“I don’t do that.”
“You don’t?”
Jack slides a glance at the hallway that leads to Mal and Skylar’s room—as ifhewants 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 heneedsfrom this conversation. A grounding technique they taught me at the military rehab centre in Birmingham, back when every exchange with Jack was a mazeof 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 backagain, 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 uswantsto 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 feelsnew, and it shouldn’t. Touching him like this is muscle memory. It’s instinct. It’sus, until Jack ghosts a fingertip over the back of my hand and sensation ricochets through me like a live current.