by Ann, Jewel E
Jillian smiled, pressing her lips to his sternum. “You just said I’m stunning.”
“I meant shocking. Your hair is a tangled mess, and you need a shower.”
“Fuck you.”
Another kiss on her head. “There’s my girl.”
“At least I have hair.”
“Low blow.”
She slid her hand over his crotch. “I don’t think you’re ready for a low blow. Maybe after I get some food in you.”
“You’re emasculating.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Her fingers drifted down his ribs that had become more prominent than his half dozen. “Aric James?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you running away?”
The already stagnant air in the room thickened in the silence.
“I’m taking a break.”
“A break from what?”
AJ rested his cheek on the top of her head and squeezed her so tight she could barely breathe. “Death.”
Jillian cursed her damn tears. Love hurt so much.
“I left a note next to my phone for my family. It said everything there is to say, then it ended in goodbye.”
His thumb brushed her cheek, catching a few tears. Tears that belonged to him. Tears of pain … his pain. She couldn’t stop drowning in his pain.
“When I saw you parked along the side of the road, it was the first real breath I’d taken in over six weeks.”
Every word pulled the knot in her stomach tighter.
“Greta had a Lascivio party.”
Jillian loved the way his gentle laugh tickled her cheek. If he could take a break from death, so could she.
“I knew you and your brother would rob all innocence from Peaceful Woods.”
“We’re doing our best.”
“I’ve taken you away from Lilith.”
“Their daughter is coming to stay for a while. Maybe until I get home.”
“So how long do I have you?”
The knot tightened even more.
“As long as you need me.”
*
AJ needed her. How long he needed her was the question that had a grave answer. Forever. Unfortunately, AJ’s forever had a finite number of days compared to most other people. He loved his parents and even the newfound friendship he’d made with Brooke—an amends of sorts. The only reprieve from thinking non-stop about Jillian came with a weekend visit from Cage. He loved that boy. He loved him so damn much.
His parents took him to his doctor appointments, fed him, washed his laundry, and encouraged him in his dark times that had become more frequent as the effects of the radiation began to set in. Yet he started to resent their presence in his life because it all came at a cost and Jillian was that cost.
“You’re not eating enough.” She gave him her best evil glare as he poked around at his plate of room service food: grilled salmon, broccoli, and a twice-baked potato. “You only ate a dry piece of toast and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast.”
“You ordered everything on the menu.”
Jillian shrugged as she slurped in a long piece of spaghetti. “You were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you to see what you wanted.”
“I haven’t had an appetite worth shit for weeks.”
“Clearly.” She gave him the once-over look.
“Sorry.” He frowned at his barely-touched plate of food. “I’m not a great dinner date yet.”
“No worries.” She held up one of the paper napkins. “It’s not a real date anyway.”
AJ shook his head. “You’re impossible. I can’t believe with all the meals we’ve shared that none of them have qualified as a date because of the stupid napkin not meeting your standards.”
“Well, a girl’s gotta have standards.”
“You don’t see how ridiculous it is that your napkin standards exceed your dress-code standards for getting the mail?”
She sucked in the last piece of pasta then licked her lips. “I’ll have you know, I’ve been wearing more clothes lately to get the mail.”
“Because it’s colder outside. Right?”
A smirk stole her attempt to come across as a changed woman. “Maybe.”
AJ went to stand then grabbed his head, eyes squeezed tight.
“You’re in pain.”
“No.” His seething response contradicted the “no.”
Jillian riffled through his backpack, the only thing he brought with him. “These?” She held up a prescription bottle.
He peeked through his squint. “Yes.”
She handed him two and his water. “You only have four left. Maybe you should call your doctor’s office and see if they can call in a refill.”
AJ shook his head, swallowing the last of the water. “Something tells me when a cancer patient goes MIA, doctors don’t continue to offer up drugs.”
“You didn’t finish treatment?”
“Two weeks left. Close enough.”
“Jesus! You put in all that time and misery to quit two weeks before the finish.”
“Finish?” He laughed through the pain. “When they, as you put it, ‘fry my brain,’ I’m not sure there is a finish.”
“So now what?” Jillian moved their plates to the tray by the door.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
Disbelief echoed in her sarcastic laugh. “What do I think? I think I let you go, gave you back to your family so they could be with you for as long as you had left. I think my whole fucking life has been an epic tale of bad timing.” Plunking down on the bed, she sighed. “I’m not going to lie. I wanted to use you. You triggered something in me and I couldn’t think about anything else. I wanted to make you bleed and suffer. The need to conquer you consumed me. There was something so cathartic about the fight for control.”
“But?”
Jillian shook her head. “But I’m not a monster anymore, even though I’ve done some things in my life that are unforgivable. I have this human side that still feels, and most of the time I hate those feelings that make me so vulnerable.”
Luke would have been proud of those words and that realization kept her talking.
“When we met, I saw someone in you … someone I hated.” Someone she murdered. “But then I saw someone else and everything changed.”
