Jacked Up (Bowen Boys #4) (24 page)

Close enough.

They ate in silence, watching the fire crackle, until Elle addressed him. “Say, would IKEA deliver up here if we draw them a map?”

He couldn’t refrain from barking out a laugh. “You’re nuts.”

She reached for him, swept the corner of his lower lip with her finger, and then licked the bit of cheese from it. “Yeah, yeah, you’ll miss me when I’m gone. You’ll see. Who will make you laugh?”

His chest tightened. Yes, he was going to miss her. Terribly. That realization was devastating.

* * * *

Paige smiled at the guy approaching the register at Rosita’s. He was cute. Nordic features. Tan skin. Blond hair almost bleached white from the sun. Not from spring in Boston, that was for sure. A bit too clean-cut for her taste, too little metal on him, but extremely cute nevertheless.

He’d gotten a drink and had been sitting at a table by the wall of fame, staring at the pictures for a long while now.

Rosita’s was a family restaurant. Paige has been working there for well over a year and she could proudly say she knew all their patrons. The Viking stranger, she hadn’t seen before. She would have remembered. Her girlie parts would have remembered.

“Could I have another?” he asked, placing the wineglass on the counter and sitting on the bar stool.

She nodded. “I’ll bring it to your table.”

“Nah, I’d rather stay here with you if you don’t mind,” he said sheepishly. “I got stood up. A blind date I was forced into by my mother. My pride can’t stand being at that table anymore.”

Paige laughed at his resigned grimace.

“That’ll teach me to come visit my parents,” he continued. “Or succumb to their plotting. I’m Nick.”

“Paige,” she introduced herself, refilling his glass.

“Nice to meet you, Paige. You guys are busy for a regular weekday,” he said motioning to the patrons dining. “This is the first family restaurant I’ve seen with bouncers.”

Paige giggled, glancing at Sean and Zack, James’s colleagues. “They are not bouncers. They are friends of the owners.”

She wasn’t sure what had happened, but James had told them yesterday Elle was going to be away for a while. Tate wasn’t up for taking on the restaurant, so Paige, Tim, and James were it. Which suited her just fine. She loved working there; she had no problem stepping up to the plate.

Since then, James had been coming in at opening and staying around until Zack or Sean or both would arrive and he could go home to Tate and their son. Cole and Max were constantly dropping by too.

“Good. I’ve not been to Boston for some time. Wasn’t sure if this had turned into gang territory while I was away.”

Thank God he hadn’t come yesterday. James had turned up with some dude with his face tattooed, Maori style, and with two-hundred-forty-pound, heavily tattooed Mike Haddican.

“Where have you been?” she asked Nick.

“Officially? Working on a sea platform. Unofficially? Escaping my parents. But really, can you blame me?”

Nick was funny. Damn refreshing to meet someone who wasn’t intimidated by her looks.

“Love the pictures. You took them?” he asked after a while of chitchatting.

“One of the owners did. Elle Cooper,” she replied pointing at a photo with Elle in it.

“Some are shocking. Others are dead scary,” he said.

“I know, right?”

“This could be a great venue for my parents’ wedding anniversary. Who should I talk to about organizing that? Oh and I’d definitely want this Elle to take the pictures. And to customize them like this one,” he added nodding at the shot of James’s wedding with Jack’s face covered in black. “I have several relatives I don’t like.”

Paige laughed. “She’s taking some time off but I’m sure we can accommodate your parents’ party.”

“When is she getting back? Their wedding anniversary is in two weeks.”

“I don’t think she’ll make it.”

“Such a pity. But I’m looking forward to seeing the new pictures she’ll add when she gets back. She seems to keep busy.”

Yes, she did. There was something about Elle that called out to people. She’d been away from the restaurant for just a couple of days and almost every diner had asked about her.

He was about to say something, but a patron interrupted and they got sidetracked.

“Would you let me buy you a drink after your shift ends?” he asked once they were alone again.

“So I’m your backup date. Not too fond of playing second chair.”

He smirked and threw a glance to the table he’d been sitting at. “You’re first chair, honey.”

“I don’t know,” she faltered, finding herself touching her choke collar. She was not in the habit of picking up dates at Rosita’s.

