laughing with friends, frowning as she hauls her groceries, fumbling with her door key…it’s what I live for. Even as I know she had the tree cam pulled out of my yard a while back. Even as I heard her once, about a week ago, tell someone on the phone she looked forward to getting dinner again. Even as I know for sure she’ll move on.
She and Jace will get divorced at some point; Max said Jace had lost control of his family’s company and fled to Italy. Fucking sad, and I’m ashamed how much I love that he’s not at her place any longer.
I’m pathetic, and that point is driven home as I sit on a bench across the street from where she stops to stretch before she heads into the park. It’s a temperate morning—seventy-nine and breezy—with smells of breakfast in the air, although it’s dark and nothing’s open quite yet.
To get here on time, I had to leave my house before I even knew if she’d go for an outdoor run. Logic was against it, since she hasn’t in a long time, but sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday, I’ll drive through the tunnel or take the train, and I’ll run and watch my phone—which has an app with a link to the Elise cam—to see if she’s going to join me. It’s fucking stupid, and I kind of hate myself for keeping on with the effort.
More pathetic: when I see her walking toward her little stretching bench, I feel my heart kick like it’s starting back up.
Fuck. I take a long, slow breath and let it out. And then she’s stretching. I can’t see well, but in the lamplight, it looks like she’s wearing pale running shorts and a darker sleeveless shirt.
She’s always been cautious, looking around non-stop, but this time I think her gaze lingers on my side of the street, like she can sense my gaze hugging her. Which makes me grin.
When she takes off at a jog, I give her about a minute. Then I start across the crosswalk, tailing her into the park, keeping the same distance I always have. I stay close enough so I can see her on some straight shots and could hear her scream if something went wrong, but not so close she’ll see me if she glances back.
It’s not ideal for me, because I can’t see her as well as I’d like. But it’s the safest thing for her. My brother peeked at a computer used by Aren’s FBI fuck buddy, and he found out Aren is looking to turn on anyone the Bureau has an interest in, attempting to mitigate charges they’ll bring against him and his crew for importing weapons and selling them stateside. If Aren thinks he can serve me up to the FBI, it makes sense that he’d shift his focus to the D.A.’s office. And because he thinks I’m on Elise’s good side—and he knows he’s on her bad side—he sees that as a weak spot for him.
I still work with Aren—it’s necessary for the pink ops—and he says something fucked up about “the cunt” almost every time we speak. Makes me want to fuck him up, but I’m not stopping the ops just because the guy’s a lunatic. I don’t even think that it would help. He’s fixated on Elise. The only thing I can do is just watch her…like this.
I’m so damn tempted to get closer to her. The run seems to last forever. I can’t sort out if I’m faster—I have been running a bunch lately—or if la mia rosa has gotten slower, but I get a little jolt when I realize that what I’m smelling is her perfume. Christ.
And suddenly, I’ve closed the distance between us. Fuck, she’s less than thirty feet ahead of me. I pause and evaluate, deciding she is moving slowly.
At that moment, she slows to a walk and brings a hand up to her forehead. Just as I’m lengthening my stride to close the space between us, she starts jogging again, albeit more slowly.
Fuck, her form is sloppy. Did she stop running for these months, and she’s just getting back into the groove? Maybe she has a blister on her foot.
I shake my head, gritting my teeth at the ridiculously strong temptation I feel to go scoop her up. It’s been so long since I touched her. Since she wrapped her arms around me.
Even though things went sideways that night at Soren’s buddy’s party,