Chapter 6 #2
Jack sets it aside and sits down, facing me, his legs caging me in. “Did you stop because you’re too busy looking after me?”
“What? No.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
He speaks without much inflection. Without anger. But he doesn’t seem all that confused either. As if the spark in his green eyes is nothing but curiosity and friendly concern for the sorry state of my sex life.
I feel pinned to the couch. Unable to move a muscle or limb without shattering into a thousand pieces. “Jack, I don’t care about sex.”
“Why not? You used to.”
“That was before—”
My jaw jams. Idiot.
Jack leans forward as if he scents the secret burning holes in my chest. “Before what?”
Before you put your hands and mouth on me like you meant it. Before you stepped in front of mortar fire and blew that night and everything it could’ve been into dust I’ve choked on ever since.
I’m choking now.
But I’m saved by a door opening down the hall. At least I think I am, until Mal appears, and walks straight past us, as if Jack’s communicating with him in ways I can’t see, and he knows not to give me an out.
Mal goes to the kitchen and rummages in the fridge. He departs with a protein shake and a bottle of electrolytes and his bedroom door shuts like a tomb a few seconds later.
Jesus, Mally. Throw me a life jacket here.
Silence is all I get for my unspoken plea. And Jack’s stare, boring into me so steadily I almost convince myself last night didn’t happen. But it did happen. And it matters more than the blue balls I’ll carry to the grave. Jack matters more.
I find a breath from the pits of hell and force it into my lungs. “I’m not lying to you. I really don’t care about sex anymore. On my list of ways to slowly kill myself, it’s at the fucking bottom.”
I don’t curse that often. I like words too much to use the same ones over and over again. I’m usually stressed out of my mind when it happens. Or drunk as hell.
I’m not drunk now.
Neither is Jack.
Gods, how I miss those beer and rum-fuelled nights we spent together. How I miss that night. How I wish and wish and wish he remembered it.
Christ, Sol. You’re all I think about. Why’s it taken me this long to figure out why?
A wretched sound coils in my throat.
I cover my mouth with my hand.
Jack snaps his fingers around my wrist, ripping my hand away. “You don’t care about sex because you never have time to want anything for yourself.”
“That right?”
“Aye, I think so. Unless you can look me in the face and tell me different.”
I can’t. But not for the reason he thinks. So I say nothing. Just die quietly until he sighs and loosens his death grip on my arm.
“Sol, you deserve a life that’s more than work and fretting about everyone else.”
“So do you.”
Jack snorts. “I’m not going to fuck anyone, am I?”
“Why not?” I press, even though it rips me apart. “There’s nothing wrong with your dick.”
Not unless he’s broken it since a few weeks ago when I woke up to it digging into my back. And why can’t I say that? Why can’t we laugh about it? Why can’t this…thing between us fade to a dull roar I can live with instead of this heartrending pain?
My eyes sting. My chest burns. I need Mal to come out of his room again. I need Skylar to save me. Hell, at this point I’d take the Morgawr, or even a call from my dad.
I shut my eyes.
Open them again to find Jack staring into space. But he’s not lost—he’s deep in thought, and he has no right being so disarmingly attractive while he’s at it.
I’m hooked. Can’t look away. Can’t resist peeling myself from the couch cushions and losing myself in the set of his unshaven jaw and the rough ink I glimpse on the skin not covered by his faded blue t-shirt.
Blue looks good on Jack. Goddamn, anything does. The only thing better is all the things I can’t contemplate, but he doesn’t make it easy.
I nudge his knee. “What are you thinking about?”
“What you said about me fucking someone.”
My gut recoils. “What about it?”
“I think it would kill me.”
I miss a beat. “In what sense?”
Jack makes a sudden and fractured noise.
He swipes my mug and rises from the coffee table.
I read his intention to leave without answering the question and it’s my turn to snag his wrist and hold him in place.
Because he lets me—he could easily break my strongest hold.
But if I have to leverage his visceral fear of hurting me to check he’s okay, I’ll do it.
“What do you mean, it would kill you?”
Because I know he doesn’t mean he’s disturbed by the idea of fucking someone who isn’t me. That the mere thought of it makes him want to shear his cock right off and fling its corpse at Bucca Dhu.
Jack purses his lips.
Tugs his arm a little.
I let him go.
