Page 336 of Romeo

The hurt came sharper than I expected. Not because he had lied to me. Jasper hadn’t. He had married me knowing something he hadn’t told me, and that touched an older nerve than anything between us. Too much of my life had happened in conversations I wasn’t included in. Social workers, foster parents, teachers, judges, adults deciding where I belonged and what I needed while I waited for someone to explain what happened next.

I hated feeling like that girl again.

“What did you learn?”

Jasper’s eyes moved toward me, and for the first time since the SUV appeared, I saw something other than concentration in them. Regret.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “Just not while I’m drivin’ around tryin’ to make sure nobody followed us.”

“That sounds a lot like you deciding when I’m ready to hear something.”

“I know.”

His immediate agreement stopped the response forming on my tongue.

Jasper squeezed my hand. “Be pissed at me. You got every right. But give me until I get us where we’re goin’. Then I’ll tell you everythin’.”

I stared at him, wanting to argue because I was tired of other people knowing things about my life before I did. At the same time, the SUV had been real. Whatever Jasper knew, someone following us down unfamiliar Louisiana roads was not the place to unpack it.

“Everything?” I asked.

“Everythin’.”

I settled back against the seat, but the easy morning we had been having was gone.

The road became smaller until pavement gave way to gravel. Eventually, Jasper turned down something I wouldn’t have called a road at all and followed it through thick trees until dark water appeared ahead. A weathered dock stretched from the bank, and an aluminum boat waited beside it, tied beneath cypress branches dripping with Spanish moss.

I climbed out and stood for a moment while Jasper unloaded our bags and supplies. The air felt heavier here, warm and damp against my skin, carrying smells I couldn’t separate into anything familiar. Water. Mud. Green things growing everywhere. Somewhere deeper among the trees, a bird called, answered by another farther away.

There were no houses.

No traffic.

No voices.

Nothing that told me civilization existed beyond the road we had just traveled.

When Jasper finished loading the boat, he held out his hand. I took it and stepped down, settling near the middle while he untied us from the dock and started the motor. The sound seemed too loud at first, disturbing water that had probably been quiet long before either of us arrived.

Then we moved deeper.

The passage narrowed between cypress trunks. Spanish moss hung low enough in places that I could have reached out and touched it. Sunlight broke through the canopy in shifting pieces while the water beneath us darkened until I couldn’t tell how deep it was.

Under different circumstances, I would have loved every second of it. This was Jasper’s Louisiana, a part of him I had only heard about through stories and jokes. I should have been asking questions, making him tell me which turns he remembered from childhood and how many times he and Gator had gotten into trouble somewhere out here.

Instead, I watched him check behind us again.

That was when the morning finally made sense in a way I didn’t like.

I had woken thinking my husband was stealing me away for a honeymoon before our families could interfere. Somewhere between New Orleans and the water, that had changed. Jasper hadn’t brought me deep into the bayou only because he wanted me alone.

He had brought me here because he thought I needed hiding.

And I still didn’t know why.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Fiona