She marched blindly toward the parking garage, her breath steaming in the wintry air. The restaurant was around the corner from Jace’s building, so it wasn’t a long walk, but it felt like five miles. Snow flurries flew around her face, tiny cold kisses on cheeks burning with anger, as her legs ate up the distance.
Footsteps pounded behind her, but she only sped up, even though it was futile to try and outrun him. Jace fell into step beside her. “It’s not something I didn’t already know,” he said, and she figured he was referring to her calling him an asshole.
“Good. Now it’s been reaffirmed for you.”
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“Just speaking truths, I guess.” She pulled her coat tighter and quickened her steps. “Please leave. I’ll let you know if I hear anything. It’d be great if you do the same. Until then I don’t think there’s any need for us to speak to each other.”
“Why are you so mad?”
“I’m not.”
“If calling me an asshole and stomping away from the table is you not mad, then…”
“When I get mad,” she snapped, tossing his words back at him, “you’ll know.”
He laughed. Like this was all a game to him. For all she knew, he’d set all of this in motion. He was downright scary on a computer; he always had been. What if he was exacting his ultimate revenge on her sister for the years of hell she’d subjected him to and was taking Lindsey down for good measure? Far-fetched? Sure. But this whole fucking situation was far-fetched. Dear God, why hadn’t it occurred to her before? What if she’d walked right into a trap, and he’d set it?
“Really,” she said, “I want you to leave me alone.”
“You shouldn’t walk at night by yourself.”
“I walk at night by myself all the time. I’m a big girl. Good night.” She couldn’t go much faster without breaking into a trot, though, but she pushed herself until sweat trickled down her back even in the frigid temperatures.
Jace didn’t falter, matching her stride for stride, shoving his hands into the pockets of his black coat.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re pissed, I get that, but you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine. Just cold. And exhausted. I’m ready to get home to bed. So please, leave me alone.”
“Lindsey.” He put a hand on her then, stopping her, and her heart leaped into her throat.
“If you try to hurt me, I swear to God I’ll start screaming,” she ground out through chattering teeth. “And maybe you can take me down, but you’ll have a hell of a time trying.”
“Hey,” he said, his dark brows drawing together. “Hey, now. I talk a lot of shit, you know? But I would never hurt you. In fact, if another motherfucker laid a hand on you right now, I’d rip it off.”
“Why? We aren’t friends.”
“We don’t have to be. I’d do that for a stranger.”
Maybe he was right, and she needed to stop getting so offended about everything.
It was only that she remembered those feelings all those years ago—the flutter in her belly when she watched him in class. The way she’d thought of him in the darkest hours of the night when she touched herself.
It had been his name ricocheting through her head when she came, sometimes even during her rare college sexual encounters. No one had affected her like he had, all from simply sitting across the room from her.
And to stand in front of him now, all these years later, and think about those harsh words shooting from his lips, aimed at her like bullets…
But he couldn’t know any of that. It shouldn’t even matter, because he wasn’t the same person. In many ways, neither was she.
Even though her mind had taken a dark detour, imagining that he might be behind all this, looking at his earnestness right now, his sincerity, she found she couldn’t truly believe it.
Or maybe she didn’t want to.
The falling snowflakes caught in his dark hair, glistening under the street lights as she stared up at him, and it was all Lindsey could do not to reach up and brush them out. God, was she going insane? Her brain was like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another.
From he’s going to hurt me to oh God, I want to kiss him.
“So, um…if I need you, is there some way I can reach you?” she asked.
“Call me.”
She’d expected something a little less overt than that, but like he’d said: these people no doubt knew right where they were. Probably at this very moment. She felt that breath at the back of her neck again, freezing the sweat that had gathered there during her speed-walking attempt.
She pulled her cell phone from her purse and powered it on, then navigated to contacts and handed it over so he could list his information.
“You can disable the GPS in your phone,” Jace said as he typed, “but regardless, you can still be tracked if someone has the know-how.”
And they probably did. She also figured Jace had her number from his cyber snooping, so she didn’t bother offering it.
“Any time,” he said as he handed her device back. “All right? Night or day.”
“Okay.”
“Leave it on. Yeah, that does mean anyone can find you, but it also means I can find you. Leave it on, never power it down. Never let your battery run out. That way if I can’t get a trace, then I know something’s wrong.”
She nodded.
“And let me walk you to your car.”
Lindsey agreed to that, too, her exhaustion so heavy that she couldn’t think around it any longer. If he or anyone else wanted to knock her in the head and drag her away to wherever her sister was, let them. She’d been dumb enough to stumble into the trap, right? She’d always thought she was pretty smart, but she didn’t know which way was up anymore.
Jace opened her car door for her after she remote started it, admonished her to be careful, then closed it after she got in. He even stood watching until she turned a corner and was no longer able to see him in her rearview mirrors.
Emptiness crowded around her. Heat blasted from her air vents, blowing her hair with its force, but she was still chilled inside. And would be until this was over.