Letting Go (Thatch 1)

He raised one eyebrow at me, and his signature smirk crossed his face as he rested one arm on the steering wheel. “I have no idea what you mean, Grey LaRue.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure you don’t.”

“Well, are you going to get out and help me with everything, or are you going to sit in here and try to figure out what’s going on?”

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t see you moving.”

He leaned in so close that my next breaths got lost in the way he seemed to fill the entire cab of the truck. “I’m always moving, Grey. I’m just waiting on you to move with me.”

Before I could respond—or figure out how to get my heart started again—he was pulling away and getting out of the truck, and I just sat there staring blankly for a few seconds before I followed.

Instead of going to the back to open up the truck, he went to the door on the side of the building and pulled his car keys out of his pocket. Once he found the one he was looking for, he unlocked the door and gave me another playful look before opening the door and stepping in, flipping on the lights as he di

d.

“Oh my God, it’s huge in here!” Shock coated my words as I looked around the massive space.

“This is just the front.”

“There’s a back to this?” I asked, shooting him a look.

He nodded absentmindedly as he walked over to a large kitchen, separated from the rest of the room by a long, L-shaped granite bar. There was a piece of paper propped up on the island in the middle of the kitchen, and he picked it up to read as I looked up at the second-floor loft, covering half of the view of the high ceiling.

“Charlie must’ve stopped by,” Jagger said, pulling my attention back to where he stood in front of the refrigerator.

“Why do you say that?”

“Fridge and pantry are stocked.”

My brow furrowed as I looked at the empty space, then back to him. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

His mouth lifted up on one side, and he dropped his head as he walked toward me. Only lifting his eyes to meet mine, he shrugged. “This is my place now.”

“Are you using it for a studio?”

“Uh . . . no. There are two rooms in the back, both about the same size as the upstairs loft. I’ll use one for a studio and another to store the rest of our stuff for now. But I’m going to live here.”

“Seriously?” My eyes widened and I looked around me again. “I didn’t know you could live here.”

“Back when my grandparents were using it, the upstairs was an open office so they could look out at what was going on down here. There was a small bathroom up there, but we remodeled it so it’s bigger now, and has a shower and everything. There’s a bathroom in the back and another in here.” He gestured to a door off to the side. “We remodeled those so they look nicer. There’s a laundry room hidden behind the pantry that we put in. I didn’t know what to do with the floor. The back rooms and the loft had hardwood put in right before my grandma passed, so I left that, but I kind of liked the way the concrete looked for this room. So they just put the dark sealer on it, and called it a day.”

I looked down at the glossy floor and nodded. “I like it, it fits with the brick walls. And the kitchen?”

“Ah, yeah, that’s new,” he murmured, turning to look at it.

“It’s huge.” Jagger made some type of agreeing noise, and I nudged his side. “You also don’t cook.”

“No,” he said on a laugh. “But it looks nice.”

I studied it for a few more seconds before turning to look at him. “Who is ‘we’?”

He turned his head to face me, furrowing his brow as he did. “What?”

“You kept saying ‘we’ when you were telling me what had been changed. Is someone moving in with you?”

It hit me then that there might have been another reason he didn’t want me coming here. I hadn’t seen Jagger with a girl in years, but I also hadn’t known about this place, and I’d been so focused on trying to move on with my life that it was extremely possible I didn’t know about a girl he’d been talking to back here in Thatch. The thought stole my next breath and left a sinking feeling in my stomach—but I couldn’t begin to understand why. I wondered for a second if he had been patching things up with his ex-girlfriend, LeAnn, and the sinking feeling grew. It morphed into something so unfamiliar and unwelcome that I tried to force thoughts of Jagger with anyone from my mind.

I swallowed roughly and took a step away from him. “That’s so not my business, you don’t have to answer that.”