Letting Go (Thatch 1)

His green eyes flashed down to meet mine, the want in them clear. “What I’m saying is that I think you should save your money. Am I hoping that you’ll one day move in with me? Yeah, of course I am, but that’s up to you and can be tomorrow or years from now . . . if it does happen. But if you think that it’s a possibility, I don’t see a point in you getting a place where you’ll just waste your money and be stuck in a lease for however long. At the same time, if you want your own place, then you should get it.”

I stared at him for a few seconds before grumbling, “You’re no help.”

“I won’t push you—”

I stood on my toes and pressed my mouth firmly against his, cutting off the rest of what he was going to say. “I know you won’t,” I whispered against his lips. “The fact that it’s been four days since you’ve kissed me is proof.”

As soon as the last word was out, he crushed me against his body and captured my lips with his, a deep moan sounding in his chest when my tongue met his.

“If you wanted me to kiss you, all you had to do was ask.”

“Okay. Well then, this is me telling you that I want you to kiss me whenever it crosses your mind.” I giggled against his lips at the force of his next kiss, and swayed a little when he released me.

“If I kiss you whenever it crosses my mind, someone’s going to start complaining about us. Come on, let’s grab an early dinner before we go back to the warehouse, that way I’ll have a table between us for the next hour.”

I smiled wryly and easily fell into his side as he turned us to walk back to his car. We got to Wake—the only restaurant that wasn’t a grill or a mom-and-pop-type place in town—and for the first time since we left my house, I was glad Mom had made me change. Wake wasn’t so nice you had to dress up—nowhere around here was since we were on the lake, and people would go into the restaurants right after stepping from the water—but I would’ve felt trashy if I’d stayed in my yoga pants.

Jagger’s hand tightened around mine as we followed the hostess to our table, almost to the point that it was painful, and before I could ask him what he was doing, I saw what he’d seen only seconds before.

“Here we are,” the hostess said, standing off to the side of a booth. “Here are your menus, and your server will be over here soon to tell you about the specials.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled, and looked up to see Jagger’s face, the expression unreadable. “Do you want to leave?”

His expression softened when he looked into my eyes, and he shook his head. “No.”

I barely glanced at the table out of the corner of my eye, only long enough to know the woman sitting there wasn’t looking at us, and an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach.

“Um, I really don’t know what to say to you right now. You look pissed, but you haven’t mentioned her in years. Is there something I should—”

“Grey, stop. Do you really think I’m uncomfortable because of something that I wouldn’t tell you?”

“Well, I don’t know. She’s your ex-girlfriend, Jag, and the first time you see her, you shut down.”

He leaned across the table so his voice wouldn’t carry. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen her since we moved back.”

“It’s not?”

“She came up to me when you were in Seattle. I was at the gas station grabbing some energy drinks, and she was just there all of a sudden. Said she’d been trying to get ahold of me, which I already knew, and was trying to talk me into getting back with her. She knows now that there’s no chance in hell of that, but she asked if there was someone else. I didn’t say yes or no, because there’d always been you, but at that moment you weren’t talking to me. I just told her I was sorry that she’d still thought there would be something between us, and she got pissed. Asked who the person was, told me I’d come back to her . . . typical LeAnn bullshit. So I’m not uncomfortable that I’m seeing her, or that she sees me with someone. I don’t like that she’s seeing you. I don’t want her to get on you because she thinks you’re a threat or something.”

“She would’ve found out eventually, it’s probably already going around town after today,” I mused as I grabbed the menu.

“Of course she would have. If I wanted to prevent that, I’d never go into town with you. I’m just worried about how she’ll react. You remember how she was in high school to any girl I talked to, including you. She’d put threats in your locker because I was always with you.”

“And sent me letters ‘from Ben’ that he was breaking up with me. How could I ever forget those lovely moments,” I mumbled drily.

Jagger sent me a droll look. “All of that added with how pissed off she was last month, I just—”

“I know, Jag, I get it. She was a little intense in high school.”

“A little?” One dark brow rose, and I rolled my eyes.

“Fine . . . she was borderline psychotic in high school. Better?”

He smiled, and the look on his face easily showed his agreement, but he didn’t say anything.

“But that was also four years ago. She has to have matured in that time. Even if she did initially get mad when you saw her last month, you have to know that it was bound to happen. One, because . . . well, it is her, and she’s the type of person who could easily be institutionalized for her actions. I’m pretty sure it’s in her DNA to be loud and dramatic about everything. Two, if she waited for you that long with the hope that you would get back together . . . then I don’t know who would expect a different reaction from her. Especially since you told her the two of you would be together.”

“She wouldn’t let me break up with her,” he whispered harshly, and I had to bite back a laugh at the scene that had gone down that entire week.