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Oh, fuck.
I’m in trouble.
2
LILY
Ihave never been so furious with a man in all my life.
That issayingsomething.
A woman doesn’t get into Columbia Law without meeting a few assholes. I paid my dues when it comes to dealing with men like that, and then I gotkidnapped,so I’mdonedealing with men like that.
I’m almostdone dealing with men like that.
Jameson’s not exactly what I would call a man like that. There’s at least one mitigating factor.
But I’m not here to give him a free pass.
Well…not atotallyfree pass, anyway. I’m here because his family doesn’t deserve radio silence at a time like this, and I feel a certain obligation to give Jameson the news. Any decent person would.
Jameson looks at me like he’s ascended to heaven and the trip was rough. His black eye looks worse than it did yesterday, and his hair’s wild around his face, and he’s spent most of the day in a police car and injail.
Ugh. I’m so mad I could scream at him.
There’s one tiny mitigating factor, though. I said I was Jameson’s fiancée, and if we really were engaged, I probably wouldn’t scream at him in the police station.
Also, his eyes lit up when he saw me. His face lit up. I don’t think he knows that, because if he did, he’d have stopped by now.
So there aretwomitigating factors.
Snowball is beside himself to see Jameson. He hops and hops andhops, his tiny weight moving from one side of the cage to the other.
“I’m the one who brought you here,” I remind Snowball under my breath. “He’s the one who abandoned you.”
Except Jameson was the one to rescue Snowball in the first place.
There are alotof mitigating factors, okay?
The police officers continue their conversation, checking Jameson out of jail. One of them hands a too-large plastic bag with Jameson’s wallet in it across the counter. Jameson bows his head as he accepts it like they’ve handed him a bar of gold, then reaches all the way down into the bag to get his wallet back out.
I’m not going tolaugh. This situation isn’t funny.
Jameson tucks his wallet in his back pocket, then tucks the plastic bag into a nearby recycling bin. They hand him some other papers, which he folds to fit in his pocket, along with his belt. He puts it back on. I’ve hardly been paying attention to the instructions from the officers.
Those aren’t my problem.Thisis my only problem, and then…
Then I’m definitely going to make him drop me off at home. Our fake engagement will be extremely short-lived.
Jameson leaves the counter and strides over to me.
“Youasshole,” I start in. It slips out before I can stop it, but at least I manage to hiss it under my breath so as not to arouse suspicion. “What the hell were you—”
His hands are on my face before I can finish my question. Jameson’s hip knocks gently against Snowball’s cage, and he lets out asorryinto my mouth and kisses me at the same time.
Kisses me like some unhinged kidnap-cabin proposal really did happen. Kisses me like he agreed to spend a week with me in a non-kidnapping scenario instead of getting himself arrested. Kisses me like he’s been in here for years instead of hours.
He still smells like his soap and the early morning air at his cabin, and I shouldn’t, Ishouldn’t,give him a second’s worth of empathy. I shouldn’t let myself fall into the kiss like I’d fly into a dance at The Membership.
