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He sits on the couch, and I straddle him and pretend to be kidnapped until we’ve both come.
Jameson doesn’t seem as shaken as he did earlier, but he never settles. Never relaxes. Never yawns.
I’mtired.
He gathers me close on the couch and scrolls through his phone while I drift, listening to the far-off lap of the lake and the wind in the trees and the night coming down on the cabin.
At some point, I realize Jameson isn’t warm anymore.
Jameson’s turned into a throw pillow and covered me with a blanket.
A soft scrape near the door startles me out of my shallow sleep and off the couch. “Jameson?”
“Go back to sleep, angel.”
“Yeah, right.” He’s by the front door in dark jeans and a dark long-sleeved shirt, a bag slung over his shoulder, stepping into his shoes. “I’m going with you.”
“Lily. I’m a criminal mastermind, and I have some errands to run.”
“What kind of errands?”
“High-stakes ones.”
“Are you going to docrime?”
“I’m not going to do anything bad,” he insists. “I just need to check something out. It might not be safe. You stay here, and I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“Noway.If you leave without me, I’m breaking our engagement. Let me brush my teeth.”
He lets out a long, frustrated groan, but there’s affection in the sound, too. I brush my teeth and put my hair in a braid, then steal a black hoodie from Jameson’s dresser.
My last stop is the kitchen, where I pick up a sleeping Snowball’s cage. It just doesn’t seem right to leave him here.
“Okay.” Back at his side, appropriately clothed for some not-bad crime, I stick my feet into my shoes. Luckily, I bought sensible ones in a dark blue color that’ll be fine for…whatever we’re doing. “I think I’m good to go.”
“Yeah. You are.”
“I am?” I straighten up and find Jameson biting his lip.
“You look hot like that,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean you’re a criminal mastermind, Lilith. You have to follow my lead.”
“I can’t follow you if you’re not moving.”
“Jesus, I love you like this.”
I do not make another joke about getting married.
When Jameson leaves the cabin, I go with him.
9
JAMESON
The place I’m looking for—a farmhouse, I guess—is north of the city, closer to Manhattan than my cabin is. Lily sits in the passenger seat, peering out at the dark countryside with narrow-eyed concentration.
“The crime isn’t going to jump out at you,” I tell her over the radio, which is crackling out a throwback song by a boy band I can’t remember the name of. “In this case, we’re the crime.”
“I’m watching for deer.”
