Jared took a step toward me, but I held my ground.
“What’s wrong, Lacey? What happened while I was gone?”
“Nothing happened. I just had some time to think about things. About your life, and what I want for mine. So far you haven’t got any solutions, other than I’m supposed to hide for as long as it takes.” I looked up at him. “Has it occurred to you I might not want to hide and be bossed around?”
His brow furrowed. “Why are you being this way, Lacey? You were fine this morning.”
“I’m fine now, too. I’m just disagreeing with your master plan for me, is all. And you don’t seem to like it. Not that I’ve heard anything other than some stupid legends. I’m supposed to sit here reading classics while you go about your important business, and hope that something occurs to you while I’m quilting or whatever?”
His eyes widened slightly. “Quilting?”
“You know what I mean. Is that what I used to do…before? Sit around the house while you went out and led an active life?”
He ignored my last question. “I need time to figure things out, Lacey. It isn’t going to all happen overnight. There are a lot of pieces…”
“I want to go back to Ridley,” I announced. “You go ahead and figure out everything you want, but I’m not going to lose my scholarship and be out of options while you tour the world with your army of groupies…and Christina.”
Jared’s voice was nearly a whisper when he responded. “It isn’t safe for you to return to Ridley, Lacey. We’ve already discussed that. As to the rest…”
“We haven’t discussed anything. You did the telling, and I listened,” I corrected. “I never said I wanted to stay here. You told me I had to. There’s a big difference.”
He looked around. “Is there something wrong with the house? I can find someplace else.”
I bit back a harsh response. “Jared, it’s not the house. It’s…it’s everything. It’s just all wrong.”
Jared regarded me with a puzzled expression. “I know this is all new to you, Lacey. I know it’s hard to adjust to such a big change. It’s a lot to absorb…” He closed his eyes for a moment and, when he opened them, fixed me with the hypnotic stare that had melted me every time in the past. “I have to go, but I’ll be back by dawn. We can talk about everything then. I thought…I thought you understood how I felt, what you mean to me. But I can see something got lost in translation.”
“How do you think it feels to know that it’s not really me you’re in love with, but some dead woman you think is inside me? Let’s start with that, okay, because we both know if it was just me, you wouldn’t have looked twice in my direction.”
“How can you even think that?” he asked quietly.
I waved his comment away. “Whatever, Jared. Go do what you need to do. Your fans are calling for you.”
“Promise you’ll wait for me. I’ll be back by dawn.”
I snorted. “Like I have a choice. I’m sort of at your mercy, aren’t I?”
A long pause. “You’re never at my mercy. More the other way around, Lacey. You have such power over me…you can’t even imagine.”
My eyes began moistening, and I fumbled with the book. “Talk’s cheap. Just remember who’s leaving in the middle of the night. It isn’t me.”
I stormed from the room and took the stairs to the bedroom two at a time in my rush to be as far from Jared as I could get, every crooked grin and flash of sapphire eyes a reminder of my own inadequacy, and of a love that had seemed doomed from the start.
Chapter 30
After a restless night filled with half sleep and ugly dreams of betrayal and rejection, I found myself staring at the bedroom ceiling, my eyes wide open as a salmon tinge of dawn glowed beyond the curtains. My heart was thumping in my chest when I swung my legs from the bed and crossed the room to the bathroom, where I quickly rinsed off and dressed.
There was no sign of Jared downstairs, and the head of steam I’d built up overnight threatened to boil over. He hadn’t come home in spite of his assurances, and now it was a new day. The question being what I planned to do about it.
I wolfed down a tasteless breakfast as I mulled over my options, and when I finished, I slammed down my empty cup so hard I nearly shattered it.
“Fine. Have it your way, Jared,” I whispered, pronouncing his name like a curse.
I had my duffel packed in about three minutes, my pulse pounding angrily in my ears as I stuffed clothes inside. Jared’s failure to live up to his promise to return was further confirmation of the mistrust that had been churning in my guts. Was this relationship – if that’s even what it was – about us? Or just about him? My doubts after seeing scores of beauties throwing themselves at him at his shows felt validated, even if my rational side argued I was being impulsive.
The air was brisk when I stepped onto the front porch, and I realized I’d never seen the house in the daytime. I turned and drank it in for a minute, and then pounded down the long drive toward the rural road beyond, unwilling to give Jared another minute to arrive and try to bend me to his will.
“You got the wrong girl,” I muttered under my breath, and picked up my pace, my Docs clumping on the cobblestone as I hurried to the gate.
Which was locked.
Of course.
I looked both ways along the stone wall topped with wrought-iron fencing, and after slipping my bag’s strap over my shoulder, climbed to the top, swung my legs over, and dropped to the other side. I cocked my head, listening for the sound of any
