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He snorts, but grins at me, flashing his dimple. “I love you, Candy.”
Oh God. “I love you, too, Joel Kingsley. I love both of you.”
He strokes my cheek, his blue eyes warm.
“Look,” I tell him, “I’ll take that photo down the moment I’m home and find out who did this. I know that you like your privacy, you have every right to it, especially after that stupid scandal last year and—”
“Shush.” He reaches again for my hand, and I tangle my fingers with his. “It’s okay.”
“Okay?” I study his flushed face. “You were not okay earlier today. Will you have problems at work because of it?”
“Nah.” He turns our hands so that mine is on top, strokes my knuckles with his thumb. “And if I do, I don’t care.”
“J—”
“No, I don’t fucking care, Candy.” There’s fire in his eyes when he lifts them to meet mine. “I don’t care about the job, or about what my parents think, or what anyone thinks. A job I don’t like, parents who don’t try to understand me, people I don’t care about. What we have is not wrong. And all I care about is you and Jet.”
I lean into him, our shoulders pressing together, and kiss his cheek. He puts his other hand on my face and captures my mouth instead, kissing me deeply.
“We’ll get through this,” he whispers as he pulls back. “And Jet will pull through. He’s tough.”
I think about what the doctors told Joel, that the knife had stabbed a lung and damaged some big blood vessels, causing a lot of bleeding, which they’d managed to stop.
My heart constricts. “Who would do this to him?”
“I think…” Joel glances at the door as if expecting someone to walk in, but it’s quiet. “His father.”
I blink. “What? Why?”
So Joel tells me the story of how Jet’s father stabbed his mother to death five years ago. How Jet watched his father leave, how he was eventually declared missing, the case closed. How Jet seemed unconvinced and scared.
“I talked to his cousin,” he says. “After I got the call from the hospital. He said Jet believes his father is psychotic. That for some reason he kills a family member every five years on this day. Apparently it’s the anniversary of the death of Jet’s grandfather, his own father. Jet believes his father first killed his own brother, then his wife, and today came for his son.”
“Jesus.”
Like, really, what the hell?
“The reason his cousin was calling him a lot lately was that he saw a man watching his house. Then someone broke in, messed everything up. If it was his father…”
I swallow hard. “His father found this address, but realized Jet doesn’t live there anymore. So he went looking for clues.”
“And found Jet’s new address.” Joel’s voice is shaking. “He must have followed him to the bar, saw his chance and fucking stabbed him.”
Now Joel is holding on to me and all I can do is let him. “He’ll be okay. You said it.”
“He has to be. He’s with us. We need him. He’s always doubting himself, thinking nothing will last.”
“We need to tell him.”
“We will.”
Chapter Thirty Two
JOEL
I’ve lived my life to other people’s expectations. Time to show my real face to the world, and if the world doesn’t like it, then fuck the world.
Beeping monitors, a tube going into Jet’s chest to empty the blood from his lung, another going into his hand transporting blood from a plastic bag—bandages, bruises, an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.
