Blacklisted (Loveless, Texas #3) - Jay Crownover Page 0,27

I need you to understand that only family gets keys to the front door, and you are part of my family.” She huffed a little bit and picked up a towel to wipe down a nonexistent spot on the bar in front of where I was sitting. “I don’t want you to leave in the first place. It’s nice having someone around while Hill is away on assignment.” She pouted and it made her look adorable. It was a look I could never pull off, no matter how similar our faces were.

I’d purposely waited until she was busy at work to drop by and tell her I was going back to my apartment. There’d been no progress on finding whoever took the shots outside my building, and I was sick and tired of living in constant fear and hiding from everything and everyone who might cause me harm. Shot’s words about me giving my life up wouldn’t stop echoing inside my head. Over the last few days I’d come to the conclusion he was right, and it was time to stop living in stasis and regain control of my life and my future. Not only was I going back to my apartment temporarily, I was also going back to work.

I was done being a sitting duck.

“Okay, I’ll keep it.” I picked up the key and twirled the ring holder around my finger. Kody lifted her head and a smile broke through the grim look on her face. I smiled back and told her, “And once I find a place of my own, a permanent place, I promise I will get you your very own copy of my front door key, because I want to be a safe place for you as well.”

She blinked in surprise and abandoned pretending like she was cleaning. “Wait. You’re going to look for a new place? Here in Loveless, right?” She didn’t bother to cover the slight panic in the last question.

I reached out and patted the back of her hand, instinctively trying to ease her sudden fear. “I’m going back to work, so that means I need to find a place closer to Ivy.” Ivy, Texas, was a suburb outside of Austin and only an hour or so away from Loveless. “I was thinking I’d look for something in between here and there.”

I also wanted to find somewhere that was my idea of perfect. All my life I’d bounced between apartments, condos, and town houses because it was just me while my mom was in and out of the hospital. I was too busy taking care of her and working to worry about the upkeep of any kind of property, so temporary and tiny worked. Now my outlook on everything was different. I wanted somewhere lasting, someplace that required me to care for it and put my mark on it. I also had a family to think of now, as Kody was so fond of reminding me. I might need more space in the future, since they’d made it clear they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. And maybe, once I was settled, I could even get a dog. I’d always wanted one, but there had never been time or enough emotional availability.

I squeezed Kody’s hand and tilted my head to the side to consider her carefully. She’d gotten past all my defenses without me even being aware they had been breached. I’d stopped fighting her when she insisted that I join girls’ night along with Case’s and Crew’s significant others. I’d also stopped feeling like a total outsider when I was with them. It was starting to feel like maybe I had a place where I really belonged.

Kody and I even spent late nights chatting when she came home from the bar while I was camped out at her place. We talked about everything from the serious threat still hanging over my head to the differences in our upbringings. She answered questions about our father, even though I knew it was painful for her, and I tried to explain what it was like growing up being smarter than everyone around me. Over the last few weeks I found myself actually wanting to spend time with her. As over the top and noisy as she was, there was something about being in her company that soothed all the frayed edges of my nerves. It was similar to how I felt when I was around Shot. There was just something about their larger-than-life personalities that helped