Page 114 of Dirty Hit
Me:I’m proud of you. I know tonight sucked and you’re probably pissed off at the world and yourself and the refs, but I’m still proud of you. I’ll be at the cottage tonight. If you want me there. If you’d rather I stay away, I’ll respect that. Just… don’t shut me out. You played hard. I’m proud of you.
My thumb hovers over the text thread, then I lock the screen and shove the phone into the cupholder.
“Okay,” I tell myself. “He’s pissed because they lost—he has a right to be. He’ll either cool off, or he won’t. You said you’d be there. So, go.”
The road out to his cottage is muscle memory by now. Turn left at the sad gas station, right where the streetlights start to thin, then follow the curve until the asphalt turns into gravel. The trees loom taller out here, dark shapes against the cloudy sky, as my headlights carve a path through the quiet.
Jericho is going to hear all about this when I get home.
I turn onto the gravel drive, my stomach already knotted with a mix of dread and hope—only for the bottom to completely fall out when my headlights sweep across the cottage.
The place is dark. Completely dark. No warm glow from the kitchen window, no TV flicker behind the curtains, no familiar silhouette moving through the space. Just a dark little house sitting silent at the edge of the trees.
And no Charger.
I pull in slowly and park anyway, gravel crunching under my tires obscenely loud in the quiet. My hands are slick on the steering wheel. Maybe he parked somewhere else. Maybe he’s out getting food. Maybe he went back to the stadium.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
“Okay,” I breathe, staring at the empty spot where his car should be. “It’s fine. He’s probably just… somewhere that isn’t here. That’s allowed. People are allowed to go places.”
I grab my phone and hit call before I can talk myself out of it. And it rings, and rings, and rings…
Every second stretches too long. Then his voicemail kicks in. His easy, smooth voice, telling me to leave a message, he’ll hit me back. I hang up before the beep, heart pounding. My breath fogs the windshield; I didn’t even realize I was holding it. Text, then. I can text.
Me:I’m at the cottage. The lights are off, and your car’s gone. Please tell me you’re okay.
I stare at the little “delivered” underneath the message until my eyes burn. No “read.” No response.
I should go home; that would be the rational thing to do. He’s a grown man who can handle himself. He probably just needed to blow off steam after the game. He doesn’t owe me his location every second of the night.
I lock the car, and stay exactly where I am.
One hour passes. Then another.
My phone screen still says “delivered” instead of “read,” and the dread sitting in my gut has gone from a knot to a solid, sick weight.
“I’m going to puke,” I mutter, finally turning the key in the ignition again.
Leaving feels wrong. Every instinct in me is screaming that I should stay here and wait him out, but another, quieter voice points out that if he wanted to see me, he’d be here. Sitting in his driveway like some abandoned golden retriever isn’t going to fix anything—it just makes me feel pathetic.
“He’s not coming,” I whisper. That, or he’s face down in a ditch somewhere, bleeding.
That thought almost sends me back out of the car, but I shove it away. If he’s hurt, he’s hurt because of who he is, not who I am, and I have no way to fix that from here. I can’t patrol every dark corner he haunts. I can either sit in this driveway until sunrise, or go home and try not to drive myself insane.
I choose the option that involves a litterbox and a judgmental cat.
The sound of a crash jolts me out of a dead sleep so fast my heart feels like it might tear out of my chest. Jericho launches off my ribs with his claws out, growling as he hits the floor. My stupid brain decides we’re back in that cottage, that the body on the floor is fresh and I’m about to die for what I saw.
Then, the familiar shape of my bookshelf looms out of the shadows, the outline of my bedroom door comes into focus in the streetlight glow, and I remember.
My apartment. Jericho. Not dead. Yet.
Another sound comes from the living room—not glass this time, but a heavy thump and a low, rough curse.
I grab my phone out of instinct, thumb fumbling on the flashlight, and inch toward the door. Jericho is a dark lump in the hallway, fur puffed up, eyes wide, tail like a bottle brush. He hisses again at a shadow that moves just beyond the wall.
“Hey,” I whisper, as much to myself as to him. “It’s okay. Stay here.”
