“It’s done.”
I didn’t respond. I just clutched his shirt to my face as the relentless tears continued to fall down my cheeks.
It’s over, I told myself. It’s over.
MY EYES SLOWLY blinked open and focused on the empty side of the bed beside me. Letting my hand run over the comforter until my mind caught up with me, I finally remembered I was at Jagger’s, but didn’t know when I’d gotten upstairs to his bed. I felt groggy, and my eyes were scratchy, and it was then that the events of this afternoon all came back to me. The messages, blocking Ben’s Facebook account, Jagger holding me as tears steadily rolled down my cheeks.
Quiet footsteps sounded on the stairs seconds before Jagger appeared at the top, his steps faltering when he saw that I was awake.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Did I wake you up?”
I shook my head and pushed myself up until I was sitting against the headboard. “What time is it?”
“Late. You’d been asleep for five hours the last time I looked at my phone.”
“Five hours?”
“And that was probably an hour or so ago,” he guessed.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I looked down at his blackened hands and raised an eyebrow. “And how did I sleep through your music?”
A smile flashed across his face seconds before his lips softly fell onto mine. “I used earbuds so you wouldn’t hear it, and I didn’t wake you up because you’ve hardly slept in the last week and a half. Let me get all this off my hands. I’ll be right back.” He quickly walked into the bathroom, and I rubbed at my sore eyes.
Six hours was more than I had been getting in two nights combined, and somehow, it still didn’t feel like enough.
“You doing okay?” Jagger asked when he sat in front of me on the bed.
“With what happened?” When he nodded, I continued. “Yeah, I am . . . I guess. I’ve been constantly worrying about what would pop up on my phone the next time and when that time would be. Knowing whoever is doing this doesn’t have that way of communicating with me anymore feels nice.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that at all, but it’s over now.”
“I just . . .” I trailed off, struggling to voice the jumbled thoughts in my head. “What could anyone have against me that they’d feel the need to do something like this? I don’t understand, and I need to understand, Jagger. I feel like I’m going insane still. Knowing that it’s not actually Ben is a lot easier to say than to believe. I know he’s gone, I do. But I—I just feel like I don’t know anything anymore.”
Jagger placed one of his hands on top of both of mine, and I quickly stopped twisting my hands together to grip his. “We’ll find out who did this, I swear.”
I nodded absentmindedly, and kept my eyes on where I was now playing with his fingers. I couldn’t stop fidgeting; something was bothering me . . . something that had to do with the Facebook messages. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Jagger was talking—saying something that I wasn’t hearing. All I could focus on was our hands and the messages and the vows.
“The vows!” I shouted suddenly, and looked up in time to see Jagger’s head jerk back from my outburst.
“What about them?” Jagger asked hesitantly when I didn’t say anything else.
“This can’t just be over. Not that easily.” Removing one of my hands from Jagger’s, I pointed in the direction of the front door. “They obviously know my car since the vows were on them, and they know about you, where you live, and can get inside your place since the vows were here. Just because I blocked one of their ways of torturing me doesn’t mean it’ll just be over.”
“You might be right, but we can’t know that yet.”
“Where did you have the vows?” I looked around the loft at the dresser and desk. “We could see if something else is missing, or—”
“Grey,” he crooned, and cupped my cheek so I would look at him. “I already did all that. I had some cops come and fingerprint the vows and the box that the paper had been in. Nothing else was missing, nothing was out of place, and I don’t even know when they were taken. There was nothing but my fingerprints up here, in the closet, and on the box. And nothing on the vows except for mine, yours, and some unknown ones that they’re expecting to be Ben’s since he had smudged the ink with his finger, and it matched the rest of the prints they found.”
My mouth had slowly opened as he talked, and I knew I was looking at him like I didn’t even know who he was anymore. “So the cops now have the vows? You would just give them something like that? Something that means so much to me? Jagger! They probably ruined the vows!”
“No, I have the paper back because they couldn’t find anything on it, and the vows are fine, babe.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you tell me that you’d called them? You didn’t even say anything about giving the vows that were meant for me to the police. What if I didn’t want them to have that?” I looked around the room, shaking my head. “Were you ever going to tell me?” I asked on a humorless laugh. “For all I know, they could’ve found something, but you’re still not telling me.”
He laughed edgily, and I knew he was getting mad, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe he’d done all that without asking me first, or telling me after. “Are you—are you f**king kidding me? Of course I would’ve told you if there was something! Jesus, Grey. You’ve been miserable since the morning you found the vows. Most of your days are bad days, and babe, that’s fine! It’s fine to be hurting. But I didn’t want you to get involved with the police when there was a chance they wouldn’t find anything.”