Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
I stared down at my contact. She was right. It wasn’t blocked. Her finger swiped the screen, pulling up the message thread.
I’m so sorry about your dad. I’m here if you need me. I miss you.
A sickening feeling sank in my stomach. I’d spent all that time angry and hurt, thinking I hadn’t mattered to her. Had that message gone through, things may have been different between us. I sat back in the chair when I read over the response:
Sorry. Wrong number.
“I didn’t send that,” I said, still staring at the message. None of it made sense.
Jade sighed beside me. “I figured you just wanted nothing to do with me.”
The fucking irony in that statement. Shaking my head, I pulled up the contact information. The number listed as mine was off by one digit. I slid the phone back across the table to her. “That’s not my number, Jade.”
“What? Of course it is.” She scrolled through the years’ worth of messages. “It is…”
I went to the settings on my phone and pulled up my number, showing it to her.
Jade leaned back in the chair, her frown deepening. “But…what? How?”
If she hadn’t wanted to talk to me, why would she have changed my number when she could have blocked me? Confusion wrinkled her brow as she stared at the device. “I promise. I didn’t change your number.” Her voice was a pitiful whisper. “I thought—” Her phone rang. “Shit. That’s my mom. I have to get this.” She pushed up from the chair, putting the phone to her ear on her way out of the room.
Stairs creaked. A door shut. Dog’s paws tapped over the floor, stopping beside my chair, but I kept staring at the undelivered messages on my phone. All that fucking time. If even one message had gone through, she could have still been mine…
Nothing will have a man on his feet and reaching for a baseball bat faster than being woken up by his dog’s alarmed, stranger-danger bark.
A loud bang came from the backyard, and Dog skittered around the corner, yapping his head off. Another thud came from outside. I stumbled through the dark house, finding Dog bristled up by the door. There had been a string of break-ins a few streets over, and adrenaline fired through my veins at the thought of taking a swing at some stupid crackhead trying to steal from us. It would be cathartic, to say the least.
I cracked the door to the distant wail of cop sirens. Dog wedged himself through the small opening and shot out, disappearing down the steps and into the dark yard with a feral growl. I crept down the rickety steps, bat in hand, and stopped when I noticed the trellis that should have been attached to the side of the house, lying across the top of the hedges.
The bushes rustled, and Dog darted into them with a string of barks. I raised the bat, ready to knock the head off someone.
“Squishy, shush!”
I dropped the bat to my side at the sound of Jade’s hushed voice. How—and when—in the hell had she left? My attention drifted back to the broken trellis that had led to my bedroom window, and my jealous mind came up with one reason, and one reason only, why she would sneak out like a grounded teenager. Fucking Brent!
She crawled out from the foliage, dressed in all black and wearing a ski mask. The same outfit Monroe wore when she was up to a bunch of bullshit. “I can explain.” She stumbled to her feet, and her gaze drifted from the bat in my hand to my face. “I—”
The whine of sirens grew closer. Her eyes went wide, and she took off for the back door like her ass was on fire. Dog, of course, chased right after her.
God only knew what kind of dumb crap she’d gotten into… When I got inside the house, Jade was pacing the small kitchen.
I went straight to her and lifted the ski mask, revealing her flushed face. “Let me guess—” I thumbed toward the single-pane window over the sink. “That siren has something to do with you and your—” I made an air quote—“work attire.”
She resumed pacing in front of the counter. “Shit. This is so bad.”
“What did you do, Jade?”
She stopped, dragging both hands through her messy hair. “I didn’t know the house had an alarm and—”
“The house?” What in the hell had gotten into her? “You broke into a house? Jade, what the fuck?”
Her fear-filled gaze met mine before she covered her face with her hands. “Oh, my God.” The pitiful breath that stuttered past her lips killed me. It was the kind of hopeless, desperate breath someone took right before they completely broke. “I’m so fucked.”
Fucked may have been an understatement. Breaking and entering carried a hefty sentence. She could kiss school goodbye. Possibly her future. Not many people would be willing to hire a nurse with a criminal record. Not that I needed to tell her that. I had never thought I would need to, either. Jade was the “good girl,” and as much as I didn’t want to care, I couldn’t help but worry about her apparent one-eighty.