“I didn’t ask you to be here,” I said. “I didn’t ask to be protected. I don’t particularly care what you do at this point. Hook upwhatever you want to hook up. The guest bathroom is at the top of the stairs. Be quick. I have somewhere to be.”
“Where are you going?”
“None of your business.” I stepped back and let him in.
I went upstairs to get dressed for the unbelievably beautiful day.
When I came back down twenty minutes later in my cropped white top and tight jeans, Jason was crouched at the kitchen counter, connecting something to the small monitor he’d installed. He heard me on the stairs and turned.
He looked at me for a long moment. His mouth was very slightly open.
“Is that how you gape at women?” I said.
“Only one woman,” he said, and I felt something strong in my chest. Almost a kind of constricting.
I looked past him at the kitchen counter. He had mounted a small screen that currently showed four camera feeds simultaneously — the front gate, the side passage, the back garden, the front path. In the corner of the counter was a new doorbell monitor sat in its cradle with a green indicator light.
“Who exactly do you think is coming?” I said.
“Camila—”
“Oh yes, I forgot. Your imaginary cartel people. Right.”
He looked at me steadily. “Whether you believe me doesn’t change whether it’s true.”
“I already saw the truth in high-definition a year ago. So, finish up,” I said. “Take your shower. Be out of my house in twenty minutes.”
Jason came downstairs fourteen minutes later with his hair damp, in the same black t-shirt and jeans, with the same freakishly chiseled face, all six foot two of him awkwardly fumbling with the towel.
“Thank you,” he said simply, and went back out to the garden.
I stood in my kitchen for a moment, looking at the four-way security monitor with its crisp little feeds of my entirely peaceful property, and thought about this man who had lied to me, maybe for years. Who was currently living in a tent in my garden because he believed something was coming for me, and who had not once, in two days, asked me for anything except permission to protect me.
But he was also an asshole. And nothing could change that fact.
I picked up my car keys and went out.
Jason was up and moving toward my car before I’d reached the driveway. I had already started the engine by the time he got there, and I reversed out of my parking spot with deliberate speed. He stepped directly in front of the bonnet.
I braked.
“What the—”
“I have to go where you go.” He put both hands on the car hood and looked at me through the windscreen. “I can’t let you out of my sight. Not until I get clearance from Briggs. You can call him yourself — I’ll give you his number. But please, Camila. Open the door.”
I stared at him through the glass.
The man had slept in a tent in a tropical storm. He had fallen off my window ledge into wet mud and gotten up as if nothing happened, and kept working. Whether he deserved my forgiveness was a separate question entirely from whether he believed what he was saying.
I unlocked the passenger door.
He got in.
We drove in silence for two full minutes. I was aware of him looking at me from the corner of his eye — building toward something, he opened his mouth and gulped some air to start talking, but suddenly decided against it.
It was extremely irritating.
After the third time he did that, I snapped.
