Chapter 4 Janie
JANIE
I can’t breathe.
I wrenched awake, clawing desperately at my throat.
The hand wrapped around it didn’t budge except to squeeze tighter.
Jack’s taut face hovered inches above my own, his mouth a grim slash, his eyes closed, his brows pushed together, looking like he had every intention of ending my life.
But the sounds he made—agony. Like he was the one in pain.
Shit, shit! I tried to wiggle, but his big body crushed me to the bed, and not in a good way.
That self-defense class I took in college for a P.E.
credit was a joke. I couldn’t even get a knee to his balls.
What was I supposed to do? Never wake a sleepwalker.
Was that real, or just untested internet advice?
What about sleep stranglers? Did the same rule apply?
If Chloe Adams, one of my best friends and a fantastic social worker, was here, she’d know what to do. She’d be gentle and calm and—
I wheezed. Oh, god, I was going to die. I was going to die and everyone would know it was because I had a one-night stand and Maya—
Hell, no. I was not going out like this.
I flicked his forehead.
“Jack.” Flick. “Wake.” Flick. “The fuck.” Flick. “Up.”
“Turtle—” His blue eyes popped open, boring into mine right as I gave one final, hard flick between his eyebrows. He blinked rapidly. “Janie?”
“Can’t—breathe—” I gasped.
In an instant, his hand was off my neck and his weight lifted from my body as he rolled to his back. I gulped in air. My lungs burned. My throat felt like I had swallowed a sword. And Jack—I twisted my neck to squint at him in the dim light.
Jack looked as shocked as I felt.
I rolled onto my side to face him. “Are you okay?” I asked softly.
He barked out a short, angry laugh. “No.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Are you okay?”
I breathed again. My lungs felt fine. My heartrate was still elevated, but it was slowing down. I swallowed. My throat still hurt, but even that had lessened. “I’m okay. I think you might have left bruises, though.”
He jackknifed into a sitting position. “Let’s get you to a doctor.”
“A doctor? Where do you think we are, Denver? The closest hospital is forty minutes from here.” I grabbed his bicep—my god, it was a boulder—and tugged him back down. After a brief hesitation, he allowed it. “I’m fine,” I insisted.
“People keep using that word,” he muttered. “I don’t think it means what they think it means.”
I laughed. It only hurt a little. “You’re fine, too. Things can’t be that bad if you can still quote The Princess Bride.”
He scoffed. “Janie, I am not fine.”
I looked at him. At the purple shadows under his eyes and the deep groove between his eyebrows. I wanted to press my thumb there and smooth his worry away. “I know,” I said softly.
I wiggled across the bed until there was only an inch or two of space between us. His gaze flicked down to me, his eyes dark as they studied me. With a sigh, he lifted one arm, curled it around me, and dragged me the rest of the way. “Come here,” he said gruffly.
I curved my body against his, resting my cheek on his chest. “You said something about a turtle. Was that…a code name or something? A person? Was that how you got this?” My hand drifted to the scar at his shoulder. The one that ended his career and sent him home.
“Not a code name. Not anything to do with my shoulder.” He twitched under my fingers. “My shoulder…that was a rescue mission that didn’t go as planned. My team made it out alive with the hostage, though, and that’s what matters.”
“I’m sorry.” He’d dodged the actual question. Whatever the turtle meant to him, he wasn’t going to talk about it. I didn’t push. Given his line of work, maybe he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. “And I’m sorry for flicking you.”
A low laugh rumbled near my ear. “I’d say that was the least I deserved.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I meant that.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he conceded. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not my responsibility.”
I craned my neck to look up at him. His lips were pressed in a grim line, the muscle in his cheek popping like he was grinding his molars.
I had a feeling that responsibility wasn’t something this man took lightly.
Jack Price wore responsibility and duty like a teenage boy trying cologne for the first time, dousing his body with more because he couldn’t smell it on himself.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” I asked, my voice wary because Jack struck me as the sort that believed responsibility came with action, and I really didn’t want to leave this bed.
