Chapter 27
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Hey,” said Jack, after the long trudge up to the house on Castle Drive. For the first time in weeks, his heart was light. Not even Boris’s grunting or the terrible gas station coffee (which always sent him running for the toilets) could put a damper on his mood.
Carla waited on the front porch. A loose magenta skirt fell just past her knees. A crisp, sleeveless shirt was buttoned all the way up to her throat.
Jack hoped he’d have the chance to unbutton it later.
“There you are,” she said, grinning wide. “I was wondering when you’d finally show up.”
“This is the same time I always come,” he reminded her. “I could’ve come earlier if you’d asked.”
“Yeah,” she said, catching his wrist, his hand. His skin was hot where she touched him. “You should’ve. I thought I was gonna have to call you. Come on.”
“What’s the hurry?” he asked, trailing through the door behind her.
She shot him a tight-lip smirk and led him down the hall, past the kitchen. “I just missed you.”
“It hasn’t even been one day,” Jack protested. Her answering laugh was throaty and carefree.
“Yeah, but I got nothing else going on and I missed you,” she said. She shook her head. “It was just… a bit of a mindfuck, falling asleep next to you and waking up to Ronnie’s goddamned farts.”
“Oh.” Jealousy prickled alongside disgust. “I… I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” she said, grasping his hand again, lacing their fingers together. “You’re here now. I just… I think maybe next time I shouldn’t fall asleep.”
Jack nodded stiffly. Tried to ignore the sting of betrayal.
Falling asleep next to Carla was grounding, left him feeling safe and content for the first time in weeks.
Tangled up together, sweat-drenched and panting, their clothes tossed across the floor of the guest room like confetti, smooth jazz spinning on the record player, he’d never felt more at home.
Alright, so maybe he was in a mobster’s house, fucking his girlfriend, but so what?
Tomorrow wasn’t a new day. They’d wake up in their own beds and none of this would’ve happened.
If they wanted to, they could convince themselves it had never happened.
Not that Jack wanted that. Nor, it seemed, did Carla, but the tension seeped from her like blood from an open wound.
“Yeah,” he said. “I-I don’t mind. I know you hate waking up with him.”
Carla groaned, turned a corner. She kept her back to Jack. “No,” she snapped. “You don’t understand. I finally got to spend a night with you, and then I woke up next to that fucking asshole. Again. I was so happy, Jack—so fucking happy! And then it all just shattered.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, softer this time. “I didn’t like waking up alone, either.”
Her grip relaxed. “Yeah, OK,” she said. “That makes me feel a little better. You missed me?”
“I definitely missed you,” he promised, following her toward the guest room where they’d made love the night before. His heart leapt.
She grinned at him. “Yeah? Good.”
They ate misshapen pancakes in bed, drizzled in entirely too much syrup, with a bowl of haphazardly cut strawberries between them.
“I’m real sorry,” Carla told him between kisses in the kitchen, the planes of her face highlighted in the dim overhead light.
Behind them, pancakes sizzled on a skillet.
“But I’m not risking going to a restaurant with you.
Ronnie finds out, we’re gonna have a problem.
But we’re safe here,” she reminded him, kissing a line up his jaw, fingers slipping beneath his shirt to press against the bare skin there.
Jack nearly flipped the pancake onto the floor.
“Right,” he said, steadying his breath. “Trust me, I don’t want to meet Ronnie.”
“See, that’s what I like about you. You’re smart.”
A smart man would’ve stayed far away from all this. Under other circumstances, Jack never, ever would’ve gotten involved with her. Their social circles wouldn’t have overlapped. They never would’ve had a reason to speak.
If it weren’t for the time loop, he wouldn’t be here at all.
A part of him didn’t regret it. Carla made his heart race, his blood thrum in his veins.
He liked the sound of her laugh, loud and unabashed, and the sound of her voice, once grating, now charmingly hoarse—the sex and cigarettes rasp of a rock star.
He’d always found her attractive, but now even more so, the way her eyes squinted when she smiled, the line of her jaw, the way her manicured fingers constantly tapped, the scar on her knee from a childhood accident.
Another part of him still feared that she would abandon him for Ronnie the moment the fog lifted.
Or worse, that she was only using him to get away from a boyfriend she’d temporarily lost interest in.
