Page 98 of A Song for You

I shoot to my feet, sending my chair knocking into the wall behind me. “Wait a fucking minute. I do care about Cat.”

“More than your revenge?” she asks, her eyes wide.

I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. Mia doesn’t recognize the change in me, and that’s my fault, not hers. For years, I cursed the James family. She knew my plans. She knew why I made friends with Carter. She helped me when necessary.

But she didn’t know her best friend was a James then.

“Yes,” I breathe, letting my shoulders drop. “Cat means more to me than revenge.”

Mia finally drops to the chair like her legs can no longer hold her, her face etched with confusion. “Does she know?”

I shake my head. It’s the one secret I’ve kept. Maybe it’s more than one secret, but they’re all twisted in a malignant knot.

“She knows I hate her father. And that my relationship with Carter is complicated by that.”

Mia scoffs. “So she doesn’t know you used Carter to exact your revenge. How do you think she’ll take it when everything goes down? Do you even know what your father has planned?”

Her questions eat at my soul. Day in and day out, I work to anticipate my father’s next move. I dig for information. But truthfully, I can’t prepare. If Cat learns the truth, that I’ve been working on setting her family up for the last five years, and why I hated her father so much, would she ever forgive me?

The answer is likely no.

And that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

I scrub at my head and huff. With my father heading to London, all I can do is hope that his plan is on hold until after he returns. By then, Cat will be headed to Paris. While she’s gone, I can work to unravel the plan or at least minimize the fallout. With her overseas, I can only hope to keep her from suffering the consequences of it all.

But now that Mia knows, that plan may be nothing more than a wish whispered into the wind. She’ll never let me keep her.

“This will break Cat’s heart,” I say to Mia, pleading with her.

Her eyes are wild. “You think I don’t know that? It’s the only reason I didn’t say anything last night. How could you be so selfish? You can’t claim to love someone and then trick them like that.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” I counter.

She reddens. “I stepped back. You asked me to give you a chance to make her happy. I stepped back because I care about her.” Her eyes well with tears. “I care about her, Jay, and this is going to break her heart.”

Standing, I tug on the cuffs of my sleeves, then round my desk. Kneeling beside her, my hands on the arms of the chair, I plead my case. “That’s why she can’t know. We need to fix this. I’m trying to stop my father’s plan, but I need more information to do that. I need to get that damn tracker they had me place in Carter’s room. I slipped it into his computer. It’s an SD chip. I have no idea what’s on it or what intel my father’s looking for, but we should start there.”

“We?” she scoffs.

Falling back on my ass, I sigh and fold my arms over my knees. “I can’t do it, Mia. It’s too risky.”

“Why?” she demands.

“Because I’ll have no reasonable explanation if I get caught.”

“And what if I get caught?”

I give her a look, and her mouth drops open. Then she crosses her arms and glares.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I argue. “You flirt with everyone. If you get caught, just bat your lashes at him. He’ll think nothing of it. Carter thinks with his dick around women…and you’ll be protecting Cat,” I add for good measure, suddenly realizing the brilliance of this plan. We can get the chip back, and once I have it analyzed, hopefully I’ll know what my father is planning. Then I can protect Cat from the fallout and make sure it doesn’t touch anyone but her father.

Because knowing my father, the goal is to take down the whole family.

“When?” Mia asks.

“I’ll call Carter today and ask if he wants to come up to Boston for drinks. You go to the apartment, get in and get out, and we’ll be all set.”

Mia is silent and impossible to read as she tilts her head and examines me. I really need her to say yes. If not, I’ll call Kevin. I need help, and I can’t let this get back to Cat. Mia is right; it will break her heart. Since the moment I found out she was Catherine James, I knew this day would come. But I’ve worked to be a better man. To be a man worthy of her. And I didn’t go through all of that—and fall hopelessly in love with her—only to lose her. I promised her a future, and now it’s time to make sure we have that.