Ishould be used to fuck fests by now.
But tonight is different. We all know it. It’s a goodbye, hopefully a temporary one, but still. So much of me wants to be downstairs with them, accepted into the fold or some shit. But I fucked up. I’m not welcome.
Clara told me I had to earn her trust before she’d try to build anything with me, and I can’t blame her. I don’t trust myself. Months of effort, but I have no idea what going back to my father’s house will do to my tentative control. I’m not ready. I’m not sure I ever will be.
But if I can’t do this, I can’t someday be a part of whatever the hell is going on downstairs. And as much as that situation weirded me out a year ago, every fiber of my being is desperate to be there with them now. To see what Clara looks like fallingapart at my touch. To be surrounded by the only people in the world I trust.
But first, I’ve got to know I can trust myself.
A yowl down the hall has me burying my head under my pillow until I realize it’s just the damn cat.
I free him from Jansen’s room, and he trails me to mine, weaving between my legs like his only goal in life is to trip me. “Fucker,” I mutter, closing the door behind us, and flopping into my bed, the ceiling not entertaining in the slightest. There’s a scuffle, then athunk, and I’m forced to sit up, finding the damn cat has opened the hidden door to the safe under my desk.
“You take after your owner, don’t you,” I mutter as he folds himself into the hollow space like it’s a box.
He mutters back something that sounds suspiciously like he’s chewing me out about my lack of control.
I lay there for a while, but then some sort of melancholy curiosity takes over, and I approach the cat. “You’ve got to move,” I tell him.
A single mew in defiance is what I get as he curls his tail protectively around himself.
“I can’t believe I’m getting back-talk from a cat. Move. I don’t remember exactly what I left in there, and if it’s anything useful, I should get it out.”
The gray beast swipes at me twice before he grumbles and hops up on the bed, taking my favorite pillow in compensation for his trouble. Asshole.
Opening the safe feels like opening a portal into a different time. Was it really a year ago that my biggest worries were a last-minute job to verify some Van Dyke for Jasmine and counting out my cash into piles of less than ten grand so I could avoid anti-money laundering paperwork? What I find in the safe isn’t some nostalgic time capsule, though.
Instead, I find a fucking tiara. One I’ve never seen before. “Damn it, Jansen,” I growl, the cat immediately coming to his owner’s defense in a series of chirps and yaps.
The piece is gorgeous, a perfect complement to the blood-red dress that I bought last winter, not knowing what the hell I was going to do with it, but knowing that if Summer said it was made for Clara, I’d be an idiot to leave it in the store. That same dress, totally see through, I may add, hangs in a garment bag in my closet, along with a pair of strappy knee-high heel things that I’m sure have some fancy name, even if I don’t know it.
I get why he took the tiara. I understand the rest of my team a lot more than I used to. It turns out that sitting back and watching them gives a man a lot more insight than hiding out and bossing them around does. Funny how that works.
Based on the design of the tiara, it came from that hoard of Nazi jewelry he hit right before we ran. He shouldn’t have, but of course he did. I’m not the only one unable to trust myself. Jansen just struggles for different reasons than I do. The rest of the safe is exactly what I expect, some papers that if the asshole progenitor came across wouldn’t hurt us, and some other pieces of jewelry that Jansen must have stuck in here.
Light steps up the stairs have me on edge, terror snaking up my spine, hating that our reprieve was so short while I grapple with the realization that I’m not ready to go back, that I don’t have enough control for this hellish mission we’ve planned out.
But nobody breaks into my room.
Instead, the footsteps go past me, the cat popping to his feet and going to the door. “Fluffington?” Jansen’s voice carries down the hallway, the annoying feline answering with a few mews, leaving me no choice but to open the door.
Jansen follows the sound of the animal, and then his wide awake, buzzing self is standing in my room, scooping up his cat,his face blanching when he spies the tiara in my hand. “Oh. Shit. I forgot I hid that there when we ran.”
I just sigh. Because Jansen is Jansen. And what happened almost eight months ago can’t be helped.
Seeing that I’m not going to rip him a new one, he flops onto my bed with the cat.
“No. If you want that cuddle shit, go back downstairs,” I state.
He groans. “They’re all asleep. And I’m wide awake.”
“Should I go get Clara so she can tug on your braid and call you a bad boy?”
He laughs, rolling all the way across my bed and sitting up at the far side, adjusting my pillows like he plans on staying. “Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s the best kind of torture.”
“No, thank you. And what the hell part of ‘get out’ didn’t you understand?”
“The part where I listen.”
