Honestly, that never bothered me before tonight.
Three blocks.
That’s how long I made it.
I turned the car around in three blocks, and I’m done pretending I don’t know exactly what that means.
She let me back in — unannounced, no questions, no making me explain myself first.
Just opened the door.
Nobody really does that.
Not like that.
Just her.
And that sticks.
I sit with that for a while.
The Reapers are going to make it through. I know it the way I know reads in the crease — before it happens, in the bone. And when they do, when we face them across the ice, Griffin Novak is going to be standing on the other side.
And I’m going to be standing on mine.
He thinks he has room to play here.
He doesn’t.
I close my eyes.
Griffin texting her pisses me off.
Her opening the door for me anyway does something worse.
It makes it mine to protect.
And I’ll be goddamned if Griffin Novak gets to put his hands anywhere near it.
Chapter sixteen
Nova
Samedress.
Still dangerous.
It fits a little differently than it did the first time, which I am choosing not to examine.
Jax is in the same suit he wore the night I learned he could make eye contact feel like a bad decision.
We have gotten disturbingly comfortable doing this in public.
That’s the problem I’ve been trying not to think about. That and the other thing. He knows Nova Shaw. He doesn’t know the name on the piece that hurt him.
And he’s sitting across from me in a suit, looking at me like he’s already decided.
And he doesn’t know.
