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“A much better one if we stick together.” He sucked in a breath, resisting the urge to wipe his palms down his jeans. “Let me come with you. I already have a ticket. We can go away together and talk. See if we can save what we have.”
Cassidy’s lip twitched as if she was fighting a smile. With surprise colouring her tone, she said, “You’re nervous, but you didn’t let go of me.”
Jake huffed out a laugh. “You have no idea how nervous I am. I’m running on adrenaline and I’m about to pass out. I’m that crazy.”
“You didn’t wipe your palms.” Cassidy squeezed his hand and brought her other to his waist, slipping under the duffel he was carrying to pull him closer. “You were never the problem, Jake. But your dad—”
“I’m falling in love with you,” he whispered. She stopped talking the moment his words registered, her mouth hanging open as her eyes widened. He watched her as her gaze left his, scanning his face as if she was seeing him for the first time, before their eyes locked once more. Still, she didn’t talk. But there was a kind of wonder playing on her lips and in her eyes. A spark that he hadn’t seen since the night before when they’d been together.
He waited, forcing himself to let Cassidy react in her own time. Holding his breath, Jake watched, fighting to keep his face neutral. His heart stuttered to a stop, halting its frenetic beats when Cassidy closed her eyes and looked away.
“I was determined to walk away from you. My head was telling me to never want to see you again. But like I said, the problem was never you. Your dad is awful. Officially the worst person I have ever met. Someone needs to stop him, but I can’t risk any more. I have nothing left. I told you last night that I didn’t want you.” Her voice was quiet but firm, and Jake’s gut sank. There was no doubting her words. She gazed up at him, and the truth shining in her eyes stole his breath. “It was a lie. I’m falling for you too, Jake—”
He reacted in a fraction of a second, instinct taking over well before his brain had a chance to catch up. Eliminating the distance between them, he stole her next words, letting them die on her tongue as he silenced her protest with a kiss. He pressed his lips to hers. The touch was sweet—completely chaste—but it rocked his world. This was his last moment to persuade her. His final chance at having half of what he wanted. His brain frantically tried to formulate counter-arguments to the ones that were no doubt bubbling on Cassidy’s tongue, but it had short-circuited with the brush of those strawberry-tasting lips against his. Jake wasn’t sure whether he was riding cloud nine or struggling under the weight of a giant boulder about to crush him.
Cassidy’s tongue slipped out and touched his lip, and he opened for her. Sound faded, his world reducing to the two of them wrapped around each other as he showed her just how much she meant to him. Cassidy pulled him closer, clutching him tighter, and Jake stilled. Against her lips, he whispered, “You’re not pushing me away?”
“No.” Their gazes locked and the certainty in them squashed Jake’s doubts. Happiness bloomed in his chest, wanting to burst free like a geyser. This was the Cassidy he’d first met. The one filled with fire. With determination. “I want this, Jake. I want you and Phoenix. Your dad scares the shit out of me, and I’m probably crazy for not running away, but I can’t do it. I’ve spent the whole morning trying to figure out how to ask you to either stop me from going or to come with me. I had to turn my damn phone off to stop looking at it every two minutes.”
Jake laughed, the fizz of happiness bubbling out of him. “I thought you’d blocked me. I’ve never been happier to be wrong.” He nuzzled her cheek with his stubbled one and sighed. “What do you want me to do, Cass? Do I stay here and wait for Phoenix, or do I come with you? Tell me what you need me to do.”
She bit down on her lip. “I want you with me. Let’s go away for a few days, regroup, and then come back for him. We know his shifts at Grounds and where he lives. We go there and bring him back to us.”
“It’s not gonna be that easy. He finished up at Grounds. His boss told me this morning that he’s no longer working there, and I went by his apartment. He’s moved out, but I saw his friend—the one he was with the other night. He said he’d give him my number. We’ve got no other way of contacting him though. Phoenix is gone from the only two places we know.”
Cassidy’s shoulders slumped, and she shook her head, her expression crumbling. “I don’t want to give him up.”
“Neither do I. But it’s not over yet. Have faith. He’ll call. I can feel it.” Jake pulled her close again and held her tight. An announcement over the PA system broke into their bubble. “Shit, that’s the last call for my flight. It’s your decision. Together or apart? Here or the Gold Coast?”
She smiled and nodded. “Together on the Gold Coast for a few days. We’ll work out a way to find him and get our lives back in order, then come back for him.”
