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After that, I fell silent. My mind was occupied. The ride to Frederick didn’t take very long and the food was served quickly at Bonefish Grill. I could’ve eaten an entire meal of bang bang shrimp. Jase kept the conversation going, talking about Jack and then moving on to my brother.
“So tomorrow’s the big deal, right?” he said, spearing a scallop on my plate and stealing it. “You think he’s going to go through with it?”
I hadn’t considered that he wouldn’t. “You don’t think he’ll do it?”
“He’s really nervous.” Jase laughed as he settled back in the booth. “Hell, I’ve never seen your brother like that.”
“Me neither. I hope he does do it. They’re perfect together.”
Jase ran his finger along the rim of his glass as he watched me from beneath lowered lashes. “We need to tell Cam as soon as he gets back.”
My breath caught and I nodded. “We do.”
The waitress appeared with the check and as Jase leaned forward to pull out his wallet, he pressed a quick kiss against the corner of my lips. The silvery light in his eyes as he pulled back caused my chest to lurch.
“Debbie broke up with Erik,” I blurted out.
He paused for just a second and then pulled cash out of his wallet. “That’s good news, right? I mean, he’s always been a dick to the girl. No one could figure out why she stayed with him.”
I watched him as he laid the money near the check. My heart beat faster. “He . . . hit her.”
Jase froze again, but this time he’d been in the process of leaning back. His thick lashes lifted. “What?”
Nothing about his expression told me he was hiding something from me, but I knew he was. “He hit her. Like Jeremy had hit me.”
The line of his jaw tightened, and then he pursed his lips, letting out a low whistle as he looked away. “I don’t know what to say, Tess.”
“Maybe that you’re now double glad that you beat him up?”
His eyes locked with mine, the color a startling shade of silver. He opened his mouth and then seemed to rethink what he was about to say. His broad shoulders tensed.
“I know,” I whispered. “Deb told me last night.”
“Last night,” he repeated dumbly. “And you’re just now saying something?” He laughed as a muscle thumped in his jaw. “You know, I knew something was up with you. You’ve been too quiet. You didn’t eat the cupcake immediately. I thought maybe your knee was bothering you.”
I tucked my hair back behind my ears. “You didn’t tell me.”
He drew in a deep breath and then slid out of the booth, rising as he grabbed my crutches. “Let’s take this conversation outside.”
Since it wasn’t a dinner type of conversation, I waited until we were in the Jeep before pushing the subject. “You went after him.”
“I didn’t go after him, Tess. It wasn’t like with Cam. I know that’s what you’re getting at. That wasn’t my intention. I ran into him at the frat house when I came back from my parents’ place. He was sitting on the couch like he hadn’t a fucking care in the world.”
Holding my breath, I watched him as he leaned forward and turned the key. The engine roared to life and he didn’t speak again until he was out on the main road, cruising toward Interstate 70. “And all I could think was that he fucking ended your dreams. He took that from you and I didn’t give a fuck if it was an accident or not. He did that.”
Erik had. “Jase—”
“After everything you’ve been through, I had to say something. I had to,” he went on, his profile stark in the shadows of the car’s interior. “I told him that he needed to stay away from you and no more accidents better happen. That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say to him, and, yeah, I might not have said it that nicely, but I wanted to get my point across.”
What he was saying was the same as Deb had said, so his next words didn’t surprise me.
“But then he said some shit, Tess. Stuff that no one should ever say about you, and I made sure he didn’t say anything else.”
There wasn’t pride in his voice. Maybe the smugness of a man who knew he’d put another man—and I used the term man for Erik loosely—in his place. “You hit him.”
He glanced at me, expression hard. “I did.”
“And that’s all you have to say about that?”
