Finding Tessa Jaime Hendricks (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📖

without Tessa, and that she’d be home, alone, vulnerable? Did he sneak to the back, bust open a kitchen window, and drag poor, unwilling Tessa across the floor, punching her, causing her to bleed all over their floor?

Was Tessa’s disappearance Jace’s fault?

15

TESSA

This man, this Jace Montgomery, is complete and utter perfection.

I’m all cleaned up and safe. Jace offers to drive me home, but I want to call Hobart—he’s the only person I trust. But the way Jace looks at me, with his dark hair, his five o’clock shadow, his loosened tie on his button-down shirt—I fall under a spell. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not the same. I don’t fall because he’s dangerous and mysterious and bad.

It’s because I think he’s good.

This is something that’s never happened to me before.

Sure, I’ve tried to see the good in people that I knew were going to fuck with me—truck drivers and construction workers and “professional video game players”—but there’s something inherently perfect about this man. He’s hot, but he’s also gentle and doesn’t come at me with lines and smarmy bullshit. Genuine.

“Come on, Tessa. Let me drive you home. I promise you can trust me. I’m not like him,” Jace says. “I’m not.”

His pleading eyes are sincere. And he hasn’t tried to touch me since he wrapped me in a blanket as I sat on the couch to recover. He even made me tea. He didn’t talk to me while I drank the tea, not because it was awkward, but because it wasn’t.

I finish the last of the Earl Grey, not my favorite but the only kind that was in the cupboard, and place the mug on the glass table in front of me with a soft clank. Then I look up at his caring face, while mine is stricken with panic. What will he do if I leave a ring on the table?

“I’m sorry. Do you have a coaster?” I ask, my first words to him since he fixed me.

Rings on the tabletop have never been a plus in my past situations. I’d be reminded of the coaster by having it smacked into my face.

“Don’t worry about it. This place obviously isn’t fancy.” He smiles at me, and it’s real. “Hey, I don’t feel right putting you in an Uber after—after everything tonight. I promise you can trust me,” he says again, which in my situation has always been famous last words.

But I do trust him.

“What are you going to do about him?” I ask.

He lets out a long sigh. “I’d like to go to the police, but I’ll respect your wishes if you don’t want me to. I guess I’ll pack up some stuff tonight and stay in a hotel. I have to get out of here. I swear if I see his fu”—he stops, looking at me and wanting to be a gentleman—“his damn face, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

I press my lips together, still tasting blood from the split one, and nod.

“Do you live around here?” he asks.

I shrug. “I’m new in town. Just got here a few days ago. I’m staying at that big hotel off Main.”

“Where were you before?”

I shake my head softly. I can’t tell him. I don’t even know him. “Around. Needed a change of scenery.”

“I see.” He nods. “Well, I’m going to pack a few things, and then I’m taking you back to the hotel. Looks like I’ll be staying there a while too.” His hands go up again, quickly. “I’m not stalking you. I just have to figure out where to sleep for the next few days.”

My thoughts go back to the girl who was here earlier tonight. “Don’t you have a girlfriend you can stay with?”

“Nope. We broke up tonight. That’s why I came home early. Thank God,” he says, nodding toward the floor where I was attacked.

“Oh. She was here when Damon and I first got here. She was in the kitchen; said she was leaving you a note. I think it’s still on the counter.”

“She was?” his eyebrows knit together, and he rises from the old wingback chair and goes to the breakfast bar. He finds the note, reads it, and balls it up and throws it in the garbage. Runs his hand through his thick, wavy hair and scratches the back of his neck. “Well, that’s that.”

“Do you have any family you can stay with?” I ask.

A shadow casts over his face. “No. My parents retired to Florida. And Tommy—my brother—he’s been dead for fifteen years.”

I open my mouth simply to remove my foot. “I’m sorry.” Change the subject. “Why did you and your girlfriend break up?” Sure, good move, T. Make him talk about one depressing thing after another. Rude of me to use him to get my mind off my current situation.

He laughs and looks at me. “Aren’t relationships always complicated?” He shrugs, smirks. “Things happen for a reason, I guess.”

I nod, thinking that if they didn’t break up, I’d be raped and possibly dead right now.

“Well,” he continues, “like I said. I’m going to pack some stuff. I really hope you let me take you back there.”

I could almost hear him saying once again I could trust him . . . or maybe that’s what I wanted to hear in that moment. That would be the third time, and you know what they say: Third time’s the charm.

“Okay. Thank you,” I say softly.

I sit quietly as I hear him shuffle around in his bedroom and the bathroom. Hangers scratching against poles, drawers opening and closing, things shaking around in the bathroom. A zipper closes with a squeak—a long one, must be a suitcase—and then another shorter one, perhaps a duffel bag. The wheels to the case thud against the floor as they roll into the living room. Jace pulls the handle to the navy-blue bag, and he has a matching navy-blue duffel over his shoulder, worn crossbody, and is also holding a garment bag. Called both right.

“This