I said bye, got one in return, and then we hung up.
The deep sigh that left Alex’s chest had me instantly glancing toward him in surprise. “You okay?” I asked. “Relieved?”
“I won’t be relieved until I’m home.”
Home.
It was the fact he wanted to feel relief that got under my skin, but I wasn’t about to ask over it.
“Where is home?” I asked. After all, his home was going to be my home, at least for a little while. All I knew was that it wasn’t close to a beach.
“Does it matter?”
Could he give me one straight answer? “Are there trees? Or is it in a city?”
He tipped his head back, giving me a good view of his muscular throat. “Do you care?”
“I get to choose?”
“No.”
That’s what I thought. Pressing my lips together, I thought about things for a second. “Are you sure you’ll be okay with me staying with you until we figure out plan B?” I asked before I could stop myself.
He tipped his head to the side. “Do I look like the kind of man who would go back on his word?”
I mean….
“I’m sure, Gracie.”
So he said now, but things changed. One minute I’d been pretty comfortable in a home I liked, and now I had jack shit. Now, I was doing exactly what I’d been raised to avoid—depending on someone, telling them the truth, just fucking talking to them in the first place. My brain wanted to protest it, but my stomach wasn’t exactly protesting it, which was confusing. I balled one of my hands into a fist. “If you get tired of having me around, you’ll tell me? With time, so I can make other plans?”
His nostrils flared before his eyelids dropped over those incredible eyes. “Why do you ask so many questions?”
I narrowed my eyes right back at him. “I just want to make sure.”
“We don’t need to talk about it anymore. I told you the plan.”
I eyed him, telling myself that I could do this. That I could rely on him for a little while. I knew who he was. I knew his name. I knew he wasn’t as invulnerable as he’d seemed.
I knew secrets about The Defender, that I doubted 99.9999999 percent of people would ever know.
That meant something. It had to.
I could trust him. Some. Couldn’t I? I had no choice but to try. “Let me see if they have anything in here to make for breakfast, and hopefully someone will get here soon.” Which then reminded me….
He didn’t move as I brushed by him and started digging through the cabinets like this wasn’t some stranger’s house we had snuck into. Like I wouldn’t go to jail if we were caught. We were criminals now, technically.
But I was also a hungry one and a sick one, and one day I’d just have to pay these people back somehow too. Like the last ones. That should be the least of my worries right now though. I just wanted some food so I could take more painkillers.
It didn’t take me long to rifle through what turned out to be well-stocked cabinets. The freezer was packed too. For a moment, I’d thought about looking through drawers for cash, but I really, really didn’t want to do that. It was one thing to steal food but a totally different thing to take actual money.
But if whoever this Agatha person was could pull through and get us a car… and cash, then we would be fine. At least he had one person he could rely on for help. Maybe he had more.
I could feel his gaze on me as I grabbed four cans and a packet of biscuits from the freezer. So many questions rolled around in my head as I prepped the food that the silence wasn’t awkward.I was going to be living with him. Or near him.That was still a pill to swallow.
It made me want to sweat.
“Are you having another meltdown?”
