I shoved him with both hands, taking him by surprise, but he still only budged about an inch. I spun on my heel and paced out of the back door into the yard. When I heard Jackson follow me, I turned to face him and held my arms out at my sides, gesturing to everything around me.
“This is home now. Neither of us have ever had a real home. Now, we do. We deserve this place, Jackson.”
He looked around, seeing the swing that barely stood, the dead grass, and the piles of scrap wood that the previous owner had abandoned. “Not much of a home.”
“It’s perfect and getting better by the day. We just looked at schools. He’s smart. He deserves to be in a real school, learning. We have a favorite bookstore already. Everything’s under five dollars. I’m not leaving. This is our home.”
I wiped at the tears spilling over and turned my back to him. Looking out at the stretching flat land behind the house that led to a small forest and a dried-up creek that would flood later in the year, I felt connected to it. It’d been through a lot. It had a story. It fit in our strange little family.
“Cammie, Raptor is going to find you. Twenty thousand is a lot of money. People are going to start searching even harder for you.”
I turned back around to him. “How did you find us?”
“I put a tracking device on your car and in the kid’s hat. I wanted to know where you were, for sure.”
I scowled and sat down on the swing. It made an old whining sound under my weight and I would’ve been embarrassed if Jackson wasn’t trying to upend my life. “I have a gun and the knife. I’ll kill whoever comes here.”
He looked towards the sky and sighed. “You know, you weren’t this stubborn as a kid.”
I stared at the tattoos that peeked out of the collar of his shirt. “I was terrified of you. I had nightmares about you sneaking into my room and killing me.”
He looked at me with a hard expression on his face. “So, I was the monster in your dreams?”
I laughed a bitter laugh and stood up. “Not what I said. Those nightmares were a walk in the park compared to the monsters in my waking life.”
He watched as I walked around him and headed back inside. “Cammie”
“You’re welcome to stay for dinner. We’re having roast with the works. There’s sweet tea and water in the fridge. Sorry, I don’t keep beer.”
I retreated to the kitchen and did what I liked to do when stressed. I took out the ingredients to make homemade rolls. I made the dough and then let it rest to proof in front of the window, where it’d get the best warmth. Next, I made pie crust and an apple pie filling.
Jackson strolled into the kitchen when I was sliding the pie into the oven and grunted. “Pie and roast? It feels a whole hell of a lot like the American dream in here.”
I rolled my eyes. “What would I know about that?”
“Just apparently that you want it.”
I looked over at him and sighed. “Don’t judge me for wanting something simple for myself and Micah. It’s not crazy to want this.”
He stared back at me for a few seconds and then grunted again before pulling out a chair at the table.
I gasped and tried to stop him but he sat in the chair before I could warn him that the chair he’d chosen was broken. I watched as all of his weight landed in the chair and the chair’s back legs gave out.
Jackson went tumbling to the kitchen floor and swore vividly while he stayed flat on his back.
I put my hand over my mouth and walked around the island to look down at him. I tried to contain a giggle, but I couldn’t.
His eyes narrowed on me. “Your American dream is a little broken.”
I laughed harder and nodded. “There was never any way around that being true.”
He sat up, the muscles in his arms and chest rippling as he did. “Thad wants one of us to be here with you if you’re not going to leave. He’s pulling real shifts while undercover, so that leaves me.”
I pulled my eyes from his muscles and frowned. “You don’t want to be here.”
He stood up, towering over me, and shook his head. “Not really. We don’t exactly like each other.”
I turned away from him and tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. “I never said I didn’t like you, Jackson. I have no problem with you.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and when he did, it was just to change the subject. “If I’m going to be here, I’m going to repair some of this shit. Can’t eat the fucking American dream in a broken chair, now can I?”
The screen door slammed shut behind him and I jumped, my nerves on edge. He was so frustrating. I didn’t know how we were going to manage being around each other constantly if he was going to stay. I couldn’t help but hope it wouldn’t be for long. He just unnerved me.
*
Micah came into the kitchen wearing a dark frown. It wasn’t his usual face at all, that was for sure. “What happened?”
I pulled the rolls from the oven and grabbed a bowl of melted butter to coat the tops of them. “The same thing as last time. You got scared when you saw Jackson again and he did that awful neck pinch thing.”