AJ held out his hand and Jillian took it, straddling his lap. “Who did you see?”
Brushing the pad of her thumb over his naked brow followed by the burn marks on his head, she shared a sad smile. “Me. Beneath your hardened exterior and need for self-preservation, I saw a painful vulnerability—one that you would never show. Some days when I look at you it feels like I’m seeing my reflection.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jackson may have missed his calling. Playing music required one special gift, writing it encompassed a whole new level of talent. Of course, he could do both and made it look effortless. Playing meant he was in a jovial mood, composing happened only when he needed to completely forget about life. Ryn showed up unannounced on that particular forget-about-life day.
A knock at the door. Another knock. The chime of the doorbell.
Jackson played several measures, erased a few notes, added a sharp, and played it again.
A few more loud raps at the door.
“Hello?” Ryn cracked open the door with hesitation.
Jackson gritted his teeth. Something was off, maybe just one note, but that one wrong note ruined the whole piece.
“Hey.”
He looked up with a slight squint.
Ryn stopped in her approach. “I knocked … and rang the doorbell.”
Jackson nodded once, pushing his taped glasses up his nose.
“I missed you yesterday.”
Tuesday. Jackson chose not to be there when she cleaned their house. The women in his life had been playing him, using him. It was Karma, he couldn’t deny it, but that didn’t mean he would continue to take it up the backside. Jackson wasn’t Jude, but the same blood
coursed through his veins and nobody—especially not a woman—could jerk him around like a toy, to be played with then discarded on a whim.
“I didn’t want to distract you.” He looked back down at his composition book, changing a chord, possibly the offending one.
“You wouldn’t have. Or maybe you would have, but only because I may have wanted you to.”
Keeping his eyes trained on the music, he chuckled a soft breath of sarcasm. “Well, by all means … whatever you want is all that fucking matters.”
She drew in a breath and held it for a few seconds. “Um … have I done something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, that couldn’t possibly be. You’re a woman and women can do no wrong. Isn’t that correct?”
“Maybe I’ll just go,” she said with a small voice, backing up one slow step at a time.
“Sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all day.”
“Why are you being such an asshole all of a sudden?”
“Asshole?” Jackson stood, sending the bench crashing behind him. “You think I’m being an asshole.” He stalked toward her.
Ryn took another step back.
“I’m not being an asshole!”
The booming rage in his voice made her flinch. With her next step back she tripped over the leg of the chair, falling backwards.
“D-don’t hit me … p-please don’t.” She curled into a ball, covering her head with her arms.
The entire world gave out beneath him. Ryn on his floor, helpless and shaking—fearing him. Nothing had ever felt so gutting.
“Fuck … Ryn.” He bent down.
“No!” She tensed, her whole body tightening into a smaller ball as a sob escaped.
“It’s okay.” He hooked her waist with one arm. She screamed and flailed as he picked her up, trapping her arms with his as he sat on the couch.
“Let me go!”
“Shh … I’m not going to hurt you.”
Eventually she surrendered, falling limp in his arms with her face buried in his chest.
“You’re right. I’m an asshole … such a fucking asshole,” he whispered in her ear. “But I swear to God, I’d never hurt you.”
His sister was a caged animal with sensitive trigger points. Jackson should have known that a woman who survived an abusive marriage would have her own triggers and breaking points.
Asshole … total asshole.
He held her tight, gliding a calming hand over her hair while whispering sorry to her over and over. After she stopped shaking, he cupped her red, tear-stained face and tilted it up to him.
“I am so fucking sorry.”
Ryn sniffled, rolling her lips together. “I’m so embarrassed.” She tried to shake her head in his grasp. “I can’t believe I reacted like that. I guess … I don’t know … I tripped so many times trying to get away from Preston, and when I was on the ground he …” huge tears rolled down her cheeks as she bit her quivering lip.
“He hit you?”
She nodded.
“He kicked you?”
Another nod.
Jackson’s brow tensed. “No one is ever going to make you feel that vulnerable again. I promise.” Brushing his lips against hers, he waited for her to respond. After a few seconds she kissed him, slow at first then desperate as her hands clawed his shirt as if she couldn’t get close enough.
He pulled back, leaving them both breathless. “Come on. Your training starts now.”
*
“I don’t think Jillian and I are the same size,” Ryn said from the top of the stairs.
“Close enough. Come down here.”
Ryn tugged at the borrowed exercise shorts that barely, and maybe didn’t quite cover her ass. The sports bra proved to be a bit more flattering than her compression ones, but her abs were sad … so very sad.
“Maybe we should do this tomorrow. I’ll wear some yoga pants and a tank top.”
“Get your ass down here.”
On a deep sigh, she descended the stairs. As if the outfit wasn’t embarrassing enough, she couldn’t stop having flashbacks of her extreme reaction to Jackson’s temper. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but when she fell it triggered something so instinctual. Preston’s voice echoed in her ears, his fist cracked against her cheek bone, and the toe to his shoe sent a piercing pain to her ribs. It had been years since a flashback felt so real and crippling.
