Page 150 of The Rival's Obsession
Still, I don’t move. I don’t trust her not to still be watching.
After an eternity, the curtains drop back into place. Darkness deepens around us once more, and I hear the distant sound of running water.
A shower.
I look down. Jaxon’s eyes are wide as saucers, still clinging to the trellis like it’s his emotional support structure.
Go.
I mouth—with all the authority of a SWAT commander.
We scramble down as quickly as we can. I land next to Jax with a hard thud in the grass. He doesn’t wait—grabs my wrist, pulling me along, and we bolt across the lawn, slipping through the gate and around the side of the house like we were never there at all.
By the time we dive into the car and slam the doors shut, we’re both panting, half laughing, half horrified.
Jaxon buckles up without a word, then finally exhales a long, dramatic sigh.
“Next time,” he says, “we break into an Amazon datacenter or something normal.”
I grin, still catching my breath. “This was the most fun I’ve ever had.”
He turns to stare at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “You need therapy.”
“Probably,” I say, shifting into drive. “But after we figure out what’s on those USBs.”
His face falls as he pats his pockets. I feel the color drain from mine.
“I think I left them in the bedroom.”
“Jaxon Kane, I will kill you if you are being serious.”
“Dang! Calm down,Murder, She Wrote.” He pulls them from his pocket. “They’re right here.”
I press the gas and pull away from Corrine Ashwood’s nightmare house, the shadows swallowing us whole.
“Sometimes I hate you.”
The lobby is quiet at this hour—tooquiet, if you ask me. The marble floors gleam under the downlights, polished to perfection like everything else in this building. But perfection doesn’t steady my nerves.
Dante stands beside me, calm as ever, hands in his pockets like we’re waiting on a cab instead of the elevator that will carry us into the most important meeting of our lives.
I reach out and fix his tie, fingers smoothing the silk against his chest.
He doesn’t move. Just watches me with that annoyingly calm expression that says nothing can touch us.
When I glance up, he’s grinning. Smirking, really. That crooked, infuriating, completely self-assured grin he’s had since we were kids.
I narrow my eyes. “What?”
He shrugs—lazy and infuriatingly unbothered. “Just thinking about the last forty-eight hours. Best of my life.”
Despite everything—the nerves, the pressure, the weight of what’s about to happen—I feel my mouth twitch.
We called out of work and spent two wonderful days together. Much of it in Dante’s bed but also, working. Together. Something we’ve not done in five years.
“You realize we’re about to walk into a boardroom full of men who’ve spent the last five years waiting for us to fail, right?”
“Yep.”
