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“You don’t have to go with him, ya know?” Johnny reminds me for the tenth time since Daisy and Jeb left to gopick outthe car we’ll be using for the first part of our road trip.
“I know,” I tell him while bundling up my computer cords and packing away the three computers I take everywhere.
I’m barely listening to Johnny worry about me. My mind is too focused on how I couldn’t keep from going to Jeb’s bed last night. I’d fought the urge for most of the night until I’d fallen asleep on my computer and had the same terrible dream I’d had the night before. The one where I’d watched as Jeb followed my family into temple.
When I woke up crying, I couldn’t help going to his bedroom to make sure he was alright. My plan was to make sure he was safe, sleeping in his bed, and then turn around and go back to work at my computer. But then I found him awake. One look into his blue eyes, and all I wanted was to be held by him again.
And then he opened his arms to me.
“I could always go with Jeb instead of you,” Johnny says, startling me out of my memories of last night. “You could talk me through all the computer crap like we used to do when it was just the two of us working together.”
“Please,” Cash snorts from the doorway of the bedroom. He is just out of the shower, only half-dressed in a pair of oldLeviswith water still clinging to his bare chest. “You’d kill him before you reached the state line.”
Johnny’s eyes narrow as he thinks about it. “Would that really be so bad?”
“Yes, it would,” I can’t help blurting.
Johnny raises his eyebrow suspiciously at me while Cash takes a measuring look at Johnny, like he’s trying to gauge his reaction to what he’s about to say. “I could always go with Jeb.”
Johnny’s muscles tense as if getting ready for a fight. “First, you’re still healing. There's no way I’m letting you get close to that kind of trouble right now. Second—”
Johnny’s green eyes go electric as he stalks over to Cash. “You want to go road-tripping with your ex-lover? You trying to tell me something here?”
Cash rolls his eyes. “Have you already forgotten what I promised you while we watched the Reivers’ headquarters burn the day I got out of the hospital?”
“No,” Johnny says sulkily. He looks at Cash, his normal cocksure replaced by a rare vulnerability. “But does your ex have to be so goddamned pretty?”
Cash laughs and grabs Johnny’s belt loop and pulls him toward him. Johnny resists for a few tugs but then gives in until they stand chest to chest. “Jeb isn’t my ex. We were friends who fucked occasionally. That’s all. I was too busy pining for you for it ever to be anything more.”
Johnny’s muscles relax slightly. “Besides,” Cash says. “Jeb was never into me.”
“You sure about that?” Johnny gives a disbelieving snort.
Cash grabs him by the chin and looks Johnny directly in the eyes. “I’m serious. Jeb never even stayed the night after we’d hooked up. And I never wanted him to.”
Cash doesn’t know what he missed out on. He doesn’t know how Jeb knows exactly how to hold someone so they never want to be let go of.
“Even if he had wanted more,” Cash eyes Johnny like he’s the only person in the world he wants to look at. “Jeb doesn’t have your sexy green eyes or your dark hair that drives me absolutely fucking wild, or most importantly—” He takes Johnny’s hand and places it over the left side of his chest. “He doesn’t have my heart, which you’ve owned for practically our entire lives.”
Johnny leans in and kisses Cash, whose arms go around Johnny.
I’m wondering if I need to go find another place to be for a while when Johnny pulls away from Cash, who tries to pull him back into his arms.
“Later,” Johnny promises Cash with a wink, and then turns his attention back to me. “Maybe Daisy could go with Jeb.”
“No,” I bark out. I don’t want anyone but me to go with Jeb on his crime spree road trip. I may have tried to escape him last night and run away to New York, but he put a stop to that. I’ll never admit it to another living soul, but a big part of me was relieved when he did.
I don’t want to leave him. Not yet.
“No,” I repeat more calmly. “Jeb and I work well together. It’s best we keep the plan as is.”
If Jeb’s plan goes well, Patriots Now will soon be dismantled, and Jeb’s and my partnership will be over. A greedy part of me wants to spend as much time with him as I can until then. Until I never see him again.
“Okay,” Johnny sighs, “but if being with that asshole day in and day out gets to be too much for you, just holler, and we can figure something out.”
“I will,” I promise, more than touched by Johnny’s concern for me. I remember when I met him three years ago. He was fire-eyed and set on revenge against the Reivers and Cash—the friend and lover he’d thought had betrayed him. Though I’d tried to keep the pushy, troublemaking outlaw at arm’s length, Johnny wouldn’t let me, and somehow he’d become my friend—my first one since Mira.
“I’m serious,” Johnny says, his voice dropping as he guides me away from Cash. “I see how the guy looks at you and the way you look back at him.”
