Chantel nodded. “She’d given Bill one of the hats. Said he looked sexy in it. I can only assume she thought his son looked sexy in one, too.”
“They both loved her,” Emma said right about the time Jayden was ready to lose his lunch. “And sadly, she probably loved them, too.”
“I think you’re right about that,” the female officer said. And then, looking at Chantel, she said, “They’ve read her her rights, and have her in the back of the car. You want us to book her?”
Chantel looked at Emma, who shook her head. “She had a one-night affair with a neighbor. There’s no crime in that...” Emma was saying.
“She withheld evidence...talking to you as she did Monday night. Not telling you the truth about Kyle...” Chantel interrupted.
Chantel seemed to think that her words might change Emma’s mind, but Jayden knew better. No one was perfect. But Suzie was the victim here.
It wasn’t pretty. In fact, the whole thing was damned ugly.
But Emma was going to try to give her a second chance at life.
Chapter 25
She was reeling. Ready to fall over. And still standing. Maybe because it let her lean against Jayden. To stay connected to him. Emma focused on his warmth as he used the key she’d given him to open her front door. They’d pick up her car in the morning.
At that moment, just getting inside her gated community where there were no flashing lights and no more questions, from police or press, had been the priority.
Jayden had to shower. His clothes were blood-spattered. She followed him into her bedroom, watched as he dropped the bag he’d grabbed during a brief stop at his place, at the end of her bed.
In all the nights they’d spent together, he’d never brought any personal items into her home before. She’d given him a spare toothbrush—one she’d received free from the dentist—and that had been the extent of his ablutions in her home.
He hadn’t asked her if she’d wanted him to stay over. She hadn’t said she did. He’d just said, as they’d left the scene, that he had to stop by his place, and she’d nodded. Waited in the car. And seen him come out with the bag.
“I thought you were dead.” She’d told herself to leave it alone. Leave him alone. Parts of her didn’t listen. Because all of her needed him. Really needed him.
“I’m fine.” His words didn’t take away the sting.
“You might not have been if Chantel and her team hadn’t been outside.”
“It was a risk I had to take.”
Yeah, that pissed her off.
He stripped off his shirt. Walked toward her bathroom. “No, you didn’t,” she said, following him. From one vantage point, outside, she could see herself following him, all shrewlike. From another—inside—she couldn’t stop herself.
“You could have stayed on that couch. Let the news come on and show him that Bill really was in custody. That could have calmed him enough for us, or Suzie, to get him to drop the gun.”
Undoing
the button on his shorts, he gave her a nod. “It could have. I had to take the surest way to save your life.”
“You have no respect for your own.”
With his shorts undone, but still hanging off his hips, he dropped his hands. Eyes narrowed, he looked at her. “Come again?”
“You were willing to throw your life away, like it doesn’t even matter,” she told him. And then took a couple of steps closer. “Well, I have to tell you, it matters to me. And I’m sure to your parents and to a whole lot of other people, too. You might find it worthless, but it’s got value. A lot of it.”
Okay, she was coming unglued.
He didn’t grin. She had to give him credit for that. But he cocked his head, and that was just about as bad.
“You can go ahead and think you’re another Tom Smith, Jayden. You can find justification for shutting out life as some sort of penance, but I’ve got to tell you, you’re just taking the coward’s way out. Running from the tough stuff. And hurting the people who love you, too, which is even more of waste.”
“I am, am I?”