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The one who was just watching you sleep.
I shuddered at the memory of his liquid black eyes, trained on me. The way it felt like they were sucking me in.
I hated Thacker Morris. I’d hated him more than ever last night. So how thefuckdid I end up in his bed?
I slogged over to get my phone and then I sat down on the floor, drawing my knees up and resting my hands on them as I tapped the screen. I had alotof notifications. The sensor read my face and unlocked the phone, and I saw the missed texts and calls from Jamie first. I tapped to expand and saw that he’d been trying to reach me since last night. My battery was sitting at six percent. I opened our thread, scrolling back through an increasingly frantic string of messages. We always said goodnight over the phone when he was at an away game. He’d tell me how the Hawks played and I’d bitch about work. But I hadn’t even stopped to tell him I was going to meet Jeanine. I’d been rushing, running late.
The only time I opened my phone after talking to Jeanine…was to answer Thacker. My mind flashed to the text he’d sent me, and my eyes narrowed. I typed out a quick message to Jamie—I’m at Thacker Morris’s house. I’m sharing my location with you. Not sure what happened yet. My phone is about to die. Hopefully I’ll be home by the time you get there, but if not, please come pick me up.
Thacker. I backed out of my message to Jamie and Thacker’s name was the next one in my inbox. I opened it, frowning. His texts, too, were increasingly frantic.
Please, Hope.
ANSWER THE PHONE! WHERE ARE YOU?!
What the hell was going on? Whathappenedlast night?
My heart was in my throat as I looked at my missed calls and saw an outgoing call to Thacker around midnight, which lasted ten minutes. Then a series of unanswered incoming calls from him, along with a couple of voicemails. With shaking hands, I pressed play on the first one.
“Hope. It’s Thacker.” His tone was clipped, all business, except that I could hear a thin tremor of uncertainty. “I think you just dialed me by accident but I’m concerned so give me a call back or I’m going to come looking for you.”
I pressed play on the next one.
“Hope—goddamn it—answer the phone. Pick up the fucking phone, baby girl. You’ve got to tell me where you are. I can’t find you and I know there’s something wrong. Just tell me you’re okay and I’ll believe you but I need to hear you say it, Hope. Call me back. Please.”
The change in tone between the two messages was clear. He sounded desperate in the second voicemail. I lowered the phone into my lap and blinked down at the screen, switching back to the messages app. I read each of his texts, the static in my head growing louder. This wasn’t the Thacker I knew. He’d never called me anything close tobaby girlbefore. He’d never seemed to give two shits about me, so why was he so concerned over a phone call?
What had he heard?
I looked at the door, feeling my chest swell with confused gratitude. I had no idea what happened, but I was starting to piece together some of the picture from his messages. He must have found me…and he brought me here. That still didn’t explain why he was watching me sleep, unless…
But there was no way he sat up all night just to make sure I was okay.
Now that I thought about it, from the brief glance I’d gotten of him before he bolted, he didn’t look like he’d slept. His clothes were rumpled and his hair was standing on end like he’d been running his fingers through it.
All night.
35.
Hope
I found him in the kitchen, scrambling eggs on too-high heat. The smell of coffee was like a drug. My heavy feet carried me to the pot, and I poured a generous helping into the gold-rimmed white mug he’d set out, complete with saucer and spoon.
Holding my coffee, with no further excuse to stall, I looked at him. He was gazing placidly down at the pan. Someone who hadn’t spent two years on eggshells, waiting for him to explode, wouldn’t have seen the tension in his jaw. They wouldn’t have noticed the muscle ticking. I was seized by the sudden, inexplicable urge to reach up and press my palm to his cheek. To soothe him.
I resisted it.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I said contritely. I was deeply embarrassed. And now there was all this awkwardness between us, instead of the bristling irritation that usually served as a thick buffer between him and me. He glanced over at me. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he turned back to the stove and cut off the eye, removing the pan and scraping its contents out onto two waiting plates.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said in a carefully controlled voice. I watched him.
“I listened to your voicemails,” I said quietly. He paused, then dropped the pan into the sink with a clatter and flipped on the faucet. Now the muscle was really jumping, and I could tell he was clenching his teeth by the way his jaw flared. “I can’t believe you came looking for me like that.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” he asked as he carried both plates to the kitchen table. “Let a couple of predators kidnap you?”
“A couple?” I asked, eyes wide.
He pulled out my chair for me and motioned for me to sit. Stunned into obedience, I walked over and sat down. He sat beside me.