He grabbed a roll and took a scalding bite of it. “I hate that. Why was he here?”
As if on cue, Jackson walked in from the back yard, carrying the chair he’d fixed. “Still here, kid.”
“Why?”
I resisted the urge to tell Micah to play nice. We weren’t in the club anymore; if he wanted to question something, he was more than welcome to.
Jackson stared at Micah for an uncomfortably long amount of time before smiling at him. “Just keeping an eye on things. Making sure I’m the only one who knocks you out.”
Micah seemed as taken aback by the charm as I was. Only, he fell under the spell, while I grew alarmed because I felt his smile straight to my core. I had a rush of thinking about the moment we’d shared in the club, locked around each other. It’d been for show, of course, but it hadn’t felt like a show. It had felt hot and too sexy for my own good. Which made no sense. Why my body would wait for its libido to come back until Jackson Alexander showed up was beyond me.
Jackson glanced up at me and the smile faded. His tongue darted out, shockingly pink in the middle of his black scruff of beard, and I was honestly surprised that anything about the man would dare to be such a feminine color. I watched him lick his lips and then shake his head. I knew that look. It was the same one I’d been giving.
Awareness flushed my body bright red and I turned around so fast that the floor-length dress I wore twirled around me. Knowing I was attracted to Jackson and thinking Jackson was attracted to me was so different and scary. Thinking he was attracted to me made my attraction for him feel so much more real.
It was the dumbest thing. He didn’t like me. That should’ve been enough to make me run. If that wasn’t enough, there was still the fact that he’d tormented my childhood. What more of a red flag did I need?
“Is this like a thing from Cammie’s romance books? Are you secretly dating or something?”
I dropped the glass I was holding and it shattered around my bare feet. I cursed and then shot a look at Micah. “Sorry, bud. You didn’t hear that.”
He laughed. “You sound funny when you cuss.”
Jackson snorted. “Should’ve heard her when she was a kid.”
I glared at him. “He doesn’t need to hear that stuff.”
Micah laughed. “Cammie’s face means I need to hear that stuff. She only glares like that when she did something bad.”
“She do bad stuff often?”
I stepped around the broken bits and grabbed the broom. “Jackson, will you help me clean up this glass? Micah, you go get washed up for dinner.”
“But I always wash my hands in here.”
“You want pie or not?”
He grinned at me and nodded. “I’ll be back to talk about those stories, though.”
Jackson squatted in front of me and touched my calf. “You’re bleeding.”
I looked down at my foot and saw that I was leaving a trail of blood around the kitchen. “Crap. I didn’t even feel it.”
He stood up and easily lifted me onto the island. I tried to shout at him to not put me down, but I couldn’t get it out in time. He put me down and the edge of the island snapped off and I fell straight to the floor, fall only broken by my ass.
I started laughing and I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop. I picked up the piece of fake wood that’d come off with me and held it up. I tried to stop laughing, but I just ended up snorting and that made me laugh harder.
“You okay?”
I nodded and waved him off as he tried to pick me up again. “I’m fine. You broke my kitchen, though.”
He pulled me up, despite my objections, and knelt in front of me again. He lifted my foot and gently ran his hand over the bottom of it. “I’ll fix it. I don’t feel any glass in your foot. Must’ve just been a cut. You have a first aid kit?”
I nodded. “In my room. I’ll go take care of it.”
He stood up and stared down at me. “This house is a wreck.”
I started laughing again and shrugged. “Lots of people go diving for wrecks. You never know what you’re going to find.”
“Asbestos?”
I hobbled to the stairs and shook my head at him. “This is better than either of us had when we were kids. Have you gotten so far from that time that you can’t see the charm in this place?”
His face hardened and I watched the handle of my cheap broom bend in his grip. “Go fix your foot.”
I saluted him and giggled again, unable to help it. I kept replaying both of our falls in my head and picturing Jackson’s annoyed look. He was the kind of man who would be annoyed with something as pointless as falling. In every way, I was sure.
That was a sobering thought and I forced myself to remember that he was only there because he had to be. I wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t have left me with Raptor, given the opportunity.
I hurried through bandaging the small cut on the bottom of my foot and hurried back downstairs to make sure nothing burned down while I was away.