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I whirl around and stomp away, but I can only go a few steps before I reach the back of the SUV, so I make a tight turn and stomp back to him. None of this is Snowball’s fault, so I take his cage carefully from Jameson and put it on the asphalt out of range of our feet. When I straighten up again, Jameson’s watching me. In the natural light, the bruise under his eye looks at least twice as bad.
“Thanks? That’s what you’re going to say?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“You could apologize.”
His chin dimples, just a little bit, and I feel no more pity for him. I don’t. I don’t even think about how he cried on the beach, or how he looked when I woke him up before he could sink into a nightmare. I don’t think of any of that.
“That’s what I was doing.” He gestures toward the jail. “Apologizing.”
“For what?”
He tilts his head. “For kidnapping you.”
“Forkidnappingme?” My shriek echoes across the parking lot, and Jameson blinks. If they’re all watching on the jail’s security cameras, they definitely heard. All the furious, conflicted emotion centers itself on my chest and makes it hard to breathe. My eyes burn. “That’s why you think I’m angry?”
Jameson gazes around, like we’re on some game show and a guy with a camera is going to pop out and announce that this was a setup.
His eyes meet mine again. “Yeah.”
“Well, Iam.I—Iwas.I was angry about it before, but then you turned into an even bigger asshole.”
He shakes his head, like I’m not making any sense. “You don’t want a cabin?”
“I wanted you not to go tojail.” I’ll shriek at him again if I lose any more control. “I asked you to stay with me at the cabin so we could get to know each other. The kidnapping part was already over by then. Or did you forget? I bet you did. I bet it was completely meaningless to you, and you don’t care at all.”
For the first time in the conversation, Jameson’s face twists up with emotion. He fights it back. “That’s obviously not true. I remember all of it, and I felt like a criminal. Iama criminal. So this is where I belong.”
“I asked you to stay.” My voice has that weird, strained tone to it, as if I’m about to cry, and I’m not. “And you just left.”
“Right, because that’s what I wanted you to do. That was the plan.”
“For me to be into you and treat you like a person?”
Jameson sticks out his hand and rocks it a little. I cannotbelievehe’s using a so-so gesture during this conversation. “I was aiming for obsession.”
“Wow,thatbackfired, didn’t it?”
He drops his hand. “No, because I’m not obsessed with you.”
Jameson August Hill, who was formerly Jameson None of My Business, is lying. Maybe he thinks he’s a good liar because of his criminal past, but he’s not. His face is all flushed and his mouth is twisted up and his shoulders have rounded forward, and I bet he doesn’t even know.
“Cool. So…you just kissed me like I was your personal savior for no reason.”
“You said you were my fiancée.” He takes a step closer, and all at once I feel his height again. “By the way, why the fuck did you do that? Those cops are going to tell everybody in New York that the judge’s daughter got engaged to a criminal asshole.”
“No, they’re not. I said that so they wouldn’t assume it was me. And because I thought you might not come out otherwise.”
His eyebrows go up. “Did you give your real name?”
“Yes,” I snap. Actually, I gave my real name in a rush when I thought the police officers might not let me post bail, but Jameson doesn’t need to know that. “I’m not the only Lily Hayes on the planet. I’m not even the only one in New York. It’sfine.”
The breeze ruffles Jameson’s hair, and I’m seized with the urge to climb him like a tree and bury my fingers in it.
Instead, I draw myself up to my full height, which is still not tall enough for gravitas befitting this moment.
“Anyway, the real—”
