Page 38 of Cross the Line
“Hi,” he says, smiling as he crouches beside me.
“Hi.”
“That took longer than anticipated.” I look past him for Elijah. “Eli’s just talking to some people.”
“Is he okay? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah. Everything’s fine, Baby.”
The endearment is everything I didn’t know I needed. The way his gaze drags over my mouth…
God, I swear I feel the affection from his kisses buzzing on my skin.
I don’t care who’s watching. I throw myself at him. My face finds the crook of his neck and he catches me, strong arms locking me in. Finally, something holds me together. Finally, I’m gripping tangible hope that, yes, everything is going to be okay. We are not falling apart. I am not being left behind.
“I love you,” I blurt, hot and desperate and true.
Jayden goes rigid. I hold tighter, because I am never letting go of him or Elijah. Never.
Not even when he tries to lean back.
“Fin… Lucky…” His fingers find the tie of my ponytail, coaxing my head up until I’m looking at him. “I’m going to need you to say it again.”
“What?” His eyes are huge, pleading. “I love you?”
He nods, breath skating my lips. “Say it again, Baby. Please.”
“I love you, JJ.”
His chest deflates in a long exhale. The tension leaves his shoulders, softening the sharpened lines of his face.
“This is what I mean, Eli. Scenes like this are not going to help?—”
“Stop, Lex,” Elijah snaps, a hand dropping to Jayden’s shoulder as he lifts us both to our feet. “I said we’d talk about everything on the jet. Not here.”
Lex mutters a curse. His cold gaze narrows on me, dragging to where Jayden’s arm still anchors my shoulders.
“We can’t have this.”
Elijah shakes his head. “You don’t get to tell them what to do. I don’t care how mad you are or what angle you’re working.”
“Jesus fuck?—”
“Okay, I think we should grab your things and go,” another familiar voice says.
He’s taller than Lex, somewhere between him and Elijah, a warmth in his presence that thaws the serious set of his face when his steady eyes land on me.
“Hello, Finley.”
My heart stops a beat before Elijah says, “You remember Taylor. Right, Fin?”
Oh.His billet dad looks different. Older. Like more than he should’ve aged since we met when he took Elijah away from Havenview to Olympia.
I nod at Elijah and lift a hand to Taylor. He’s still intimidating: deep voice with a low boom, ramrod posture, every inch the league scout who found Elijah and pried him out of our closed town.
But the way his hand settles on Elijah’s nape is gentle. A father’s anchor. A physical promise: I’m here. It melts something in my chest that I didn’t know was frozen.
Taylor is everything our parents never were.
