But what if it wasn’t him? Then that meant someone out there was even more interested in torturing me than Franky. And we were no closer to figuring out who that person was.

My anxiety started to spiral. I could feel it in the way my chest contracted and my head felt as light as a cloud. “I’m freaking out,” I said out loud, keeping focus on the road and simultaneously trying to calm my hammering heart. “Like, legit, I’m starting to really freak out.”

Jake must have heard the tremble in my voice. He reached out and put a hand on my thigh, squeezing, his thumb rubbing soft circles. “Right now, you’re completely safe. As long as I’m by your side, you’re safe. So don’t think about the scary what-ifs and focus on the nows instead. Everything is okay.”

It was a bald-faced lie. A complete fabrication. A damn fairy tale.

And yet I ate it up all the same. Jake’s words struck a chord in me, pushing back some of the waves that had threatened to crest over my head and drag me down into the tide. He spoke with an assurance that sold his lies as fact. I knew he couldn’t see the future; he couldn’t promise me that everything was, in all actuality, okay.

But just having him here, in my car, speaking in that gravelly tone of his, it was the balm I needed. My lungs filled with air, something they were incapable of doing only seconds ago. My head wasn’t light anymore, although my heart still felt like it was lodged somewhere in my throat. “Thank you, Jake. For all of this. For calming me down, for confronting Franky, for trying to figure this all out with me. I’m really glad we bumped into each other at the store that one night.”

Jake’s smile was effortless, his blue eyes sparkling with the memory. It was enough to silence all of my nervous thoughts, vanquished by the Prince Charming sitting beside me. “It definitely feels like one of those nights that changes things, ya know? So many little things had to line up to make that happen. The smallest shift could have had us barely crossing paths in the store. Maybe one of us took two minutes longer looking for parking, or you chose to go to a liquor store instead of the supermarket. But everything worked out perfectly.”

“It really did,” I said, matching the intensity of his grin. “And if you weren’t a big reader, I doubt I would have told you to come to the book club, which really propelled things.”

“Things, huh? What do you think got propelled?” He looked over at me, a slight arch in his brow, his grin still wide.

Ah, crap. He got me cornered. “Our, uh, friendship. We went from casual work friends to… really good friends.”

“Great friends.”

“Best friends.”