Still, I was grumpy and tired, but I wasn’t driving home, depending on a lift from Alex, who dropped me at my place and then drove off with a smile and a wave. Jacob still hadn’t returned my texts, but it was three in the morning now, and I’d bet he was still asleep on the sofa. The thought of snuggling next to him and having him kiss my booboo better gave me a spring in my step, and I jogged to the elevators mashing the button to our floor and darting out sideways as soon as the doors opened. I didn’t find Jacob asleep on the sofa though. In fact, he wasn’t anywhere. His laptop was missing, his phone, his favorite Raptors’ jacket with my number on the arm, but nowhere could I find a note in explanation as to where he’d gone.
Without thinking I called his phone, but it went to voicemail and I left a message that was ten percent pissed and ninety worried. I’d bet he was working; he knew I was coming home tonight, and that it would be super late, but he always waited up. Or at least he’d be on the sofa asleep, where he’d been waiting and had given into his exhaustion. He worked too hard, and I had this horrible premonition that he was up at three a.m. in the office working on some seed stat with Adam.
Okay, stow the jealousy, get some Tylenol, and think.
Sometime around four, just as I thought I should call the hospitals, and after I’d talked to Adam who reassured me he hadn’t seen Jacob, I began pacing the apartment, had 911 on my phone, ready to call in any and all favors to find out where Jacob was, but my phone began ringing obnoxiously loud, and Jacob’s name flashed on the screen.
“Where the hell are you?” I blurted out rather than say hello, or how are you, or I love you.
“Ry,” he sounded weird, as if he’d been shouting and his voice was hoarse. He didn’t sound like my Jacob.
“What’s wrong? Where are you?” I asked again, this time more controlled, and with a hell of a lot more worry.
“I need you to come get me, Ry. From the gate outside Adam’s place.”
I glanced at his truck parked where it belonged.
“Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Just come get me.”
“I’m on my way, stay on the phone.” I couldn’t bear the pain in Jacob’s voice—I thought my big strong man was going to cry, and it’d been a long time since he’d cried. I took the stairs down to the parking lot and climbed into my car. Within minutes I was out on the road in the dark, the clock showing four forty-two a.m., my head pounding, and the pain in my jaw making me wince. “Are you still there?” I asked, begged, pleaded, and I heard him say yes. But it sounded wrong.
Everything was wrong.
I floored the car as soon as I was able, wondering what I would say if a cop pulled me over and not giving any actual shits if they did. I made it to Adam’s in record time, saw Jacob standing on the side of the road. I screeched to a halt and clambered out of the car.
“What happened?” I checked him over as I ran to him, and held him, and then he guided me back to the car.
“Fuck,” he yelled as soon as the door was shut. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He was nursing his fist, and before the interior light switched off, I could see his knuckles were bruised. Oh shit, had he gotten into a fight with Adam? Killed him? My head spun as I calculated how long it would take to get to the border, and then get over without ID, and how much money I could get my hands on, and I’d done all that before Jacob turned to me and shook his head.
“I didn’t kill him. But I hit him. Hard. And I quit.” I reached out and closed my hand around his bruised fist. “Shit, Ryker, I quit.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue.” Jacob coughed.
“Jacob?”
“I don’t know,” he shouted, then scrubbed at his eyes. “I think he roofied me, but I put him straight about the job, that’s all that matters.”
Roofied? What the fuck? I opened the car door and started to climb out. “I’m going to kill him.”
Jacob yanked me back. “Leave it, Ry. Take me home.” I hesitated, because there was too much anger in me to leave it there. “Please. Just take me home,” he added quietly.
So with reluctance, but with love and fear for Jacob, I did what he asked.
Seven
Jacob
By the time I was back home, I felt like a golem.
No, that wasn’t right. Golems have no feelings, and I was having lots of those. Maybe I wished I were made of clay so the swirling, horrible emotions that were about to overtake me wouldn’t be crushing my chest. I’d just be cold. Like clay. Right now, being a clay man would have been good. Ryker touched me, just lightly on the arm, and I lifted my head to look at him. He had a split lip with stitches, a black eye, and I imagined it must’ve been so painful, but he acted as if it didn’t matter. That was all it took. I fell into him, desperate for a loving touch, terrified over the time gap in my head, and sickened at the thought that Adam had not only played me like a fiddle but could’ve touched me in ways that…
“I feel sick,” I groaned as I clung to Ryker. He felt so good, so right…
“Okay, babe, okay, let me grab you a bucket.”
“No, don’t leave just… hold me,” I whimpered. And so he did. He held me up until his smaller frame couldn’t support me anymore.
“Let’s sit, just sit, I’ll go make coffee. Call the cops.”
“No, fuck no, don’t call the cops!” I tumbled to the sofa, my head bumping the back, my gut roiling, my world upside down.
“Jacob, that motherfucker drugged you!” Ryker snarled as I waved a hand around in weak circles.
“No cops… just, babe, coffee please.”
He worried at his stitches but did as asked. In the time it took to brew a cup of coffee, I’d laid down and drawn my knees into my stomach. I still felt queasy, and my brain was scrambling to delve into the void of last night.
“Here, sip,” Ryker whispered, kneeling beside me as he held a straw to my lips. I sucked slowly, the hot liquid coating my throat, then my belly. “Let me get your shoes off.”
I said nothing. Once my sneakers hit the floor, Ryker sat beside me. Maybe an hour or two passed with us that way, me on my side with silent tears leaking onto the couch cushion, Ryker entreating me to drink some coffee and eat crackers which was all I could keep down. He didn’t push me to talk about it, he was simply there when I needed him the most, and I willed myself to pick up my head so he could sit on the couch. Once my cheek rested on his thigh, he began carding his fingers through my hair. Each time he did it I picked up the smell of chlorine. Had I been swimming? What the fuck had happened?! Why would Adam do such a thing? I’d trusted him, even looked up to him. And he’d been a fucking predator, a wolf, circling whom he had obviously known was a dull-witted deer.
“You were right,” I coughed out sometime around eight at night after spending all day on the couch. Ryker hushed me. I shuddered and sniffled, as guilt and shame took up residence in my breast. “You were right to distrust him.”
“Don’t make this about being right or wrong, babe. He’s a creep and the cops will agree.”