“Dude. You’re not listening. They. Are not. Married.”
“I don’t give a shit. They’re fucking sleeping together.” He kicked a wood-engraved chair into the wall.
Should she jump in? Try to talk to him? Would she get hit over the head with the brass centerpiece? She looked at Tony. “You’re not going to do anything?”
“I only interfere when he’s hurting himself or someone else.”
Jay looked around the room with wild eyes. Then he locked on Nathan and rushed toward him.
Tony ran to block his attack, but Laz jumped on his back, pinned his arms, and brought him to the floor. Jay flailed his arms, yelled incoherently, and dragged his legs forward, his knees buckling, taking Laz to the floor with him.
Charlee’s heart stopped, her body frozen in horror. Jay threw back his head and screamed, “Burning. It’s burning.” He ripped free of Laz’s embrace and scrambled backward until he hit the corner of the room.
His head hung between his knees, and he wrapped his arms behind his neck. His body shuddered, and he let out one muffled sob. It was small, lonely, and more than she could bear.
26
A miasma of burning flesh emanated from him. It was pungent and smoky and everywhere. Jay couldn’t move, it was so cramped in there. No light. The walls were hot and growing hotter. “Turn it off. Please, Aunt El. Turn it off.”
Stop it. Not real. He proved it by rooting himself into the wall at his back and staring at the swirly designs in the rug. He dug his bare foot into a splinter of glass. If the slivers pierced skin, he didn’t feel it. The dirt floor flickered in, the thin boards of the shed rattled. The room darkened.
Then he saw feet next to his. They were tiny and naked with black painted toenails, wiggling, bringing him back to the dining room in the New York suite. It was only a few moments before she spoke.
“Will you come with me to your room?” Her voice was so delicate, so sweet. “Just you and me?”
He loved the sound of those words, but her feet were in danger. “Don’t move.”
A pause. “Why not?”
“You’re standing in glass.”
She curled a toe.
“I said don’t move.” He raised his head and dove into the crystal-blue pools of her eyes.
“I guess you’ll have to carry me then.”
What a silly thing to suggest. He was barefoot, too. He knew she was trying to redirect his emotions, and damn, it worked.
She didn’t give him space as he rose to his feet. The top of her head came to his throat. The perfect height to tuck all that red under his chin.
He shimmied around her in an awkward dance of bending and standing. How would he do this? Scoop under her legs? Where would her hands go?
She put her arms up, waiting, and dropped them back to her belly. “How about a piggyback ride?”
A laugh escaped his chest. A laugh? What a strange sound in his voice. “Yeah, piggyback is totally rock-n-roll.” He turned his back. “Hands—”
“No hands. I remember.” She leapt, arms up and over his shoulders, legs squeezing around his hips, and laced her fingers together in front of him.
She weighed nothing. Not sure what he expected. He’d never carried a woman, let alone allowed someone to ride on his back. She was childlike in her bone structure, though the thighs beneath his hands and the curves of legs wrapped around his waist were deliciously mature.
She kept her fingers away from his body and tightened her clench around his hips. “You’ve never held anyone this close before.”
He was stiff, he knew, but was he that obvious? Maybe she’d gathered that from his no touching rule.
Her breath circled around his ear. “Your heart’s knocking against your chest.”
It sped up. “I might be nervous.” As in a thrashing maniacal ball of nerves.
“I think there’s a little of that happening on both sides right now.”
The misery-loves-company thing didn’t usually work for him, but he knew without a doubt his misery loved Charlee.
His friends stared at him with their mouths and eyes gaping as he left the dining room full of echoes and broken glass and strode to the bedroom in long urgent steps. He kicked the door closed behind them, and instead of releasing her, he pulled her legs tighter around him.
The hopelessness piled on his shoulders weighed so much more than she did. Now she’d seen him at his worst. “You thought I was made of steel. Now you know.”
There was a pause as if she were debating the answer. She was probably glaring at the back of his head.
She dropped her cheek on his shoulder. “No, it’s still in there. You just haven’t found it yet.”
His hands curled into the flesh belonging to the woman who strengthened him by merely opening her mouth. She was his ghost of dreams, his backbone, his everything.
He realized she was struggling to get down, and he released her immediately. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”