“I think you’re okay to sleep,” he said, not letting on just how relieved he was. “I have a second bedroom you can use.”
“Oh.” That pink on her cheeks deepened. He tried not to think about how attractive that flush made her. She glanced up at the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. “I don’t… I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance.”
“You’re never a nuisance.” He raised an eyebrow. “Though if it helps, I can tell you that I’m insisting. I want to make sure that you’re okay in the morning. That, and I don’t like the idea of you being alone tonight after what happened.”
She bit her lip. Her hand brushed unconsciously against the bandage on her forehead. “All right,” she murmured.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “You need to rest.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Jasper,” she said. “For everything.”
“I’m glad I was able to help,” he said, fully aware of how massive an understatement that was.
He stared up the steps long after he heard the door to the guest room close. His mind spun. To give himself something to do, he grabbed the mug, took it to the sink, and began washing it.
Lucas. They had thought he’d fled the area. He was cleverer than they had given him credit for if he’d managed to stay under the radar for that long. They needed to figure out his plan before he got even bolder than he’d been tonight. Jasper had no doubts that this was only the beginning.
Lucas was after Nikki, too. Jasper didn’t know why, but it didn’t matter. The only thing he cared about was keeping her safe. The question was how best to do that.
His gaze continued lingering on the stairs, his mind spinning. The conclusion he came to unsettled him, but after running through all the other options, he decided it was the best one they could come up with in such a short time.
He just needed to figure out how to explain it to Nikki.
Chapter 4 - Nikki
When Nikki’s eyes peeled open, she shot straight up, head swiveling. She didn’t know this room. She had never seen it before in her life. Where was she, and why was she here?
After that initial panicked moment, everything came flooding back. The walk back from the library, the street along the woods, someone grabbing her from behind and pinning her against him. A lump formed in her throat, and a chill crept over her as she remembered Lucas pinning her down, the feel of rope on her skin, just how close she had been to being dragged back to captivity and a life she had thought she had escaped for good. A lump formed in her throat, and she had to stop herself from trembling.
It’s over, she told herself.You’re safe. Nothing happened.
But it almost had, and what was more, Lucas was still out there. What was to stop him from attacking her again?
As that panic began to creep in, her fingers grasped the comforter. The texture was unfamiliar but soft. Her thumb brushed against it, feeling the weight of the fabric. She used it as a touchstone, a way to ground herself while the panic continued to flicker through her. She stayed there, staring up at the ceiling, until that panic began to ebb and she could think straight. It took longer than she cared to admit, but eventually, her heart rate slowed, and that image of Lucas pinning her down, the feel of his knee between her shoulder blades, evaporated, replaced by the warmth of the covers and the gentle sound of the HVAC kicking on.
Once she had managed to quell her panic, she climbed out of bed, wincing at the aches and pains all over her body from the night before. A spot on her head felt tender, and when sheprodded it gently, she could feel a large lump. She shuddered, that feeling of dread and fear threatening to overwhelm her once again. After a moment, she managed to start moving again. She cracked the door open, peering down the empty hall. She could hear something that sounded like the clatter of pans down below, someone moving around.
Jasper. Why that thought made her heart pound faster, and her stomach squirm, she didn’t want to think about just then. After one more moment, she stepped out and began to follow the sounds down the stairs.
The tantalizing smells of bacon and homemade waffles wafted toward her from the kitchen. Her stomach growled at the scent. When she rounded the corner into the kitchen, she saw Jasper over a frying pan and heard the sizzle of cooking bacon. A waffle maker was next to it, currently closed, a bowl half-filled with batter on one side, and a small stack of waffles next to it. The waffle maker dinged. Jasper flipped one last piece of bacon before turning to the waffle maker, pulling it open, and extracting a perfect golden-brown waffle. Her stomach growled even louder.
As if he could hear it—and for all she knew, he could—Jasper turned.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi. What’s all this?” She stepped further into the kitchen.
“I thought you might be hungry when you woke up,” he said. “So I fixed breakfast.”
“I can see that.”
What he couldn’t know was that he had made her favorite breakfast, the one she always ordered at the local diner whenever she had breakfast there.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing at the table with the hand not balancing a stack of waffles.
She did, and he placed the tower of waffles in the middle of the table, followed by a mound of bacon. A cup of coffee, cream, and sugar already mixed in, appeared in front of her a second later.
“Thank you,” she said. She took a sip of coffee. It was delicious, made exactly the way she liked it.