Loneliness was a heavy weight to bear, and Jack didn’t dare assume that her heart would ever belong to him.
This is fun, he told himself. Just for fun.
But it didn’t feel like just fun when his stomach fluttered at the sight of her, when she grabbed his hand and tackled him onto the bed, giggling and running her hands over him like she couldn’t get enough.
There was only one picture of Ronnie in the house, and Jack often found himself staring at it.
He was more or less what one might expect: tall, broad-shouldered, raven haired, handsome, with a hooked nose and a gut that his tuxedo only just contained. Beside him, Carla barely reached his shoulder. Jack had no doubt she was wearing heels.
Comparatively, when he and Carla were both barefoot, the top of her head just reached the tip of his chin.
Ronnie could crush them like bugs. More importantly, whatever was stuffed into the massive gun safe in the master bedroom could probably blow them to pieces before they even realized what was happening.
But Carla was right. No one bothered them inside the house.
If the servants knew what was going on (and they must, Carla wasn’t subtle), they hadn’t reported anything to Ronnie.
Maybe he was hard to reach. Maybe they didn’t care.
Maybe they liked Carla better—another thought that sent shivers down Jack’s spine.
What had Ronnie done to lose their loyalty? What went on around here?
Which led to another question: Why did Carla want to leave? Why now?
That question followed him into the bedroom, lingered at the back of his mind even as they tangled together, panting and writhing, connected at the mouths and hips. It was there afterwards as they passed a cigarette between them. Finally, Jack had to ask.
“So, why are you leaving Ronnie?”
Carla exhaled a puff of smoke and scowled. “Really? Right now?”
“I want to know,” he said, properly chastised, heat flooding from his cheeks to his chest. He reached for the cigarette.
“Have you been thinking about this the whole time?”
Jack’s blush deepened. “Maybe.”
“Oh my god, you have problems.” Carla snatched the cigarette from his hand, took a long drag, passed it back.
“I just—Why now? What happened? You said you’d been together five years, right?”
He was pretty sure he’d gotten the number right. That she’d definitely said that a few nights ago during their stakeout.
“Yeah,” Carla sighed. “Five fucking years. No ring.” She waggled her fingers at him.
Three rings glittered on her hand, but none were on the correct finger.
“I mean, there’s more to it than that. I met him when I was twenty-two, working at a club.
I knew who he was and I wasn’t too sure about him, but he convinced me it wasn’t like that.
Said he was running a business.” Her brow furrowed.
“Course, that wasn’t true. I learned that the hard way the first time he blew someone’s brains out in front of me. ”
Jack winced. “And you didn’t leave him then?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she said, “No. I didn’t.
I should’ve. But I was afraid of him. Afraid of the world I left behind.
” She shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d fit in if I tried to come back.
I just pretended everything was fine. That nothing was happening.
Ronnie wasn’t a murderer, and I wasn’t living off blood money. ”
Jack nodded. Bit his lip as he considered the terror she must’ve felt when she realized what Ronnie was capable of.
Jack had spent portions of his life gripped by denial, convinced that somehow, some way, things would change.
And then, they didn’t. The weight of reality grew heavier and heavier, until it became so backbreaking he could no longer deny it.
Floundering relationships, jobs with no raise in sight, apartments on the verge of collapsing.
He supposed he was lucky he’d never found himself in a relationship where someone else had all the power. Where he had to sneak and scrounge and hide just to feel safe.
But Carla wasn’t like him. She was loud and boisterous and glamorous—the perfect girlfriend for a mobster rising into his prime. Where Jack would’ve disappeared into himself, she found ways to fit in—flying under the radar by fulfilling Ronnie's expectations.
It sounded exhausting.
“Do you think he’ll let you leave?” The words fled Jack’s mouth in a barely intelligible jumble.
Carla lowered her gaze to the sheets. “I told you. I can—”
“But that’s not what I asked.”
A long exhale. Carla rolled her eyes to the ceiling, started to throw her hands up, then dropped them, defeated.
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’ll be easy.
I know too much. He’s not gonna like that.
The family isn’t gonna like that.” She shrugged her shoulders.
The chain around her neck dragged across her tanned collarbones.
“I don’t know, Jack. I really don’t. What I do know is that I’m good at running and hiding. ”
“Why is that?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are you running from?”