Jake grinned and nodded, pulling back so he could catch his flight. He didn’t want to give her a kiss goodbye. There was nothing final about this hour’s separation. What they were doing and where they were going was all ahead of them. “See you in an hour.”
He let go of her hand and stepped backward, smiling at her. Joy, pure and as strong as the sun’s rays, filled him and he was sure it reflected in his wide grin. She was beautiful, standing there with a matching smile on her face and her hands stuffed in her pockets. Even dressed casually, she looked a million dollars in jeans, a knitted singlet, and matching cream heels. It took everything in him not to eliminate the distance between them again. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and her smile turned shy. “See you in an hour. Don’t leave me waiting.”
Hearing those words had the weight lifting off his shoulders. He was floating, riding a high that had, only twenty-four hours earlier, crashed and burned. They weren’t complete—they had a way to go to get there again—but they would do it. He knew they would. He raised his hand and placed it over his heart before holding it out to Cassidy. He might as well hand his heart over to her. She already held it anyway. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Eleven
Phoenix
T
he weekend was a complete and utter clusterfuck. Getting thrown onto the street barefoot and with his jeans barely buttoned up was humiliating. The threat he received from the ape of a man who’d shoved him out the door, glared at him, pointed down the street, and growled, “Leave, and don’t come back,” terrified him. It wasn’t so much the words or even the actions, but rather the look in those dead eyes. Eyes so cold and unflinching, devoid of any emotion that a shiver had run down his spine and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Phoenix didn’t even remember what happened next, except that he found himself crashing through his front door hours later after having run half the city, trying to lose the feel of those eyes watching him.
He hadn’t noticed the pain in his shoulder until he’d lifted his suitcase to shove some clothes in it. Fire shot through his arm, and Phoenix clutched it, shouting out in agony. It hit him then. Everything he’d been through. Every second of the rollercoaster of emotions he’d experienced in twenty-four hours crashed into him. The physical ache coalescing with the emotional destruction wrought upon him levelled Phoenix.
Then his friends had barged through his door, teasing him until they’d seen the tears tracking down his cheeks and the bruise forming around his arm. Rachael and Stevo’s expressions had changed when he finished explaining how he got his injuries. They looked at him with wide eyes and stony silence. He couldn’t tell whether they were disgusted, surprised, or holding in a laugh. Was the whole thing his fault? Had he brought this on himself? Was it because he’d chased the two people who’d captured his attention from the moment he’d met them? Some cosmic karma biting him in the arse? But then Rachael had spoken, and the hatred spilling from her mouth made him flinch. Until he realized she wasn’t talking about him. Within minutes, she’d ordered Trav to get a rideshare to the hospital and plotted out the bones of a civil suit.
Phoenix was drained. It was as if all his energy had been sucked out of his bones, leaving him a husk. He had nothing left to argue, so he followed along, letting his friend lead the way and trying to avoid the others’ wary gazes. They hadn’t said much since they’d found him, and it made him antsy. What were they thinking?
When the ordeal at the hospital was over, he’d begged Rachael to go home. Drugged up on pain pills and his shoulder strapped with his arm in a sling, he wanted to curl up and hide under his covers. But Rachael insisted the police needed to be involved.
That’s when he’d received the phone call from a Senior Sergeant Campbell. He’d excused himself from his friends, ducking into the bathroom in the emergency ward to talk privately. Except he didn’t do much talking. The officer explained how he’d been asked to do a welfare check on him because of a concerned citizen making a complaint against Jake and Cassidy. Phoenix tried to explain his side of the story—how he’d been with them, and they’d been happy until they were interrupted. But every time he spoke, every time he tried to get the words out, the officer cut him off. He accepted one-worded answers, and that was it. Anything more and the answers repeated back were totally different to the ones Phoenix had given. His words were being twisted against him, and Phoenix knew when to shut up. The whole conversation had him wary. Anxiety spiked, his heart rate quickening and breathing shallowed out. Even locked in the bathroom, he couldn’t help looking over his shoulder. He had to get away. Had to cut ties with anything that would bring the two men and woman who’d walked in on them out of his life.
That was a week earlier. Moving out of the apartment wasn’t fun, especially with the torn muscle in his shoulder rendering him mostly useless. Thank goodness for his friends. If it wasn’t for them, he’d still be trying to lug his bags out. Resigning from Grounds was bittersweet—he was only leaving a week early, but he knew he’d left his boss in the lurch. She’d understood when he explained his arm was in a sling, and he was on painkillers strong enough to level a horse.
