“Jasmine didn’t hang up the phone. I was still on the line when you decided you’d come here for deviled eggs and businessmen.”
“Oops,” Jasmine said. “Here. Take a picture of us!” She pushed her phone at Nick and threw her arms around Riley. This time Riley really did fall off her stool. He caught her before she hit the floor and propped her against the bar.
“Can I buy you a drink?” A trim Asian guy in a great suit with even better hair sidled up next to Jasmine, distracting her.
“Read my mind,” Nick demanded.
“Wha?” Riley asked, trying to focus on him.
He cupped her chin. “Read my mind, Thorn.”
“Why? Are you thinking about my butt too?”
He closed his eyes and let out a breath. “The only way you’re going to understand why I did the stupid things I did is if you can actually be in my head. So do it. Go be in my head.”
“That’s an invasion of privacy.” Riley sniffed. “And unlike some others, I respect my partner’s privacy.” She tried to boop him on the nose Bella-style. But missed and poked him in the mouth.
“I invaded your privacy. Now you get to invade mine. That’s how relationships work.”
“I don’t know if I can read your mind with so much tequila swimming through me,” she told the Nick on the left.
“Try.”
“Ugh. Fine.” She closed her eyes. Then opened one. “I don’t owe you any favors, you know. I could just tell you to go away until I’m ready to talk to you.”
“I know that, and I appreciate that you haven’t done that yet even though I deserve it.”
With that settled, she closed her eyes again and tried to remember how to be psychic. It took her a few tries, and she got the hiccups, but she finally found herself in the Cotton Candy place.
“Hey, guys! It’s me, Drunk Riley. Nick says I can read his mind. So I guess go ahead and show me whatever is going on in there. I’m guessing it has to do with sex and lawn care.”
Either the clouds were spinning or her brain was. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
This time, the clouds didn’t part. There were no visuals partially obscured by pastel fluff. There were only feelings. Adrenaline. The red-hot haze of fury. Heart-pounding fear. Like the first hill of a roller coaster, her stomach dropped, and she felt like she was in a white-knuckled free fall.
There was a flash of blue water, of a man kneeling in the water.
This was what Nick felt when he’d found her under the water in the fountain, a madman’s hands on her neck.
Where jail and justice had given Riley the peace she needed, it hadn’t been enough for Nick. He wanted more. Needed more.
It was a constant, drumming beat in his blood.Not again. Not again. Not again.
Not Riley.
Keep her safe. Any means possible.
I love her.
On the last revelation, she slid right out of the clouds and slumped against the bar. “That’swhat goes on in there?” she slurred, staring at both of him.
“Yeah. All the time.”
“I thought it was like, I don’t know, football scores and women and beer preferences.”
“Very funny, Thorn.”
Nick Santiago was a protector. And he thought he’d failed once. He wasn’t willing to pay that price again. So he’d assumed responsibility for her safety.
