“Then tell me what to do. Tell me how to make this right,” he pleaded.
“Trust me, okay?” I blew out a breath. “I know why the coven is coming after me, and I promise I’ll tell you everything soon, but please stop taking off and leaving me here with Jax.”
“You know why they’re after you?” Each word was slow and calculated.
“Yes.” My stomach knotted. Maybe I shouldn’t have shared that little bit of information with him.
“Do they want to kill you?” He snarled, his lip curling with barely contained rage.
“No.” Not technically, but it was probably best not to share that with him just yet. “I promise I know what I’m doing. Please just trust me.” I’d always trusted him, and now it was his turn.
He hesitated, then eventually said, “Okay.”
“And tell your friends to stay out of my head.”
“Done,” he said.
“And what was that with Jax down there?” I asked.
Granted, Jax had deserved to be punched in the face for the things he’d said and implied, but he’d said and done much worse before and Trent hadn’t lost his cool like that.
Trent sighed. “Remember when I told you Jax blames me for everything that happened with Hannah?”
“Yeah.”
“He promised that one day, he’d make me pay for what I’d done.” Trent hung his head. “And he knows how much you mean to me.” He glanced up, his eyes filled with despair and regret. “I’m worried he’s going to use you and whatever relationship you two have to get his revenge, that he’s going to get close enough to hurt you because he knows what it will do to me.”
My ears rang with Trent’s words. Did he truly believe Jax would use me or harm me to get revenge? Jax and I didn’t exactly have the most stable friendship, but not too long ago, before I knew the truth, I’d trusted him.
And with the way he’d been acting toward me since we’d gotten to the cabin… I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more happening, and it wasn’t revenge.
“Then why was he in Malibu pretending to be my friend? He said you thought it was a good idea. Why would you let him get that close to me if you truly believe he’s using me to get revenge?”
Fresh pain sliced across my foot and up my calf. I bit down on my lip to stop from howling in pain.
Releasing his hold on me, he carefully dragged his hands down my leg and lifted my foot to rest on his thigh. “How’s your ankle?”
“It’s killing me,” I admitted.
Easing my foot onto the floor, he stood, and then he lifted me into his arms and deposited me in the middle of the bed. “Don’t move.”
Then he was gone. He returned in a flash with an ice pack, two aspirin, and a bottle of water. He handed me the pills and the water.
“Thanks.” I took them, then reached for the ice pack and placed it on my ankle.
Trent climbed onto the bed and gathered me in his arms. I snuggled up to him and rested my head on his chest, sighing with contentment.
I loved being in his arms like this, and the longer I thought about everything, the more I realized I didn’t want to be anywhere else. No one could or would ever make me feel as safe and loved as Trent did.
“I was a mess without you,” Trent said, his voice low and level. “I needed to know you were okay, but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to check on you myself. If I had gone to Malibu, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from talking to you.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“So, I sent Jax to check on you. Just to make sure you were all right. He did, and he told me you were doing okay.”
I swallowed hard. Jax had been there checking up on me, and I hadn’t even known. How long had he watched me? And what exactly had he seen that led him to believe I was okay? Because I was anything but okay while in Malibu.
“But then Sean found out about the coven, and I knew we needed to intervene. Your ad for tutoring services was the perfect cover,” he said.
I almost hadn’t placed the ad. But some force I couldn’t understand had propelled me to do it. Fate or God, maybe?
“And then you found me at the concert…” I momentarily closed my eyes, remembering everything Jax had told me about what happened while he and Trent were in Malibu.
Trent kissed the top of my head.
“You know there’s nothing going on between me and Jax, right?” I slid my arm across his stomach, letting my fingers sneak beneath his shirt to find hard, warm flesh.
He groaned. “I know. But I came home, and you weren’t here. I panicked, and next thing I know, he walks in carrying you. Seeing you in his arms like that… And then all that stuff he was saying. I lost it.”
“For what it’s worth, every time I see Whitney touch you or smile at you or whisper something to you, I want to gouge her eyes out.”
Trent laughed, the sound rumbling beneath me. “I promise you, there is absolutely nothing going on with Whitney.” Pure, honest truth dripped from his voice.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:
Ready or Not
I JOLTED AWAKE, DISORIENTED AND FIGHTING to catch my breath.
“Hey, whoa. Easy, Chloe. I’m right here,” Trent said, rubbing my arm.
“You stayed,” I said like an idiot.
He was half sitting, half laying, and just looking at him in that awkward position made my muscles ache. He chuckled. “I stayed.”
I sat up so he could, too. The room was dark and silent. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight-thirty.”
“At night?” I gasped.
It had been early afternoon when I’d lain down. I slept the entire day away. How did that happen? Memories from earlier flooded me, and my stomach sank. I was glad Trent and I had talked about things, but I