His smile was big and unthreatening. “Come on. We could go dancing. What do you say, you in?”

* * * *

Elle was sick and tired of staring at the ceiling.

Soundly asleep, Jack had his arm over her stomach, and she tried disentangling herself without disturbing him. She’d moved maybe an inch when suddenly a powerful leg trapped her.

“Where are you going?”

“Can’t sleep. I’m going to the living room for a sec.”

He didn’t loosen his embrace. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Can I borrow your phone? I swear I won’t call anyone. I’ll just check my messages.”

The silence was deafening. When he finally spoke, his tone was full of disapproval. “That’s what you did with your other lovers? Did you leave Kai in your bed and go to your computer to write to me if he didn’t exhaust you? And did he let you? Because I won’t make that mistake. You’re in my bed, you’re not leaving it. You’ll be too exhausted to even think about it, much less to write to some other guy.”

Kai had never been in her bed, but she didn’t feel inclined to appease Jack, not while he was back at pretending to be master of the universe. “Fine. Let’s fuck. Exhaust me.”

“Not yet. I asked what was wrong. I expect an answer.”

“Can’t sleep. It’s not a crime, last time I checked. Oh wait, maybe on Planet Cyborg it is, used as you are to barking orders and being obeyed. But guess what? I’m not one of your soldiers.”

She was picking a fight, she knew. If he wouldn’t distract her by fucking, they could have a verbal sparring match, right?

He didn’t fall for it.

“Stop trying to piss me off and talk to me.”

She couldn’t contain the snort. “I’ve been talking all day long. You? Not so much.”

“You talk all the time, pet, but you say nothing. It’s all babble. Inconsequential. Filler, just to cover up you’re hurting inside. I might not talk much, but when I do it’s to the point, and, unlike you, I actually say something.”

The asshole. She was going to answer but he turned her in his arms and pressed on, his eyes intense on hers. Scrutinizing.

“Can’t you stop this crazy life of yours, just for a second, and grieve? Cry? Mourn? You do thousand things a day, balls to the wall, take on everyone’s issues and projects until you drop dead of exhaustion into bed. And don’t give me bullshit. I know you do. When you don’t, you can’t sleep. How fucking long are you going to pretend? You can’t bury this forever.”

She didn’t like where this was heading, not at all. “What the hell are you talking about? I do stuff, true, like most people with a minimum of a social life, present hermits notwithstanding. I’m not burying anything.”

“Sure, that’s why you look like you’re on crack all day long, rushing from one place to another. Why you can’t sit still. You need to stop running and face reality,” he stated.

“That’s what I was doing until you waltzed into my life and fucking kidnapped me,” she yelled, trying to wrench away. He didn’t even move a quarter of an inch.

“Bullshit. You might not physically run out of Boston, showing up every day at Rosita’s and being there for your sister, but you’re going through the motions, spacing out nonstop. Your body is present; your head and heart aren’t. You’re always occupying yourself with something not to think or feel.”

She swallowed down the intense need to cry. It infuriated that he could see through her so easily. The first year after her dad and brother had died, she’d run. Disappeared for weeks at a time. Traveled to Florida with her mom and spaced out however she could. Then she’d come back to Boston and manned up. Buried all that shit and had gotten on with her life. With Rosita’s. With whatever was needed. What else could she do? If she let down the walls she’d erected and allowed herself to feel, she’d get swept away by the flood and might never resurface again.

Then his tone softened. “You have to mourn your dad and your brother, pet. This isn’t the way to do it.”

“Let me go. I don’t want to talk about this.” She had better things to do than lying there, visiting memory lane.

“Tough shit. You aren’t going anywhere.”

“And I don’t cry. It’s useless. Pointless. It takes too long to put yourself together. Much longer than it takes to fall apart. I can’t afford the time or the luxury. I’m too busy.”

He snorted, not a speck of humor in his voice. “‘Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Love slowly’. You surround yourself with all those inspirational quotes but you do the opposite. You kiss fast, never forgive yourself, and never let yourself forget.”

“Life is short, so I live fast,” she retorted. “And I do break the rules.”

