Chapter 8
I falter in the doorway, already resigned to only a fleeting moment with Jack.
Because he’s asleep.
At least, I thought he was. So I’m sorely unprepared for how awake he is as he holds out his hand.
Open.
Waiting.
Lie with me.
Ten years ago, I’d have rolled into his bed without hesitation, even though I knew his platonic affection would destroy me later, when I was alone with the reality that my straight best friend had gone to war on the other side of the world and left me behind with no sound promise I’d ever see him again.
In this moment, in this life, I scan him for signs of distress or pain while he eyes me in a way that makes his tidy room seem smaller and more dangerous than it’s ever been.
Because Jack…he’s not rattled or hurting or lost. He just wants me.
My company. My head on his pillow while my stupid heart weeps next to his, and I’m so tired and wrung out that every part of me aches to take what he’s offering, even though it’ll hurt so much worse tomorrow.
I claim his hand and slide into his bed. My chest is tight from the stress of visiting my mum and snooping through the box file in my dad’s shed. I have numbers on my mind. Big numbers. Impossible sums that are almost meaningless to me. But as Jack keeps my hand tucked in his, it all fades.
He’s lying on his stomach, propped on his elbows. I turn to him in the dark, shifting onto my side. It shouldn’t feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, and yet somehow it does. “All right?”
“Are you?”
“That’s not an answer, Jackie.”
He waits me out, bringing his other hand to smother mine, his palms caging me, thumbs grazing the knuckles I split wrestling with the engine hatch.
“What happened here?”
I tell him.
He frowns, thinking hard about something, but whatever it is, he can’t find it, and he doesn’t seem too pressed about it. “Are you okay?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, Sol. You. I don’t think anyone asks you enough.”
“Lisa asked me tonight.”
“Doesn’t count if she didn’t listen to your answer.”
Jack knows my mum so well. How she drifts away from anything sharp, all soft edges and no bite against the chaos my dad brings home. Filing herself smooth to survive.
He knows I love her.
That I resent her.
And I’ll never stop defending her, even if it means lying to his face. “I told her yes and she moved on to feeding me cheese pies.”
His gaze flickers. “How many did you eat?”
“Enough that I almost fell asleep on the way home.”
I’m joking, mostly. But Jack doesn’t smile. He frees a hand to grip my chin and stare so deeply that my breath catches, and the tightness in my chest…it comes back.
“Something’s wrong.” His voice is barely a whisper, but he might as well be shouting in my face for the impact it has. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
Because he’ll help me. He’ll give me every penny he has and the shirt off his back to save a house I’m beginning to believe is cursed and there won’t be a thing I can do to stop him.
And so I deflect.
I change the subject to one I know will break his stare, and maybe even have him pulling away from me; a pain I brace for. “Are you ready to finish the conversation we started the other day?”
Jack grimaces, loosing a low rumble from the base of his throat. He presses his face into our joined hands and guilt licks at me with the spiked tongue of a spriggan. “I was, until I saw you.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Can’t remember.” He raises his head to give me a dry look, acknowledging the obvious lie. “But…”
“But?”
He growls again and shifts his weight a little. “I haven’t thought about sex in forever. Now I can’t stop and I don’t know why.”
A truth he rakes from his own personal abyss. One that has fear rising from mine—a feeling I have no right to claim. Not about this. “What kind of sex are you thinking about?”
Jack heaves a sigh. “I have no idea. It’s not specific…it’s, like…fuck, I don’t know. Just feelings, and I can’t tell if they’re mine.”
I’m too sleep-deprived to decipher a sentence like that. But I try anyway, for Jack’s sake. So he doesn’t have to do it himself. To say it twice and trip over the repetition.
Think, man.
I do and it finally clicks. He can’t tell if what he’s feeling is a memory or a present-day desire, but in the time it’s taken me to figure that out, he’s hyper-focused on my raw knuckles again.
Tender fixation unleashed on me with no warning and I’m ludicrously aware of how it would feel if he ever looked at me like this if we were in bed for different reasons.
Aware because I’ve felt it before and I lost it.
Gods.
Too many emotions flame my body. Jack drags his thumb over some broken skin and I shut my eyes, searching for the shallow pain of a silly injury. Anything to mask the deeper wounds we both carry.
“Sol?”
I open my eyes to his earnest stare, dark brows pulled together as he zeroes in on me as though everything else on this earth has evaporated. As though he’s trying to solve me and we’ll both vaporise if he doesn’t. “Yeah?”
Jack’s still on his stomach. Still holding my hand. He lets go and reaches for my face, but his fingers tremble, and he changes his mind, tucking his hand away.
We’re not touching anymore.
Feels sensible.
Feels wrong.
But like everything I hate, I’m a slave to it. I lie like a corpse as he withdraws and let it break me, piece by cracked piece.
Come back, love. I miss you.
“I was wrong the other day.”
“Hmm?” I blink as if I’ve been asleep for a week, when the truth is I can’t remember the last time I shut my eyes for longer than a couple hours. “About what?”
Jack moves, bracing his fists on the bed and hopping over me, bare feet to the wood floor before I comprehend what’s happening.
He leaves the room.
Comes back a moment later with the first aid kit Skylar keeps stocked.
My knuckles.
He’s not done with them.
“Jackie, I’m fine.”
He grunts and sets to work cleaning them anyway, that soul-pinning focus engaged again as he kneels at the side of his bed.
I throw my other arm over my eyes, wrecked as ever. “What were you wrong about?”
Jack doesn’t answer.
I breathe through it for as long as I can, which isn’t all that long. Then I let my arm fall away and face him.
He’s done disinfecting the abrasions on my knuckles. His own hands are flexing at his sides and his gaze drifts to the door, head tilted, as if he’s heard something I haven’t. As if the senses he’s so sure were forever dulled when that mortar hit him are as sharp as they’ve always been.
Another faint grimace colours his features, but it’s more wry than annoyed, and it looks good on him. So good, I reach for him and press my cleaned knuckles under his scruffy jaw. “What do you hear? Mice again?”
“More like fucking rabbits.” Jack rises and climbs over me, sliding back into bed.
His bed.
I should go.
He’s not upset or unwell. He doesn’t need me to stay, and gods, I need to sleep, just a little, before I face the world again. But the thing about Jack’s bed is that it’s the same as every other bed we’ve ever laid in together. It’s quicksand and nothing and no one can make me move, not even me.
Especially me.
“Did you eat?” Jack asks suddenly.
“Yeah.” I don’t remind him we’ve already talked about it. “Cheese pies with Lisa. I brought some home.”
Jack lies down. He’s silent a moment. Then he shifts again, onto his stomach, and it’s out of character enough to have me raising my head a little.
“All right?”
“Aye.”
“Sure? You don’t need—”
A large clean hand clamps over my mouth. Jack’s hand, his palm so broad it blocks my whole air supply. And fuck, I like it. I like it so much instant terror swamps me and I make a sound that rattles Jack too.
He rips his hand away. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. Am I getting worse at talking?”
“You talk just fine.”
He snorts. “Now I know you’re lying.”
“Tell me what you were wrong about.”
Jack spears his gaze to the ceiling. He leaves it there as he spits words that slay me stone-dead. “I was wrong about not wanting your help.”