“You’re so much sexier than you think you are.”
“I’m sorry.” She wrung her hands together behind her back.
“Never apologize for being sexy.”
Her lip curled as a warm blush crept up her neck. “About how I reacted earlier. I’m so embarrassed. I acted like a complete psychotic freak.”
“It was all on me.” He grabbed her hand and jerked her into his chest. “And trust me … you are not a psychotic freak. I can guarantee Jillian has that title.”
“Jillian? Really?”
Jackson nodded. The intensity in his expression radiated an unspoken pain. “It’s completely justified. She hasn’t always been this way. There are just some things in life that can only be erased by death. I don’t want her to die, so I’ve accepted the crazy.”
“I love the way you love her.”
He nodded with a thoughtful pull to his brow. Ryn imagined being loved by Jackson would be an extraordinary gift.
“Let’s do this, hot pants.”
She rolled her eyes. Would he ever let her live down the panties in the fridge incident?
They started small. Jackson reinforced some things she’d already learned about preventing confrontation. Then he showed her some basic moves to strike the most effective body parts: eyes, nose, ears, neck, groin, knee, and legs.
“You’re exerting too much energy with weak attempts,” he said.
She was already gasping for air and had yet to land a single strike.
“It’s hit or be hit. You may only have one chance so make it count. Got it?”
Ryn nodded. “But I don’t really want to hurt you.”
“If you can’t make me bleed, knock the wind out of me, or make me buckle over in pain, then you’re always going to be an easy target.”
She kicked at his knee with the pressure of shoving open the back door to bring in the groceries.
“No.”
Her heart pounded. The conserving energy thing wasn’t going so well.
She went for his other knee. He easily avoided her strike.
“You’re telling me with your eyes exactly what you’re going to do.”
She met his eyes then squinted. He pissed her off with his arrogance.
Smack!
“Oh shit! I’m so sorry.”
He blotted the slow drip of blood from his nose with a smirk on his face.
“Better. Much better.”
“But you’re bleeding.” Her face morphed into a tight wince.
“By choice.” He grabbed a towel and pressed it to his nose.
“You let me do that on purpose?”
Jackson chuckled. “It’s your first day. I’m not going to lie and give you false confidence, so yes, I let you make me bleed. We both needed to know that you could put some power behind your punch.”
“You played me.”
Another chuckle rumbled from his chest as he tossed the towel aside. “I’m getting mixed signals. Are you upset because you made me bleed or that I let you make me bleed?”
Her jaw unhinged then closed, but nothing came out. Why was she upset? Plopping down on the mat, she crisscrossed her legs and focused on catching her breath.
“You were mad at me when I showed up. Why?”
Looking to the ceiling, he drained a bottled water then licked a drip from his lip as his gaze locked with hers. “Jillian went to Portland for AJ. It’s kind of complicated, but it wasn’t the … safest decision. I told her not to go but she did anyway. It’s impossible to protect someone you love when they put themselves at risk halfway across the country.”
“What’s
so dangerous about going to Portland?”
Jackson chewed the inside of his lip, focusing on her with a thoughtful stare. “Earthquakes … volcanoes …”
“Yeah, sure. I’m not buying that, but it still doesn’t explain why you were so mad at me.”
Jackson lifted his arms and pressed his palms to the side of his head while shaking it. A low grumble accompanied his frustration. The last time they were together the sex was good. Good? No. They’d had exceptional sex. She hadn’t inspected the condom, but it seemed as though he came. If not, his acting skills were quite good. Ryn didn’t care for that scenario. A guy faking it? For some reason that seemed so wrong. Sexist? Maybe.
“How do I explain this without sounding like a …”
“A?”
He scrubbed his hands over his face, mumbling beneath them. “A girl.”
That brought a curious smile to her face. “A girl?”
“Yes.” His hands dropped to his sides as he leveled her with his gaze. “Random sex. The ‘guy’ thing. I was good at it … really good at it.”
Those were not inspiring words.
“I never gave women a chance to be clingy or needy or even the opportunity to fall asleep next to me.”
Jackson Knight had been a man whore. Ryn sort of knew that, but she sure didn’t appreciate the reminders.
“I avoided biological clocks, second dates, family dinners, holding hands, and often names weren’t even exchanged.” He nodded. “I know … I was a real prick. But I’m not now, or at least I don’t want to be. So when you kicked me out the other night it pissed me off. I don’t get tossed to the curb like a rejected teddy bear, so when you did it, I realized how much of a clingy female I’d become. I found myself being the one who wanted to stay just to see your face in the morning. But you … well you were me or the old me—the hump ’em and dump ’em person. Anyway, I was mad about Jillian for leaving, rejecting my protection, and I decided to have some menstrual-cycle pity party like a fucking pussy and the anger you saw was really at myself. I was just deflecting it at you, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes grew with each point he tried to make, like air being pumped into her head, leaving it ready to explode.
“I’m not even sure where to begin. First, I did not kick you out or hump you and dump you. As I recall, you left.”