Page 47 of Jonas

Fuck.

“There’s only one bedroom. I’ll take⁠—”

“No way,” Derrika cut me off. “I’m smaller than you. I’ll take the couch.”

There was no use arguing about who was sleeping on the couch, when I wasn’t allowing her to be uncomfortable. Not to mention, the couch was five feet from the front door and that wasn’t happening either, even though an alert would go out to all of our phones if someone so much as dipped a toe over the sensors around the property.

Like when we pulled up in front of the farmhouse, Derrika was leaned forward in her seat, with her eyes tipped up staring at the cabin. I didn’t think she was admiring the plain wood planks and it was too dark to see much else.

“I take it you didn’t grow up in the city?”

She didn’t take her eyes off the cabin when she answered, “No. Monroe, Utah. Population two thousand.”

The high school I went to was half the entire population of the town she grew up in. I thought back to earlier in her apartment when she told me she had to sleep with the curtains closed.

I’d lived in cities until I spent a decade overseas. The transition back to living in the US had been difficult. It would’ve been more difficult if I hadn’t had Theo, Smith, Easton, and Cash with me. Not to mention, Zane and the rest of Z Corps to guide our way back.

“How old were you when you left?”

“A few weeks before I turned eighteen.”

My gaze drifted from the house back to Derrika. There was longing in her tone, but there was something else I couldn’t place—fear, maybe? Anger?

“Do you miss it?”

Derrika abruptly righted herself in the seat. Her stare transferred to the side window and she shook her head. “I miss roaming the land. I miss climbing the rock outcropping and looking out over the valley. It was quiet up there, I could hear my thoughts, I could pretend the beauty that surrounded me was real. That my father wasn’t somewhere out on that land waiting for the opportunity to deliver a teaching. I could forget he had other wives, that my mother had left, that my brother who I’d loved deeply was going to turn into the man I hated more than anything. I miss the darkness. I miss the smell of pine and dirt. I miss sitting in the aspen grove watching the elk. I miss swimming in the creek. I even miss running the cattle and working the gardens.”

That was a lot to miss. It also sounded like she grew up in heaven—minus her father and his fundamentalist beliefs.

“What I don’t miss is the people. I guess that’s a who more than a what but I don’t miss them. I would’ve missed my brother if he hadn’t turned. Sometimes I wonder if my father beat the meanness into him or if it was always there and I loved him so much I didn’t see it. Or if it was our mother leaving that broke something inside of him and he blamed me like everyone else did. I think my father was happy when she left; it reinforced what he said about me—my wickedness was so great my mother had to flee to escape me.”

Derrika paused and looked back at the cabin. Even in the dark, I couldn’t miss the anguish etched in her profile. The way her hands were clasped at rest on her thighs, palms rubbing together, gave credence to her grief. I bet, like me, she kept the memories locked away. Pretended they didn’t exist. That her life started when she left Monroe.

“My father owned six hundred acres. His brother owned another five hundred on the eastern border. The western boundary was national forest but to the north and south the land was owned by men from my father’s church. In total there was twenty-five hundred acres of the most beautiful land you’d ever see. Meadows, creeks, wildflowers, pastures, barns, forest, outcroppings, foothills. But it was a prison. The day I left, I knew I’d never go back. I’d never walk those meadows again. I’d never climb my rock, I’d never sneak away and sit by the creek. All of it would be lost to me. The moments of peace I found on that land would be lost to me. Now, those moments are gaping tears in my soul—bittersweet. I don’t want to forget the beauty but I can’t remember it without dredging up the bad. And the bad far outweighs the good. So I push it to the back of my mind. But sometimes, when I see something, or smell pine, or when I’m someplace that’s dark outside and I can see the stars, I can’t stop the memories—the wishful naiveté of a childhood that should’ve been picture perfect but instead was a nightmare.”

Jesus, fuck me.

My gut was already tight, but when her head turned to look at me, it rolled with fury. She looked lost, alone, and a little hazy like she’d just been jostled awake.

“I have no idea why I told you any of that,” she whispered.

I didn’t know why. I also didn’t care, I was just weirdly pleased she had. The weird part of that was, no one would be pleased to hear about someone’s childhood abuse. But regardless of that, I liked she’d opened up and felt she could give me a piece of her—of her past—even the parts that caused her grief.

Before I had a chance to formulate a response, she went on, “We should get inside.”

We should.

It had been a long day.

A bizarre day—one that had included being shot at, taken hostage, and rescued. Yet that wasn’t what made it arduous; it was the opening of emotional floodgates that was taxing. It was knowing the woman who sat next to me had a past that had shaped and molded her into the kind of woman who would risk her life to protect someone else—who had protected me.

That was the part that had me fucked-up, had my insides in knots, and for the first time in a long time had me wondering if there was something more out there for me. Was it possible for me to have what Theo, Easton, and Smith had found?

Or more to the point, was it possible to catch feelings for a woman in less than twenty-four hours and have those feelings run so deep the thought of not seeing her again made you break into a cold sweat and your heart pound? Because I was pretty sure I was sweating and it had nothing to do with the air temperature.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Like a coward, I’d sneaked out of the cabin. Or maybe I slunk out because I’d waited until I heard the shower go on before I put on yesterday’s clothes and tiptoed out the door. At least I had the courtesy to leave Jonas a note so he wouldn’t send out a search party.