my face. The dark midnight blue of his eyes in the dim light of the room seemed to slice through the space between us, lasering into me and cutting a clean precise incision directly through the center of my heart.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He moved around the end of the bed, getting closer. It felt as though his powerful body was sucking up all the air around us, and I steeled myself against its influence. Closeness was not good. I needed to escape, get outside his circle of influence. But he didn’t move, and I was frozen.
“Where are you staying while you’re here?” he asked.
My fingers tightened on the rail of the bed, and bitterness rose in the back of my throat. “Pop’s apartment, if you can even call it that. It’s a certifiable hellhole.”
I shot him a look that let him know exactly who I thought was responsible for the fact that our dad was sleeping in a one-bedroom rooming house with a rat problem that would keep the entire pest control industry in Syracuse busy for the next five years.
Charlie had lost the family home at some point during his trial. A house that had been in his family for several generations. The money had gone to pay for his defense.
“I thought about getting a hotel room, but Sweetie Pie needs someone to take care of him.”
Sweetie Pie was the family pet, a fifteen-year-old Maine coon cat, half-blind, totally deaf and ornerier than a polecat trapped in a burlap bag while in fierce heat.
“You should have called. You could have stayed at my place.”
I stiffened. Was he really that clueless? Did he actually believe that I’d take the freight elevator up to his loft apartment ever again? Or was he simply demonstrating his total insensitivity to what had happened to us in the past?
Sweet, painful memories of those late-night elevator rides flooded my senses, making me slightly woozy. Nights when we’d barely make it onto the elevator, let alone into his apartment before we were tearing at each other’s clothes.
The elevator would chug upward, its gears and chains grinding and churning, as he’d press me up against the metal gate with his hardened body. His lips would travel over the pounding pulse in my neck and his clever hands would tear at my shirt buttons. My own hands frantically pulled and tugged at the waistband of his worn jeans.
We’d get to the top, push open the gate and stumble out, hobbling and hopping across the bare plank floor of his apartment, hanging on to each other and hampered by our clothing dragging down around our ankles.
Finally, we’d collapse onto the king-size mattress lying on the floor in the center of the loft. Jack didn’t have a lot of furniture in those days. Besides, a bed seemed to serve any and all purpose in his life at the time. Knowing him, it probably still did.
Even with that bitter thought, my mind drifted back to those crazy, hot, passionate nights. I’d lie on my back and suck in great gulps of air from the open skylight above, while his clever hands did wild and wonderful things to my body. And we’d lie there for hours, his powerful limbs entwined with mine, his lips whispering secret words in my ear as I screamed for a release I wanted so badly I could taste it even now.
My hands shook as I roughly pushed the thoughts aside, fighting to keep the emotions from ripping at my insides and showing on my face.
I met his gaze, and my anger heated to white when I saw the touch of sympathy sitting in the depths of those exquisite eyes. If there was one thing I didn’t want, it was to have Jack feeling sorry for me. I wanted him on his knees hurting worse than me.
“Sorry, that wasn’t very diplomatic of me, was it?” he said.
“Gee, you think?”
“Come on, Killian, cut me some slack. I said I was sorry. Can we call a truce?”
“Not in this lifetime.” I tore my eyes away from his.
For a moment, I questioned if I was being unreasonable. But then rage pulled at me again. He didn’t have any rights, in my book.
He had destroyed Pop with his testimony, telling the jury and the rest of the world that Charlie had sold important police information to the local crime boss, taking huge kickbacks in return.
He’d come to Claire’s funeral when she died of cancer a week into Charlie’s trial, but he stayed in the back, aware that he was no longer welcome inside the magic circle of young adults who clustered around Charlie in a show of support and infinite sorrow.
At one point, Charlie had reached out to him, but Jack was quick enough to catch the warning glares from the rest of us. He disappeared a short time later, never making it to the graveside service.
“None of the others have mentioned you lately. Have you talked to them?” I was referring to our five foster siblings.
“The reason he hasn’t mentioned us is that we never see him,” a new voice piped in.
I turned to see Shawna, one of our former foster sisters, watching us from the doorway. She stood with both hands planted firmly on her narrow hips, a fierce expression of protectiveness stiffening the dark mahogany planes of her proud face. The thick gold ring punched through the center of her lower lip glittered in the muted lights of the room as she glared in Jack’s direction.
“Jack knows he isn’t welcome around here.”
“Good to see you too, Shawna.” Jack’s expression showed no reaction to her bristly greeting. “As disagreeable as ever, I see.”
“You ain’t even seen disagreeable, big brother.” She turned away from him and concentrated on me. “Brian told me you’d arrived. I came down right after work. Couldn’t get away earlier. Another supervisor retired, and I’ve been picking up the slack. Damn hiring freeze.”
She scowled and then moved over to stand next to me. “How’s he doing?”
“No change,” I said, leaning down to hug her. She clung to me for a few seconds, her head nestled against my shoulder as if trying to soak in some of my strength. I’d always envied Shawna her petiteness. Without meaning to, she had always managed to make me feel like an Amazon.
“The docs been in today?” she asked finally, stepping back.
“Earlier. They didn’t have anything to say. The usual grunts and nods. Which seem to be the typical way of imparting information around this place.”
Shawna nodded and rearranged the sheet lying across Charlie’s chest. Her nails, long and meticulously painted, showed bloodred against the white linen. “Drake and I are taking the night shift. He told me to tell you to go home and get some sleep. You and Courtney have day duty.”
I sighed. Did they really think I was going to leave Charlie’s bedside? “I’m fine right here.” I nodded toward the cushioned high-backed chair in one corner of the room. “I’ll catch some Z’s right over there if I get too tired.”
Shawna shook her head. “They only allow two of us in the room at a time.”
“Then I’ll sleep out in the waiting room.”
