Page 42 of Cut Off
Ice flooding my veins, I mutter, “She’s going to take my son. She’ll say whatever she has to.”
Zoe doesn’t let go. “You did everything right, Jonah. You stayed calm. You told the truth. Eli is where he’s supposed to be. There’s no way she can win this.”
I want to believe her. I really do. But the old fear—the panic that I’m never enough, that I’ll screw up—claws inside my gut.
She squeezes tighter, and I cling to her, letting the fear and the relief battle it out inside me. Maybe I don’t deserve Eli. Maybe I’ve never deserved someone on my side the way Zoe is. But right now, with Zoe in my arms, I believe I have a shot.
I wish I could just stay here, like this, forever.
13
The History
ZOE
Ihold on to Jonah and the illusion of control.
Here we are, in the parking lot of justice or whatever, and Jonah Holt is melting into me like a six-foot-two ice sculpture in the sun.
I should let go.
I don’t let go.
His chin is somewhere near my temple, and his hands fist the back of my sweater like he thinks I might float away, and the entirely unprofessional, deeply inconvenient truth is that he feels good. Solid. Warm. Like every bad analogy about a man’s chest, except real, and pressed against me, and currently breathing in a way that is doing absolutely nothing for my “no falling for him” rule.
Get it together, Lane.
“Okay,” I murmur into his lapel. “We’re okay.”
He doesn’t answer. He just keepsholding on.
I let him. Because today, a woman in pearls just told a judge that he was unfit to raise his own son, and made him sound like a thug. He earned this thirty seconds. I’m just the lucky rag doll he picked to absorb the impact.
After what’s probably a full minute and definitely too long, he eases back. His eyes are red around the edges in a way I’m choosing not to remark on, because Jonah Holt does not do crying and I do not do witnessing him not-cry. We have an unspoken agreement about it. We’ve had it for about four seconds.
“Come on,” I say, businesslike, because someone has to be. “Car. More private. Less courthouse.”
He nods.
We walk back to the SUV in silence, my heels clicking on the pavement, his hand brushing mine once and not on purpose. I climb up into the passenger seat and crank the heat, and the vents blow cold for a long, mean second before they warm.
Jonah stares straight through the windshield. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t start the SUV.
“You okay to drive?” I ask.
“Fine.”
“Mm-hmm.”
He cuts a look at me. “What.”
“Nothing.”
“Zoe.”
“You’re not ‘fine.’ You’re about three seconds from putting your fist through the dashboard, and I wouldn’t blame you.”
He exhales through his nose. The kind that has thirty pounds of feeling shovedinto it.
