something.”
“Let’s take care of that, then we can see about clothes and toiletries for the trip.”
Jessica groaned. “Shit.”
He kept his hand on the small of her back, guiding her toward their room with a brief stop to grab some pain killers from the first aid station. Breakfast courtesy of Baruti was waiting for them in the room. A quick reheat and they settled back on the sofa to eat and make their plan.
Samuel spent most of the meal with the TV on but watching Jessica. He couldn’t take his eyes off her while she ignored him, pretending it was just a normal day.
He knew about her, and yet they’d gotten close in a bubble apart from the world where outside opinion or stress didn’t matter as much. When they returned to true reality, what were their chances of withstanding that together? Was this doomed to fail? Or was this a fling?
She was a district attorney from Illinois from a prestigious family. With her inclination, he could see her becoming one of the most tenacious district attorneys in the country. That was probably why she’d started in Illinois. From there, she could rise in the government, enacting real difference.
Or maybe she became a judge?
Yeah, he could see that. Offenders would not get off easy when it came to her rulings.
Any way he looked at their situation, their paths diverged from one another. Maybe not right now, but eventually being together would take work.
Samuel was tied to the east coast. He could transfer, get assigned a new partner, but that meant leaving Baruti. They’d been together since almost the beginning. Samuel couldn’t imagine leaving his brother behind. The FBI was a friendlier place now, but Baruti was a gay, Black man with a family. That was something a lot of people struggled with. What happened to him if his new partner opposed the pairing?
No, Samuel couldn’t leave New York. He would only hold Jessica back. Either people would whisper about him not being good enough, or being forced to divide her attention between work and a long-distance relationship would take its toll. Unlike her, he was a poor boy from Georgia who’d hustled to get where he was. That kind of history would only weigh on her. And Jessica was a shooting star.
How long until they fizzled out? Until they couldn’t make it work?
Everything in him wanted to be selfish and take what he could get while it was here. But continuing with a romantic relationship would only further jeopardize his ability to think rationally about this trip and her safety.
Samuel carefully wiped his fingers then his face.
There was one solution. One way he saw how to do it all.
He wasn’t going to leave her safety up to anyone else. He was going on this trip regardless of his thoughts about it. That was non-negotiable. Which meant everything else had to fit around that.
“Jess?”
Her head turned toward him, brows arched. “Hm?”
He reached over and linked his fingers with hers while it felt as though his heart were trying to ooze between his ribs to get closer to her.