“Get you a glass of water.”
There was barely a second between the words leaving his lips and Jack leaving my bed, his large palm gently guiding my cheek off his chest to soften the landing.
He padded across the room to the kitchenette: a sink, a small fridge, a microwave, and three cabinets hanging above the countertop.
If he noticed the bare-bones layout of the place, he kept it to himself.
I propped myself up on my elbows and enjoyed the view while he located a glass from the cabinet and turned on the tap. God, that ass. I wanted to bite it like an apple. Scars peppered his skin, but that only added to the appeal.
Then he turned around and that was even better. He wasn’t even hard and it just…looked like that. Long and thick and so pretty that my fingertips itched with the need to sketch him.
“Thank you,” I said as I took the glass from him. He watched while I took three grateful gulps in a row, his forehead knitted in a frown. The cool water soothed the rough, scratchy feeling.
“How is your throat?” he asked. “Any trouble swallowing?”
I shook my head. “The water helped. I’m okay, really and truly. I don’t need a doctor. I wouldn’t sacrifice my own health just to make you feel better about choking me, I promise.”
He snorted a laugh. “That actually does make me feel better. I don’t want you to hide something like that from me. Then I can’t fix it.”
A memory flashed. I have to fix it. That was what he had said about Essie crying all those years ago. I eyed him over the rim of my glass as I took another swallow. “You’ve been an old man since the day you were born, haven’t you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He snagged his underwear from the floor.
“You don’t have to go,” I said, setting the glass on the table. “It’s barely morning. The sun’s not even up yet.”
“Staying isn’t a good idea.”
He buttoned his jeans, then leaned down to cup my face in his hand. When he tilted my head, I realized he was looking for bruises. I arched an eyebrow at him. “Anything?”
“Not yet.”
He tugged his shirt on over his head. I sighed. That was that, I guess. The end of the best fuck of my life.
He moved to the back door, which exited to a fire escape behind the bar, and paused with his hand on the knob. “You know where to find me.”
He didn’t even pretend he wanted my phone number.
I tried not to let that sting. It wasn’t like I didn’t know this was a one-time hookup.
Hell, I wanted this to be a one-time thing.
Sure, for my ego’s sake, it would have been nice if he had at least been interested in something more. But I didn’t have time to date.
I smiled. “I’ll call you,” I said glibly.
His eyes searched my face, but I couldn’t make out his expression in the dim light. I hoped that meant he couldn’t read mine, either.
The house was dark and still as I slipped off my shoes and shrugged out of my coat, wincing at every crinkle of fabric.
I padded silently across the marble floor of the mudroom—the bane of their housekeeper, Maria’s, existence—and zigzagged up the stairs.
Muscle memory guided my feet between the creaky spots.
Dad wouldn’t be awake yet, but Mom was putting on her face right about now and she’d expect me to do the same before we all convened in the breakfast room at the appropriate time—which, according to my mother, was 8 a.m., 8:04 at the absolute latest.
Maya and I had our own place in Aspen Springs, but we spent almost as much time at my parents’ ranch because free child care was not something I could afford to pass up as a single mom, even if that generosity came with strings.
I had already showered and washed off my makeup at the one-room apartment above the bar, where Brax let me crash on nights I closed, but I knew my face needed a solid fifteen minutes of effort to meet Mom’s standards.
Still, I bypassed my old bedroom in favor of the room next to it with butterfly stickers all over the door.
“Hey, ladybug,” I whispered as I slipped inside.
Maya was awake, sitting cross-legged on her bed, still wearing her frog pajamas, her red curls ratted from sleep.
If I had been home last night instead of getting railed by my best friend’s brother, I would have braided her hair before putting her to bed.
Maya wouldn’t let anyone but me touch her hair.
My throat burned, but it had nothing to do with Jack’s hand.
