Tempting the Hitman (Men of Ruthless Corp)

I come back out of the closet because I swear it sounded like he said forever. “How long?”

He clears his throat. “I don’t know. A few weeks to be on the safe side. You want me to pack your camera equipment?”

No doubt he noticed the bedroom that I turned into my studio. There’s a lot of equipment and processing photos. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

Relieved to have a few minutes alone, I keep my mind busy and mentally check off everything I’m going to need and do. I need to call the school, and I’m not even sure what to tell them about what’s going on. I guess I’ll have to ask Colt about it. There’s a long list of things I need to do, but I just keep packing clothes and bathroom items. When I have everything I think I’m going to need, I walk into the spare bedroom, where Colt is sitting on a chair, looking through a photo album.

I step into the room and resist the urge to pull the photo album from his hands. “I’m ready.”

He’s staring at a page, tracing his finger along the picture. I take a step closer with no doubt what I’m going to find. This is an album I created a long time ago and added pictures to through the years. The whole album is Colt and me. The pictures tell the truth of how I felt about him all these years. There was no hiding it. In some of them, I even made myself believe that the way he was looking at me told the same story.

I look down at the page he has opened. It’s the one at my high school graduation, and I swear it’s probably one of my favorites. I have my cap and gown on, and Colt has his arms around me. I had looked up at him, probably to tell him something—I don’t even remember what it was—and my mom took the picture as we were staring at each other, smiling. I’ve spent many nights staring at that picture. It’s obvious that I love him in this picture. There’s no doubt, my whole face is lit up with it. But the way Colt’s looking at me, it always gives me goosebumps. He’s looking at me in awe, as if I’m the most important person to him.

He looks up at me. “This was your high school graduation.”

I nod, itching to take the album from him. Him looking at this album gives him so much inside information to what I’ve felt for him through the years. I take the album and set it on the side of the desk. “So did you get my camera?”

“Yeah,” he says, as if he’s deep in thought. “I got your camera, lenses, battery packs. I also loaded up a bunch of photographs. I noticed there’s a lot of pictures taken at the park and around the city. I’m wondering if you took pictures of something and that could be what they’re after. Maybe they thought you saw something.”

I lift my shoulders as if I’m exhausted by the whole thing. I’m just ready for this to be over with. “I guess that’s possible, but nothing that I took pictures of triggered me in any way.”

He puts more photos in a bag. “I’m going to take these with us. Maybe we can go through them on the way home.”

I nod and turn away before he sees my reaction. Home. He says it with confidence. I don’t really have a home. Not anymore. I used to think home was wherever Colt was, but I gave up that dream a long time ago. I nod and walk out the door, trusting that he’s packed all I need and he’ll follow behind me.

We make trips to the car, and the whole time, we’re both on edge. I’m not ready for another hitman to show up. I’m tired of being in danger, worrying about me, worrying about Colt. I just need this over so I can go back to my dull, uneventful life.

8

Colt

“Thank you for the ride, Jax,” Kinsley tells him as he picks her up in a big bear hug.

He’s holding her in the air and looking at me over her shoulder. He’s always been friends with my sister May, so in turn, he’s nice to Kinsley. But I know he’s going overboard, and I know he’s doing it to make me jealous. He’s like a brother to me, we served in the military way before we started with Ghost, but there’s only so much shit I’m going to take from him. Especially where Kinsley is concerned.

“All right, that’s enough. Let’s go.”

Jax laughs but sets Kinsley back on her feet. She looks at me curiously, and I don’t even try to hide the jealousy on my face. She walks past me up the steps to the plane.