Page 66 of Failure to Match

Bang. Bang. Bang.“Jamie?”

Two things. One, that shattering sound had been the vanity mirror. The very large, very broken-into-tiny-pieces vanity mirror. Two, Jackson’s knocks startled the shit out of me, they were so aggressively loud.

He was going to be so fucking pissed.

“Yes?” I called shakily, scanning the room for Toebeans. He wasn’t on the bed anymore.

“Are you okay? What was that sound?”

I chewed on my bottom lip, assessing the damage. There was glasseverywhere. All over me, the hardwood floor, surrounding my bare feet.

“Jamie.”

I couldn’t tell if he really did sound panicked or if I was assigning him emotions as some sort of coping mechanism. Panic was better than rage in this instance.

“Um... yeah, just fine.”

A pause. “You don’t sound fine.”

“Oh.”

That was it. That was all I could come up with.

“Can I come in?”

“Wait, let me just…” What? How was I supposed to clean this all up without help? I couldn’t exactly walk over shattered glass with my bare feet to grab supplies.

Also, I didn’t know where the brooms were kept in this house, but it probably wasn’t in my suite. Either way, he was going to see the mess.

“Okay,” I eventually said. “Come in.”

The door handle was being twisted before I was done giving shaky permission. Jackson stepped into the room with purpose and promptly froze when he saw me.

“You, um, really need to stop hanging outside my suite like a stalker, w-weirdo.”

Jackson’s eyes were scanning the situation, sliding between me and the floor. “You have glass on you,” he said flatly. It was a statement. There was absolutely no emotion behind it.

“Oh yeah, that’s because it fell on my head.”

His eyes flared, shoulders tensing.

“I think your house might be trying to murder me,” I whispered.

He didn’t smile, though. He didn’t have a sense of humor.

I cleared my throat softly. “Because, you know, first the whole pool thing and now this,” I overexplained. “Or maybe the universe is trying to tell us to stop going on dates. I mean, I know you don’t believe in that stuff but like, what are the chances?”

Two not-real dates ending in almost-real deaths.

Jackson didn’t seem like he was listening. He was just walking toward me slowly, glass crunching underneath his fancy black shoes.

“You okay?” he asked gently when he reached me.

“I couldn’t get the dress off. Broke the zipper trying. I’ll compensate you for it, obviously, but we might need to arrange a payment plan if it’s made from mammoth tusks or something. Either way, you’ll eventually get your money?—”

“Jamie.” He tucked a gentle knuckle under my chin and tilted my face so he could scan it properly. “Are. You. Okay?”

A ball of unexpected emotion lodged itself in the pit of my throat. I couldn’t swallow it down. “I think so. I’m not bleeding or anything…”

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