Two words. No elaboration.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and said nothing.
It was past one in the morning.
Jason had made camomile tea and set one in front of me at the table. He sat across from me looking wrecked and somehow still handsome, which I found deeply unreasonable.
“I spoke to Briggs,” he said. He turned the mug in his hands. “He’s arranging a safe house. Local authorities are involved. But, we’d… we’d need to leave in a few hours.”
I looked at him.
“I’m not leaving.”
“Camila—”
“This is my life, Jason.” The anger came back, quieter than before but no less real. “My café. My animal shelter. My street, my cottage, everything I built in the last year — I’m not leaving it because Scarlett and her bodyguard jumped my garden wall.”
“They will come back.” He said it without drama. “Tonight was a delay, not a defeat. I know how these people operate. They don’t stop.”
I looked at my tea.
“The fundraiser,” I said finally. “I have been planning it for months. It’s next weekend. Every penny goes to the shelter renovation and the animals.” I looked up at him. “I am not missing that.”
“Next weekend,” he said.
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly. “Can Audrey manage the café for a few days?”
I thought about Audrey, who had hit my ex-husband with a sandal upon first meeting him. She had been my saviour, my mother, my best friend, my everything for the last one year. I already knew the answer.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then we go to the safe house tonight, and you will be at the fundraiser next Saturday.” He looked at me directly. “I promise you that.”
I wrapped both hands around my mug and looked at the steam rising from it.
“Pack what you need,” Jason said. “I’ll handle the rest.”
CHAPTER 25
JASON
Camila had packed in fifteen minutes.
I didn’t know what I’d expected — resistance, maybe, or even anger at her life disrupting completely over a week. But she had gone upstairs, and I had heard the quiet sounds of drawers and a zip, and when she came back down she had a bag over her shoulder and her keys in her hand, which she set on the kitchen counter without looking at me.
I picked them up. Locked the door behind us. She was already at the passenger side by the time I reached the car.
We drove in the dark without speaking.
I checked the mirrors every forty seconds. The road behind us was empty and stayed empty, the occasional street light passing overhead and then receding, the dark pressing in around the car like something solid.
Camila was looking out her window.
I glanced at her in a peripheral way that didn’t require turning my head. She had her arms folded loosely, her face turned toward the passing dark, and she looked like someone processing a loss she hadn’t fully accounted for yet.
Noah.
