“Only today? The day’s almost gone. Why didn’t you come by thismorning?”
He bit his lip, and I knew something was wrong. “What is it,Jake?”
When he sat the mug down and rubbed his hands across the tops of his thighs, and I knew something was really wrong. “Jake, you’re starting to scareme.”
“Maybe you should put that coffee down,” he said before he swiveled on the stool and gestured for me to take the otherone.
Once I’d settled, I eyed him warily. He pushed my bag and things toward the other end of the counter, out of reach. “Jake, what did youdo?”
He released a long heavy sigh and shifted toward me so our knees lined up. He was the same height as me so I could meet his eyes square on. They lookedfrightened.
“Jake, what did you do?” I asked again with a little moreforce.
Seconds passed in heavy silence. I didn’t recall him every giving me this look of apprehension andshame.
“You know that guy you asked me to lookinto?”
Dread began to build in my belly, but I held it with tight reigns, praying Jake didn’t kill him orworse.
“Well, I learned something about him. Then after I sent you his details, I saw that you deleted the email without even looking at the pdffile.”
“Yes, I deleted it. He told me everything I wanted toknow.”
“He didn’t tell you everything,Izzy.”
“Okay, so what? We’ve known each other a very short time. I don’t expect to know all his secrets right off the bat. Especially since I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be with him. I wanted to keep thingscasual.”
“They didn’t look casual,Izzy.”
My mouth dropped open, and I clamped it shut once I realized. “Have you been spying onme?”
“I got on a plane after our conversation. I’ve been spying on Gray, notyou.”
I wanted to slap him. My own twin brother, treating me like a child. “I’m a thirty-year-old woman for fuck’s sake. I don’t need you to rough up my boyfriend, or sex partners, forme.”
He flinched at the word sex partner, and I knew he would. I’d thrown it in there just to torture him. “What did you do, Jake? Besides betray mytrust?”
I slid off the stool and began to pace alongside the bar. If I sat and looked at him the entire time he recounted his story, I might murder him. And the cleanup would be hell. The big question echoing in my head was why he felt the need for such a dramatic step. I’d had many boyfriends, and even sex partners, in the past. He’d never flown around the world, or wherever, to spy onthem.
“Why did you do this?” I asked, not looking at his face, stillpacing.
“I only did it because this guy is insane. And I’m not talking normal person insane, actual freaking certifiably insane. You didn’t read the report, and I was worried, so I came out to make sure you werealright.”
“By stalking the guy I was sleeping with. How does that tell you if I’malright?”
He shifted off the stool and pulled a squished roll of white paper from his pocket. I snatched it out of his hand with aglower.
The papers had a bunch of test result numbers printed on them. I read as I paced back and forth, barely catching some of the scientific jargon underneath an assessment, “I don’t know what this says, Jake. Just explain it tome.”
He shifted forward, sliding both feet off the rungs of the stool onto the floor. “It means your boyfriend’s brain has reached its breaking point. He’s been hallucinating. All the crap about him thinking you’re the reincarnation of that girl he killed, none of it’s true. You don’t look anything like her. His mind is breaking, and he latched on to you as some sort of realityhandle.”
I narrowed my eyes and stepped back from my brother. The one solid foundation I’d possessed my entire life seemed to be crumbling around the edges. It wasn’t all this crap about Gray that bothered me. It was him being in my city without telling me, without coming to me. Him lying about where he was and not calling. Him stalking the guy I was sleeping with. None of it made any damnsense.
I shoved the papers at his chest. “This doesn’t matter. I told you. He and I were seeing each other and now we are not. You’ve done a dumb ass thing for absolutely no reason. And now I’m mad atyou.”
Damn him for being such a pig-headed male like all the rest of them. He was supposed to be the different one. The one I could count on. I grabbed my mug and refilled it with hot coffee to warm up the liquid that remained in my cup. Jake sat with his back to me, his head hanging down as he lined up the papers and rolled them back up to put in his pocketagain.
When he finished, he spun around on the stool to face meagain.
