Virginia departs the room,leaving Jayden, Landon, and me alone.
“What happened to your sling?” I happen to know Jayden isn’t close to being ready to abandon it just yet. His doctor was clear about that.
He shrugs. “I guess it fell off and I didn’t notice.”
Landon snorts, buying the lie as much as I do.
I don’t get to say anything else about the topic. Jayden gestures wildly at the contents of the room, his gaze locked on mine. “This is why I don’t want you to be an operative with the rest of us. It’s too fucking dangerous.”
That fire in his eyes usually gives me chills, in a good way.
Right now, I want to dump a bucket of cold water on his head.
“But it’s not too dangerous for Landon? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, because he’s a man.”
Oh, damn. He did not just say that.
If I were a fire-breathing dragon, smoke would be unfurling from my flared nostrils. “Oh, really? Because in case you didn’t notice, when you and Blake came charging in here on your whiteponies, Landon was still tied up and I wasn’t. I was the reason one man was out of commission.”
“Christ, I really hate it when Mom and Dad fight,” Landon says, barely holding back a laugh.
Neither of us turns to look at him.
We’re in standoff mode.
Ready to circle one another. Each ready to bring the other down.
“Maybe I should leave so you two can rip off your clothes and fuck yourselves silly,” he says.
Neither of us responds. We continue glaring at each other.
I’m vaguely aware of Landon walking toward the open door. “But you might want to skip on the toys in this room,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the damage they might inflict. Text me when you’re ready to go to the police station.” The door clicks shut.
And opens again. “I don’t suppose you need a condom?”
“Get the hell out of here!” Jayden’s gaze still doesn’t leave mine.
This time when Landon closes the door, it stays shut.
“Look, I get it,” Jayden says with the growl of an unreasonable caveman. The tension between us is like a live wire. Sizzling. Crackling. Ready to burn.
Or be burned.
He steps closer, the heat between us intensifying. “You wanted to do something different, something dangerous. Well, you’ve done it. You almost got yourself killed in the process. Now it’s time to go back to your regular job.”
I let out a hard breath. “You don’t get it at all, do you, Jayden? This is what I’m supposed to be doing. Being on this mission with you feels more right than anything else I’ve done before. You assume I’m incapable of doing the job because you refuse to see beyond the walls of the box.”
“It’s not that I refuse to see it. I don’t want you to get killed. I’m fucking in love with you, Isabelle, and I can’t bear the thought of watching you get killed. Becausethatwill kill me.”
For a second, the world goes completely still, the air in the room sucked out. The meaning behind Jayden’s words, even though they were spoken in anger, in the heat of the moment, sears our thoughts. Renders us speechless.
Double damn.
We look at each other for a long moment, our breaths heaving from our hurled words. Then something clicks inside us.
I start undoing his shirt, impatient to get it off him—refusing to fully examine his words for now.
