Chapter 63
Becka
It was 3:24 a.m., and I was alone in our hotel suite – or more specifically, alone in our king-size bed.
Only a few days had passed since our argument, and things were still way too tense between us. Oh sure, we'd been working hard to go through the motions, but still the tension lingered like a bad case of the flu.
Jack was wary, and I was impatient. Even now, I couldn’t decide if confronting him had been a mistake.
Maybe I should've stuck with my original plan – to wait it out, believing for some stupid reason that he'd eventually tell me everything on his own.
But he hadn't.Not evenafterI'd confronted him.
And now he was gone.
Again.
We were in a different hotel in a different city. But the dynamic was all too familiar. Now, lying in the darkness, I couldn’t help but wonder if I'd made a mistake by agreeing to that whole no-questions clause.
Was I a sap?
Maybe.
And yet, Ididbelieve him when he claimed there was nobody but me. And crazy or not, I honestly couldn't see him doing anything terribly immoral.
In spite of all the secrets, I'd come to feel like I truly knew him. He was big into codes of conduct, old-fashioned honor, and everything associated with those things. And I loved him all the more for it.
Still, in a perverse sort of way, this only made his disappearances more unsettling.
What was he doing, anyway?
As I stared up at the darkened ceiling, the question haunted me to the point of distraction. Finally, I couldn’t take it another minute.
I got up, got dressed, and grabbed my newest paperback. I considered going down to the lobby, and immediately rejectedthatidea. After all, the last thing we needed now was something else to argue about it.
And then, I remembered something. I had myownhotel room – not that I was staying in it. Still, it was someplace to go, if only to clear my thoughts.
Did it work?
No.
Because the moment I opened the hotel room door, I realized my mistake.The room was already occupied.
By him?
It sure looked that way.
As the door swung silently shut behind me, I stopped to stare. The lights were already on. And right there on the bed were the same dark clothes I'd seen Jack wearing on several other occasions. They were wrinkled and worn, like he'd just taken them off.
Silently, I glanced around, trying to put everything into context. The bathroom door was shut, and the shower was running.
I could hear it, even if I couldn't see it.
Was Jack in there?Hehadto be.
And surely, he was alone.Right?
Like someone in a trance, I moved toward the bathroom door, only to pause halfway when I spotted his black notebook, along with a large manila folder, sitting on the nearby night stand.