He retreats to the kitchen, but he’s not gone long. A few seconds. A lifetime. It’s all the same to me. Then he’s back and rubbing the base of his neck, awkwardness marring his features. “I meant I can’t imagine blowing my load without having a fucking seizure.”
“Can’t imagine it, or haven’t tried?”
“You know I haven’t fucked anyone.”
I do, and I wonder if it would be easier if I didn’t. Like the old days, when he had his life all over the world and I had mine here. But that’s not really the point. I know Jack. Even when I don’t know what he’s thinking, his emotions are a beacon to me, and right now?
He’s worried.
Embarrassed.
And maybe I can help.
“What about when you’re alone? A cheeky wank hasn’t killed you, has it?”
“I don’t do that.”
“You don’t?”
Jack slides a glance at the hallway that leads to Mal and Skylar’s room—as if he wants rescuing from this conversation, now the tables have turned. “No. Never. Not since I made cabbage soup out of my fucking brain.”
I block out the harsh words he claims for himself. Focus on the rest of it and come up screaming.
Never?
“So, you haven’t…”
Jack pins his stare to the ceiling. “Not by choice. It happens when I’m asleep sometimes.”
“After a seizure?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Jack has seizures in his sleep a couple of times a month. I’ve seen dozens of them. Can’t say I’ve noticed any sexual excitement, though. Only pain and bewilderment.
His.
Mine.
I force it away and try to dissect what he’s actually saying.
And why he’s saying it—what he needs from this conversation.
A grounding technique they taught me at the military rehab centre in Birmingham, back when every exchange with Jack was a maze of scrambled memories and sudden grenades of emotion.
Back when it killed me that he’d forgotten so much, and the only thing keeping me breathing was that my face, and the absence of Mal’s, seemed to be the only thing in the world he knew for certain.
Sometimes he looked at me as if what I said next would shift the earth under his feet.
He’s not looking at me now. He’s zoned out again, pinning a glare on the floorboards.
I reach for him on instinct, but he stands before I make land. Exits the living room before I can snatch a breath.
I’m dizzy in his wake.
He disappears into the hallway—bedroom, bathroom, who knows? Not me. I’m too busy shorting out like someone’s unplugged me.
Then he’s back again, filling the space in front of me and fixing me with a stare that renders me a statue all over again.
“I didn’t mean to tell you that.”
“No?”
“Christ, no.” His hands clench and flex at his sides. “It’s bullshit and I don’t want it to be some other fucked-up thing you have to help me with.”
His voice catches, wrecked for saying it.
Wrecked for needing anything at all, and it should be a moment I’m good at.
One we’ve navigated before. But I’m sleep-starved and emotional.
My filters disintegrate and something wicked falls out of my mouth.
“Jackie, I’ll help you with anything; you know that.
You need me to sit with you while you sort yourself out, I’m there. ”
The air turns molten.
Jack’s eyes widen, sparking like a struck match, and I realise what I’ve said too late to take it back.
Taran, save me.
Or at least strike me down before I say another word.
Before Jack can respond. But no storm god comes to my rescue and we teeter in fragile silence that steals the air from my lungs.
As if we’ve stumbled into a hidden room and neither of us knows how to get out.
As if neither of us wants to get out, and the difference sends my pulse clattering into the stratosphere.
“Jack…”
I reach for him again, and this time he’s still in the room.
He watches my hand skate down his corded forearm, grazing the old and blown ink blurred into his skin.
Takes a shallow breath as my fingers wrap around his wrist and my thumb presses into his pulse point, a hangover from the dark days I was so scared he’d die in his sleep.
He lets me do this too and it feels dangerous. It feels new, and it shouldn’t. Touching him like this is muscle memory. It’s instinct. It’s us, until Jack ghosts a fingertip over the back of my hand and sensation ricochets through me like a live current.
I lift my gaze to his.
He stares down at me, jaw flexing, as if one wrong breath could tip us over. “I need to get to work.”
A door slams in my head. I start to pull back, another instinct I can’t suppress. But Jack…he frees himself from my grasp and sets his hands on my shoulders, bringing his forehead to mine, like he’s done since we were kids when I was too scared to jump from the cliffs into the rock pools.
“Don’t go far today,” he murmurs, a low rumble that prickles my skin. “I’m not done talking about this.”