He didn’t answer immediately. Just stared at me for a few unspoken heartbeats before he folded his arms over his chest.
I ignored the way my body heated up because he looked good in his suit. He looked good in anything really.
“You never answered my first question. What did you do?”
“I just dug up a little information on Suzanne.”
“What type of information, Grace?”
Rolling my eyes, I told Jacob all about how Suzanne had a history of harassing and even stalking doctors. As I told him about the confrontation I had with Suzanne, in which she admitted to what she did in the office, and that I recorded it, his expression didn’t change.
“After all of that, the hospital must’ve seen fit to dismiss Suzanne and absolve you of any wrongdoing.”
Jacob unfolded his arms and moved them to his waist, staring at me intently.
“Jacob …” I moved closer, feeling uneasy at the way he was looking at me.
“How many times are you going to try to keep saving me, Grace?”
Wrinkling my forehead, I tilted my head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said. I don’t need you to keep rushing in and saving me. I don’t need you to be my personal hero.”
My back went straight. I felt like I’d just been gut punched but he hadn’t touched me. His words were the only force he needed. Those and the way his eyes began to cloud over in that stormy way he looked at everyone else. I could almost feel him shutting me out.
“J—” I started but his phone buzzed.
I was silent as he pulled it out of his pocket and checked the text message. His eyebrows spiked and his lips pinched. I couldn’t read the face he was making. He stared at his phone screen for a long while, as if reading the message over and over again would allow him to make sense of it.
“I need to go,” he finally stated, moving past me to grab his coat off the rack in the corner of the room.
“Jacob,” I called. “Where are you going?”
He turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. “Back home,” was all he said before exiting the office without even looking back.
And what had been the start of what I believed would be a great day, had gone so wrong, so quickly.
Chapter Thirty
Jacob
“Jacob, you know you don’t have to go to this if you don’t want to,” Dr. Kearns reminded me yet again.
“Why the hell do you keep telling me that? I know.” I gritted my teeth and paced the hotel room I’d been staying in for the past three days.
“I’m just making sure you’re aware that you have options. No one is—”
“Forcing me. I get to make the decision. I’m aware, Doc, we’ve been over this.” I stopped pacing and stared out the window of the hotel. From this fifteenth floor, I had a great view of the Space Needle in the heart of Seattle.
“But you’re still going.”
“Yes.” He hadn’t phrased it as a question, but I still felt the need to say the yes out loud, more as a confirmation to myself.
“And you have your journal and your coping strategies with you?”
I rolled my eyes. “We’ve only gone over them a hundred times since I’ve been here.”
“Yes, we have, but this is a big deal, Jacob. What you’re doing takes a lot of courage, and I don’t often encourage my clients do this so early in their recovery process. But—”