“You don’t live at all, pet. You exist. And you hide. You pretend to be careless and free, when in reality you’re chained down. Trapped. And you are your own jailer. What are you avoiding thinking about? What, too tough for the fragile little princess to face reality?”

“You know nothing about me,” she said, gritting her teeth, which, by the way he was able to press all her buttons, was a big fat lie.

“Why do you stay at your parents’ house?” he insisted. “Answer me.”

“It’s my penance,” she yelled, tears finally escaping. “You happy now? It’s my penance for killing them! I’m not allowed to forget it.” Not even for a second.

This was the first time she’d said those words out loud and no matter how hard she tried not to break down, she couldn’t control the waterfall.

Jack didn’t even flinch. “You didn’t kill your father and brother. A drunk driver did. I read the police report.”

“They were there because of me. It was my night to close, but I was too busy partying. My car was in the shop, so I took Dad’s and Jonah drove him home. They were not supposed to be anywhere near that intersection. If it wasn’t for me, Dad would have been home, and Jonah would have been upstairs cuddled with Emma, his fiancée, pregnant with their unborn baby. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone when Tate and Mom called. Too busy having fun and drinking and whatever the fuck I was doing to rush to the hospital to say good-bye to my dying brother.” By the time she did answer, it was too late. “So now I live in the house as a constant reminder and do everything that Jonah used to do.” It was the least she could do to right her wrongs. Not that she was doing enough. There would never be enough.

“So that’s why Aston Biggs—”

“That asshole took something from Cecilia that she can never have back. He stole her last words to her son. He deserves all the shit I’m dishing on him. All my wrath.”

“But that wrath is ultimately directed to yourself, not to him.”

As it should be. She couldn’t even blame somebody else for not making it to the hospital on time. It had been her. All her.

She wiped her eyes furiously. “Then I took off and dumped everything on Tate, who almost died while I was partying in San Francisco and Florida, avoiding setting foot in Rosita’s.” Because being guilty of her dad’s and older brother’s deaths wasn’t bad enough to begin with.

The grandmas at Eternal Sun were wrong. She wasn’t golden; she was a fake.

“You did the best you could at the moment. You had to run to survive, but you’re stronger now. You don’t have to. You can deal with their deaths.”

“I’m not so sure,” she whispered. It hurt so badly every time she thought about that night. She hated being alone with her mind. Couldn’t stand it, actually.

“Give it time.”

Right. “Time doesn’t heal a damn thing.”

“Yes, it does,” he insisted. “You’re better. You’re not running anymore.”

“Duh, because you’re holding me down.”

“And I will keep doing it until you stop wanting to run.”

She lifted her eyes to him. “You won’t be always here, remember? This is temporary. It comes with a fast-approaching expiration date.”

He held her gaze and didn’t correct her. For some reason that made her even sadder.

“So you better get over this running-away shit fast. Besides, it doesn’t help a fuck. Tried that.”

“You also killed half your family?”

He gave her a firm shake. “No, and neither did you, pet. The drunk driver did. You need to forgive yourself.”

Too bad she didn’t know how to do that.

“So what did you have to run away from?” she asked changing the subject.

Jack gave her an are-you-serious look, and for a second she felt ashamed of her mocking tone. As if the marks all over his body weren’t explanatory enough. “Lots of shit went down while in the military, and then later on. On the sleepless nights, we would meet at a diner.”

“To talk feelings?”

He snorted. “Fuck no. Sometimes we didn’t even talk at all. We sat there, drinking coffee, until dawn. But it helped. You learn to forgive yourself and move forward. You face your fears head on, and the pain. You don’t bury them. Cry as much as you have to and yell and get mad at the injustice of it all. Get rid of that anger and despair so that the good memories can take center stage again.”

She looked at him and nodded. She would try.

“I’m sure neither your dad nor your brother would have changed places with you.”

True. She would give anything, her life included, to have them back, but didn’t doubt for a second they wouldn’t let her.

Maybe it was the crackling of the fire, or the rhythmic movement of Jack’s chest, or the fact that for the first time in two years she was talking about Jonah and her dad, but she found herself relaxing, her mind not racing every time there was silence.

“So now you do all the stuff Jonah used to do.”