“Sure.”
“Thanks,” he says, opening the door and signaling for me to go ahead.
As I’m moving through the doorway, he distractedly mutters, “Call you later.”
He drops a kiss to the side of my head before he shuts the door behind me instead of coming inside, leaving me alone and discombobulated.
Before he went to the clinic, he said he wanted to talk about last night.
I just finished making it known I took the day off.
But he’s gone.
45
JASE
I run for hours. I run so long, it’s twilight by the time I get back to Tyson’s cabin where I find Bailey sitting on the porch.
She’s changed into jeans and a frilly green shirt. She’s wearing heeled shoes and she put curls in her hair. Again, she’s wearing that glossy red lipstick that sends sharp pains through my groin. She fidgets nervously as I approach and grab my jeans from the chair beside her.
“Hey?” I greet questioningly, as I pull them on, trying to downplay the painful wince of stuffing myself into denim confinement. “Everything all right?”
I give her my back to finish dealing, carefully, with the zipper.
“Not particularly,” she answers.
I turn to face her. She’s looking at her feet.
I wait for her to elaborate.
When she doesn’t, instead looking like she’s trying to work up the nerve to say something to me, I open the door.
“Wanna come in?”
Her stepping in reminds me it’s time for me to take another one of those pills. I took one this morning before I left to find her.
Having her here, I don’t need to test my stretched willpower, so I grab the pills from on top of the fridge, take one, and wash it down with a beer.
“You want a drink?” I ask. “I’ve got water, beer, and… that’s pretty much it.”
She shakes her head. “Can we talk?”
I gesture toward the couch.
She sits. I sit on the arm of the chair instead of beside her, giving this pill a chance to work because fuck, she smells delicious.
“You look beautiful, Bay. You forget to put that scent mask on?”
She says, “I didn’t put the scent mask on, Jason.”
And it comes out with annoyance.
“Okay…” I say, letting it hang because obviously she has more to say.
More to say from those juicy, red lips.
“Are you okay?” she asks.