It was straight up mom guilt. I always crashed in the upstairs apartment on nights I closed the bar, but normally that meant going straight to sleep, not getting my brains fucked out.
The guilt always hit especially hard when I had actually enjoyed myself. Ah, motherhood.
Maya turned her serious eyes to me, her gaze landing just past my cheek. “Mother,” she said as gravely as a six-year-old with a missing front tooth could, “I don’t wish to alarm you, but there are over eight thousand species of amphibians, and none of them start with X.”
I bit back a grin. I don’t wish to alarm you.
Where the heck had she picked that one up?
The radio, maybe, or a TV show. Or maybe she’d overheard it in a random conversation somewhere.
It had been her phrase of choice for about three weeks now, and I figured we had another month at least before she moved on to something else.
She didn’t always use it correctly. The last time she didn’t wish to alarm me, it was to inform me that it had started to rain.
But this time, she had it right. Eight thousand amphibians, and not a single one that started with X?
Fuck my life, and fuck scientists for not predicting that one day there would be a child whose sole ambition in life was to write the Ultimate Guide to Amphibians A to Z, and would therefore need an amphibian that started with X.
That seemed like the sort of thing a bunch of dorks should have at least considered. I was absolutely alarmed.
I sighed, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and immediately consulted the internet, even though I knew Maya wouldn’t be wrong. A short list popped up. I skipped the top two I had no chance in hell of pronouncing correctly. “Xenopus coptodon,” I said. “It’s a type of frog.”
“That’s the Latin name. Our book uses common names. X won’t be the same as the other letters if we use the Latin name,” Maya said.
“Then it will just have to be different,” I said.
I tossed my phone aside, grabbed the detangler and hairbrush from the vanity that Maya had never once sat at, and handed her the squeeze toy filled with colored oils.
She hated having her hair brushed—it was the sound of it more than the feeling—but we had a routine that made it more bearable for both of us.
“Different is good,” I encouraged. “I like different.”
Her lower lip trembled, a sign of an impending meltdown. For someone who didn’t easily recognize emotions in others, she sure did have some big feelings of her own. “I don’t like surprises. I don’t like different.”
My chest tightened. Maya didn’t like different, but Maya was different.
Watching her attempt to categorize herself into a neat and tidy box like she was a new species of amphibian broke my heart a little.
Honestly, her autism diagnosis six months ago was a relief because at least now we had a label. Maya fucking loved a label.
“We have three options, ladybug. There is not a magical fourth option where you discover a new amphibian and name him Xylophone. Okay?” I liberally sprayed her head with detangler and then tackled the knots, starting with the ends.
“One, you can decide not to do Amphibians A to Z. You could do butterflies or bugs or not do a book at all. Two, you can use all Latin names, if there are Latin names for all the letters.” I had my doubts.
“Three, you can use common names for every letter except X, and only X will have the Latin name.”
Maya squeezed her toy, not saying anything.
Blue globs of oil floated upwards. I second-guessed myself, triple-guessed myself, quadruple-guessed myself while I gently stroked through her curls.
Maybe I shouldn’t have given her a choice.
Maya struggled with making decisions. But she couldn’t go through life letting other people make her choices for her, could she?
Maybe I should have given her only two options.
But she was smart; she would know I had left something out.
I wished I had a manual. Something to tell me how to be a perfect mom for the person I loved most in the world.
Autism is a spectrum, her doctor had said. There are similarities between children but no one-size-fits-all approach.
So many paths. So many ways to fuck up a kid who deserved nothing less than everything. So many mistakes I had already made—the biggest one being her dad, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it, not even a little bit. Because it brought me her.
“Option three,” Maya said finally. She squeezed her toy again.
“Great,” I said. “Xenopus coptodon it is.” I knew this wasn’t the end of it. When we got to X, Maya would struggle again. But that was a problem for future Janie. One thing at a time.
“Mother,” she said. “I don’t wish to alarm you, but I would never name an amphibian Xylophone.”