Page 77 of Sweet Like Whiskey

He makes his usual gruff, one-note reply.

“Do I get to drive now?” I ask, holding out my hand and curling my fingers.

Jackson reaches into his pocket, slapping the keys into my palm on his way past. With a grin, I hop into the driver’s seat and start up the vehicle. I wait for Jackson to join me, although it would have been a whole lot of fun to watch his face as I drove off. Maybe next time.

“What are you doing today?” I ask, getting us turned around and heading back the way we came.

“Well, Iwasdoing a perimeter check, but somebody convinced me to take time outta my day to release a rabid, grain-stealing pest into the wild.”

I give his leg a slap. “Guilting me won’t work. And it wasn’t rabid.”

He grunts. “You decide what to do about your car?”

I let out a sigh, slowing to take a sharp curve. “I stopped by Ratchet’s earlier. Said my goodbyes to Edna.”

Jackson’s brow is drawn when I glance over at him.

“What?” I ask.

“I could’ve come,” he says, voice so low I nearly miss it over the rumbly purr of the engine.

“For what?”

“Support?” he says.

Oh, Jesus. Needing to distract myself from the heart palpitations I’m currently experiencing, I say, “You have zero sympathy for a cute little animal, but you would’ve come to pay respects to a hunk of metal?”

“You obviously liked that car,” Jackson says. “You named it. So, yeah. I would’ve come.”

I blow out a breath, but apparently Jackson isn’t done annihilating me.

“I don’t like seeing your face go all sad,” he says, sounding grumpy about it. “It ain’t right.”

“When have you seen me sad?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer for a long moment. “You were on the deck,” he finally replies. “Last week. You had your eyes closed while you were, you know, doing your stretches. And you looked…pained. Was it physical? Or emotional?”

Fuck. For a man who says so little, he sure knows how to hit.

“A bit of both,” I admit. “I, uh… It was a bad pain day. And sometimes, that doesn’t bother me. I’m used to it. But other times…”

It takes me a minute to figure out how to explain it. I wouldn’t even have known how before it all started because I never would’ve understood the way chronic pain can overwhelm you. How it can become incessant, like the buzzing of bees, so quiet at first but then, all of a sudden, loud and impossible to ignore. How you can deal with it day in and day out without issue, but then, for no discernable reason, the next day it’s at the forefront of your mind and won’t be shoved back again. How, at times, it can feel hopeless. How it can occupy your every waking thought, making it hard to concentrate, hard to focus on anything else.

“Sometimes I forget it’s even there,” I tell Jackson. “But that day, I was feeling really down on myself. Because it wouldn’t let me forget, and I couldn’t help but wonderwhy me? I want to remember what it feels like to stand up without wincing and tonot have to put conscious thought into the way I move my upper body just so the pain doesn’t flare. I’m thirty-five, Jackson, but sometimes I feel seventy. And it doesn’t matter that it’s not fair because what is? It’s life. And I’m not going to let it stop me. But it still knocks me down every now and again.”

“Pull over,” Jackson says.

“What?” I ask, startled. “Where? We’re on a dirt path in the middle of—”

“Just stop the damn vehicle, Ash.”

I pull us to a stop and turn to face Jackson. “There. Stopped. What is it?”

I’m not expecting Jackson to take my face in his hands. Nor the seriousness is his eyes as he forces me to hold his gaze. “When you get knocked down,” he says firmly, “you give me your hand, and I will pull you back up again.”

“Jack…”

“I understand why you feel like you have to do it all on your own. I do. Igetit. But you said you’re in this, remember? So if you can’t learn to rely on me, at least a little, then what are we even doing here, Ash?”

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