‘You’re a lawyer, Nella. Save the psychoanalysis. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He spun a loose screw between his fingers.
‘Well, I’ve been in enough therapy to know what self-sabotage looks like.’ She stalked around to the safe, but he kept his gaze resolutely on the half-opened safe door. His lips had parted slightly at the therapy comment.
‘So you’re never going to settle down anywhere?’ she demanded, when the silence had strained too much.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I have this ... timer inside me, and it gets louder and louder the longer I stay, until I can’t take the ringing anymore. Some people want the white picket fence, others want to travel and be completely untethered. Movies and pop culture convince us we need the first one in order to be fulfilled, because it benefits society if we’re all imprisoned in our own little suburban fortress with two point five kids and a sedan. But that’s not for everyone. That’s not for me.’
He wasn’t telling her everything. She could feel it like pins and needles crawling over her.
‘Does your girlfriend knowimprisonedis the adjective you use to describe a long-term relationship?’
‘She’s not my girlfriend. We’re not even exclusive.’
‘Shocking.’
‘I know you want stability, Nella. I know your dream was always to carve your own mark on the world and dig your roots deep into the ground so your father couldn’t cut them out. I know you wanted your own family tree far away from his, and I know that hasn’t changed even though he’s gone. So I don’t expect you to understand me, just like I’ll never completely understand you.’
She swallowed. ‘I don’t want kids.’
His hands stilled as he dug his fingers beneath the metal to pry the door away. ‘What?’
‘You’re right about making my own mark and all that crap, but not about the family tree. I don’t want children.’
She knew what he was thinking.You’ll change your mind.It was everyone’s reaction whenever a youngish woman made that assertion. But she wouldn’t. She’d made up her mind about this when she was ten. And, unlike everything Nella had done to build a life for herself away from her family name, this was one decision that wasn’t made to spite her father. Although, admittedly, that had been a satisfying bonus. The man’s death had only nailed her decision deeper into her skin.
She knew she didn’t have long before the door was off. ‘So when you leave us, you’re never coming back?’
‘That’s the way it has to be.’ With one final whir, the door crashed to the ground. It was a good thing, because it meant he was too distracted to see her face.
She ignored the thundering of her heart as Jett reached into the dark square hole and pulled out an iPad with a brown leather case that made it look like an old novel from the 1700s. He opened the flap and pressed the power button.
‘It’s flat.’
‘Fuck. We’ll charge it in the car. Put the door back, we don’t have—’
Voices filtered through the cracks of the office door.
Jett lurched up, eyes wild. They stared at each other. ‘What do we ...’
‘Just trust me,’ she hissed as she closed the space between them. Not thinking. Not anything.
She clasped her hands around his neck and pulled his lips to hers.
She pulled him underwater, underground, down, down, down, until he wouldn’t be able to see or think or remember who he was before he felt her mouth.
Except that wasn’t what was happening. She’d never be able to make Jett feel like that.
He tasted like something she shouldn’t know. Was never meant to know. Eve chewing the bitter sweetness of the apple. Coffee and mint. The mints he kept in his glove box. The coffee he put too much milk in.
She knew too much. She didn’t know enough.
A tiny, thorny part of her stung with guilt for what she was making him do – for the part she was demanding he play in her schemes. But god, he was good at pretending.
Jett understood the assignment better than if they’d sat down and planned this out alongside the safe-cracking. His mouth met hers with the same furious desperation she felt deep inside. It was like someone had been squeezing her lungs and now, her body pressed up against Jett’s, her mouth devouring his in greedy, hungry kisses, she was finally breathing. She could still smell the peppery, leather musk and faint aroma of the garage.
But it wasn’t just a kiss. They both knew they had to make it look good.
That was why he lifted her up onto the desk. That was why she pulled him closer, her fingers gripping those shoulders that had diligently done her bidding, rescuing her and driving away from crises and now, unwillingly,this.What would it feel like to have those muscles, this body, these hands, touching her like this in reality and not this make-believe simulation of desire?
