Page 53 of Truthfinder’s Promise
“I’m not physically fragile, and I’ll divorce her as soon as this mess is over with. Happy?”
“I’m not certain the promise of a speedy divorce will make this any better.”
“To her, it will. That’s the only woman I’ve ever met as opposed to marriage as I am.”
Hel’s eyes sharpened. “Wait a minute. You like her like her, don’t you?”
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“No. Just saying if you like her, maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to divorce her.”
He looked at her warily. “So you aren’t coming down on Serenity’s side in all this?”
“It’s not like either of you did something wrong, so I don’t feel like I need to take sides. Admittedly, finding out you’re married had to hit like a sucker punch, but again, it’s not like you ever intended for her to find out, so I can’t blame you for it.”
“Have I ever told you you’re my favorite almost-cousin?”
She snorted. “It’s not hard to come out ahead of Dom. We all know I love him like a brother, but he needs to work on his people skills. So are you going to think about it?”
“About what?”
“Keeping the marriage?”
“Marriage isn’t a stray cat. It doesn’t just show up one day and you decide to keep it. It’s a commitment between two people. One neither I nor the pissed-off woman inside wants to make.”
Hel sighed. “If you say so.” She linked her arm through his and walked him back into the house.
Jace and Siren still hadn’t come out by the time Jensen walked back in. He was down Dom and up Hel, though she broke away and trotted upstairs with a wave at the rest of them. How had she gotten outside in the first place? Last Meredith had seen Hel, she’d been walking upstairs with Serenity.
Meredith killed the silencing spell she’d conjured, and Jensen held up a motel keycard. “Any chance you want to take me for a drive? Hel says all their stuff’s at the Convenience Inn off the highway into town. Plus, she brought some of my clothes and, uh...” He looked down to where the waistband of her dad’s old sweatpants was threatening to give way. They hadn’t been that small on him this morning. “I think I’m going to need them.”
“They had the foresight to know you’d need clothing?” Valkyrie asked.
Jensen grinned. It was a good grin, easy and charming, and brought out the dimples that never failed to make Meredith’s heart beat faster. “Shifters are always losing clothes.”
Considering the alternative to the hotel field trip was Serenity living in the robe Meredith had lent her, or—heaven forbid—Meredith loaning her actual clothing, the answer was obvious. She snatched the keycard. “Let’s go.”
“You sure you should go by yourself?” Valkyrie asked.
“Julian isn’t going to touch me until I bring him my evil mother’s stash of magical artifacts. I’m more worried about making sure things are okay here. You two are staying, right?”
“Consider us your new roommates,” Random said.
As if she didn’t have enough of those already. But truthfully, she would be happy to have them all under one roof until this mess was over. “If Siren and Jace come up for air, you think you can convince them to stay, too?”
“The more difficult path would be convincing them not to stay.”
Meredith felt marginally better once she was behind the wheel of her car and tipping the speedometer up past eighty. It was half an hour to the Convenience Inn, and she used the stretch of mostly-empty highway to work out her aggression.
Jensen was quiet and tense in the passenger seat beside her. Quiet wasn’t unusual for him. Tense was.
They were maybe ten minutes into the drive when he said, “Can you pull over?”
“Why?”
“Can you just do it? Please?”
She was a sucker for please. Probably because it wasn’t a word she’d heard much. She was more accustomed to being ordered around. There wasn’t an exit for another fifteen miles, but it wasn’t a popular stretch of highway. She pulled off the road and slipped the gear shift into neutral, hitting the parking break.
