Page 44 of Cross the Line
What is wrong with me?
I should be comforting him—holding his hand, telling him how proud I am of his strength—reminding him it isn’t too late to take the bastards who hurt him to the edge of the world and drop them into the abyss.Fuck. Them. Up.
Because that’s where my mind is right now: ruin. I want to wreck the cunts who touched him, who violated his trust and boundaries, who took what wasn’t theirs, and walked on like it was nothing—when, to me, every crumb of Eli is everything.
“Relax, JJ,” he offers with a reassuring smile that chokes me all the way down to the pit of my stomach.
“I can’t, Eli. I’m trying, but I can’t. That night does not get to dictate the rest of your life.”Fuck, I realize I’ve said too much too late, and everyone is looking at me quizzically like I’m speaking in tongues.
Well, not everyone. Finley and Lex. They’re looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, and I can’t say that I’m not losing it when Taylor gives me a look of pity and resignation.
What the fuck?
He knows. And he did nothing. How can he love Eli and not see how deep the hurt runs?
Eli’s hand grips mine tighter, anchoring me before I tear the jet apart.
“There will be no statement. We’re going to keep going about our lives like we always have.” Eli leaves no room for negotiation. “There is no room for anyone else’s opinions or judgments.”
Lex nods. “I admire that… the three of you…” Brown eyes track between Eli and me, flick to Finley, then land on Eli. “And if silence is how you want to handle it, then I respect that. Even if it makes my job a helluva lot harder.”
A thick brow hikes up his forehead as he sits back into his seat. Meanwhile, Taylor studies us for a beat, a slow grin quivering at the corners of his mouth. He’s about to speak when Lex’s phone detonates into an alarm-toned ring that jerks all of us upright.
“Fuck! What now?” Lex barks.
Eli tenses against me. Lex answers with a weary “give it to me,” eyes pinned to the three of us. Something comes over his face, a choked kind of expression that shoots a bolt of nausea through me. Eli crushes my hand in his as Finley tucks deeper into me, her arm hooking awkwardly around Eli’s nape until we’re a knot of tense limbs.
The longest minute of my life unspools amid grunts and hushed demands for more information that are punctuated by gutsy curses.
When Lex ends the call, he gives us an appraising glance.
“Relax, that call wasn’t about you,” he says, sitting straighter as his phone keeps pinging. “Here’s the deal: we’ll handle this your way. No statement, no big deal—” He spears me with a narrowed look. “—you do you and carry on as you are. But the instant it comes out, I handle it my way. I don’t want you to hide, to waste bandwidth on worrying about being outed. Now is the time to up your game and make sure it’s your talent that outweighs the bullshit. Got it?”
“Yes,” Eli replies.
“Okay. Meanwhile, I’ll have my PR team set up some low-key opportunities for the three of you to show your faces together. It’s important that we navigate this with caution and grace.” He checks his watch and buckles up just before the pilot announces we’re preparing to land. As Finley gets up to wake Christina, Lex tells her, “My people are going to reach out to brief you on how to handle the press, and I know you don’t have social media, but that has to change.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eli groans beside me, “what happened to carrying on as we are?”
Lex’s gaze runs the length of us and lands back on Eli. “Your social media manager is going to put a new agenda together. It’s all being organized as we speak. I’ll be leaving for LA as soon as I pick up Weismann from your hotel.”
“Oliver?” I stand, following Finley toward the berths as Eli falls in behind me.
“Is everything okay with him?” Eli asks.
Now is not the time for us to lose him.Who the fuck fills in now?
“Yeah, his wife had an accident?—”
“What?” I glance at Eli, and he frowns in my direction.
“Oliver’s married?”
Lex’s eyes bug like he can’t work out why we’re so surprised. Then, shaking his head, he tells Eli, “You need to rest up and be prepared to get back on the ice.”
Eli nods, grasping my shoulders and spinning me on the spot before I have a chance to go back to the whole Oliver having a wife ‘what the fuck.’ We head to the lounge area where the girls are already buckled in. Christina still looks half-asleep, her paper-pale skin making her freckles stand out.
We sit. I take a breath and study Eli. At a glance, he’s serene, but the closer I look, I notice the minute divots between his brows and the tense clench of his throat, hollowing out the bottom of his jaw.
