Finding Tessa by Jaime Hendricks (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

Damon was divorced. A good-looking, mysterious, troublemaking bartender, he was an entitled prick and assumed he deserved women to be at his beck and call. He didn’t like it when they weren’t. Jace had never witnessed it until he saw Tessa on the ground, being choked, bleeding, and Damon trying to forcibly get her pants off.

The image still made the bile rise from his stomach to his throat. That was his wife.

Jace remembered the way Tessa looked at him when he took care of her that night. She was a wounded bird, and so grateful that he wasn’t there to take advantage of her, like every man in her life before him had supposedly done. He knew nothing of her checkered past at that point, and he may have fallen in love with her right then and there. Her doe eyes, even though one was swollen and the other looked to be healing. Her beautiful lips, even though one was bleeding. Her long neck, even though there were purple and blue rings forming around it.

Now, all he thought about was getting her back.

There could be a million reasons why she’d disappeared, since she’d had so many abusive exes, including one that she was running from the night they met. But Jace only thought of one real problem: Damon Moretti. But he couldn’t tell the cops that yet.

With Jace’s current bad luck, now that the news about Tessa was out, now that his name was out, he wouldn’t be surprised if Damon himself went to the cops. To scream about Jace pulling a gun on him last Thursday night, the night Tessa went missing.

Tessa hated guns—she’d had her share of guns pointed in her direction. When she opened up about her nameless last husband—Asshole—she’d said that he pulled guns on her all the time. And someone she knew from back home mentioned to her that the ex was still looking for her. So Jace got a gun for protection. When he let Tessa know and showed it to her, wanting to teach her how to use it in case she had to in a pinch, she shrieked her disapproval and told him to stop pointing it at her—like he’d ever do such a thing. He assured her he was doing it for her own protection. Then he promised her he’d get rid of it.

He sort of did. At least, he got it out of the house, like she’d asked. He kept it in the locked glove compartment of his car, until he could figure out a better place to hide it—he wouldn’t be without it—not if Damon or the other nameless Asshole came looking for her. And the night she’d disappeared, he had left a note on the table before he left for work that morning, one which he immediately burned when he discovered she was missing.

Tessa—I got rid of the gun. I never want you to feel unsafe. I’ll be home as soon as I can tonight. I love you. Jace

He couldn’t let the cops scouring his place know he’d had a gun in his possession, because it was illegal. He didn’t want to bolster their belief that he was a suspect. He hadn’t done anything to Tessa. He’d give his right arm to know she was safe.

Still, rage took over when he saw Damon at Jupiter’s while he was out with Rosita and the two guys from VistaBuild, Andy and Kyle, last Thursday. As usual, Damon was hassling a girl. He didn’t see Jace—in fact Jace had only seen Damon once since the night that he beat Tessa, and that was a few days later, when Jace was moving out. Tessa was staying at a hotel nearby, and Jace stayed with her until they got married, two weeks later.

Quick.

Fate.

Love.

Damon had followed the girl out of Jupiter’s that night. She was alone, a would-be victim. Jace wouldn’t let Damon fall into his old antics, so he excused himself from his current company. Grabbed the pistol from his glove compartment and when he found Damon pinning the crying girl to the back of a building, he put the fear of God into him.

The gun wasn’t loaded—Jace wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t about to kill a man. Even an attempted rapist piece of shit like Damon. But seeing his face in the bar brought back the memories of his hands around the throat of the woman he loved, and he lost it.

In the back of the building, over the woman’s cries, even Damon was able to hear the click of the trigger being pulled back—a warning. Felt the pressure of the cold steel barrel against his head. Heard the threats that poured out of Jace’s mouth.

Damon literally pissed himself while the woman ran away. For an added threat, Jace cracked Damon over the head with the gun. Left a mark, made him bleed, as Damon had done to many other girls. A huge mistake, considering it was Damon’s blood that Andy noticed on his shirt when he went back into the bar. But worth it as Damon looked up at him with wide, glassy, frightened eyes, and Jace added, “Don’t let me see you again, motherfucker,” and backed away, still pointing the pistol at his head.

He hoped it would be a while before Damon tried to harass another woman.

When Rosita called him out on disappearing from the bar for a little while, Jace made up the story about having to move his car. If Rosita told that to the cops, surely, they’d be able to check street cameras and see where his car was all night. He hoped she kept her mouth shut.

He didn’t mean to lie. He wasn’t some county vigilante, but fuck Damon Moretti.

Tessa disappeared around that time. According to the forensics team, it had to do with the freshness of her blood in the kitchen.

Did Damon seek revenge? He knew Jace and Tessa were married. Did he look up their address, knowing that Jace was out in town