Sam was crying now, too. “Jaime, please.”
He shook his head. “No, Sam. I’m not coming with you. I survived the last year without you. Alone. I was never helpless—I don’t need anyone else tomanageme. I hate feeling like that. I want to be around someone who wants to be around me, too.”
He looked up at Finn, hope in his eyes. “And I think I’ve found that, now. A choice. A chance to be with someone who wants to be with me, not someone who thinks of me as a burden.”
He turned back to Sam, squaring his shoulders. “So you can go. There’s a safe house that the security team is preparing for us. I’ll stay there until the trial.”
Sam cast a glance at Finn, still wary. “You’ll be there with him.”
“Yes.” Jaime’s voice turned hard again. “And you cannot go to the police about what you just saw. There’s nothing to report.Finn is my—Finn is with me. And I’m with him. What you saw, just forget about it. It has nothing to do with you.”
Sam, incredulous, waved his hands at Finn in a gesture nearly identical to one he’d seen Jaime make. “Jaime, you can’t seriously expect me to just forget aboutBig and Hairyover there, nearly ripping my throat out!”
Silas choked a laugh into a cough, and Finn knew he’d hear that nickname again.
Still, Finn winced at the mention of threatening Sam, but Jaime snapped back, “Don’t be fucking dramatic. He did not.”
Finn made eye contact with Silas over the brothers’ heads, and grimaced. He kind of had, but he wasn’t going to argue that point.
Jaime continued. “Besides, you stormed in here, unannounced, screaming like a banshee. I know how grouchy you can be in the mornings. Now, I’m tired, and cold, and naked, and I want to go back to bed. Leave.”
Sam was looking at him like he’d never seen his brother before. Like they were strangers, and this was the first time they’d ever met. Maybe it was, in a way. From what Jaime had said, Sam had always taken care of Jaime, even when they were little, and again when Jaime was first attacked. And Jaime kept reaching and reaching for him this last year, only for Sam to retreat further.
Until now. Until Jaime stood up for himself and chose his own path forward. “Fire the lawyer if you want. End the contract with the security team, if you want. I don’t give a fuck. I’ll figure it out.”
Finn had a moment of internal panic before he relaxed. His decision to take Jaime’s case had never been about the contract—it was merely an excuse to justify shoving his way back into Jaime’s life when he’d walked away last year.
But Jaime hadn’t walked away willingly; he’d been forced to drop contact due to some terrible circumstances, and now that they were together, there wasn’t a force on Earth that would keep Finn from him.
So, fuck the contract. He’d quit and hole up with Jaime in a safe house somewhere indefinitely for all he cared. He had the savings. And he’d show Jaime just how wanted and loved and safe he was, for as long as Jaime wanted him back.
Sam looked utterly defeated, like a completely different man from the one who had stormed in demanding answers. “Jaime, don’t do this.”
Jaime sighed heavily. “We are both responsible for breaking this, Sam. I needed too much from you, and you pushed me away because of it. Maybe someday we can mend that. But I cannot continue having this conversation with you right now. I really need you to leave.”
Sam stared at his brother for another long moment, then at Finn and Silas, before he turned and left.
Silas watched Sam leave with that same intensity. He glanced back, pointedly not looking at Jaime covered only by the blanket. “I’ll follow him, and make sure he doesn’t go to the police.”
He stepped out the door, and tossed over his shoulder, “Sheppard called, the safe house is ready.”
The quiet inthe truck was tense as Finn drove them north from Jaime’s cabin past Silver Rapids, taking the only real highway this far into the Alaskan interior until they hit Fairbanks just over five hours away.
They wouldn’t be going that far, though; the coordinates Sheppard had sent him through a secured device directed thathe turn east off the highway in two hours before another two hours of backroads finally got them to the safe house.
This place truly was tucked away in the Alaskan wilderness.
Sheppard warned him that the cabin’s water supply came from a giant tank out back, so while they did have a tiny shower stall and running water in the kitchen sink, there was no indoor plumbing, and they’d have to conserve water. But, their overnight delay had allowed him to get people out to clean and open everything up, heat the stove, and stock the fridge and pantry and other amenities.
They’d just be shitting in an outhouse for the next week until Bishop’s trial.
Jaime hadn’t said much after Sam left; all of the courage and bravado had left him, so that he just looked hurt and worn. They’d packed quickly and silently, leaving their personal phones on the coffee table for Silas to hold onto. It wasn’t safe to take anything that could be tracked, and Jaime didn’t seem inclined to bring his phone along anyway. The only times Finn had ever seen him use it were to try and call Sam or his lawyer, and they both knew he’d be at a safe house and could get ahold of him through the secured phone the security team provided.
Not that Finn thought that Jaime would answer, if he knew it was Sam calling.
So they drove, with Jaime staring out the window and Finn stewing over whether he should say something. He stewed for the next four hours, in fact, all the way down the rough and jarring dirt road that was barely passable this time of year. If Sheppard used this house year round, he’d have to fly or snow mobile clients in.
By the time they pulled up to the cabin, the ground in front of the door cleared by whoever opened and stocked the place, Finn had worried and spiraled himself so far into worst-case-scenario territory that he didn’t know which way was up.
