“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.