Page 39 of Slash & Burn

LeAnn: Oh, thank god. I was about to call Joey.

Jill: Please don’t. And please don’t tell him about

My fingers froze, hovering over the letters for a split second before I could go on.

Jill: Adam. I don’t need anyone making more of this than it is. I’m fine.

LeAnn: You’re sure you’re ok?

Jill: Yes. You won’t tell him?

If Joey got wind of Adam being back there was no way he wouldn’t give him a hard time. Hell, even Cash might show up at his doorstep just to stare at him. Neither of my brothers were equipped to let this go without making a scene, so I had to hope they didn’t catch sight of him themselves. The bubbles popped up and disappeared a couple of times before she finally replied.

LeAnn: I won’t. But only if you check in with me every day. And if you talk to him, you have to tell me right away. I don’t want you alone with all of that.

Jill: Okay.

I didn’t need her to coddle me. I was a big girl. But given what had happened before, how quickly I’d gone into the dark, desperate places in my mind, I could sympathize with her concern.

LeAnn: Okay. Good. Love you Jilly.

Jill: Love you too

After splashing some cool water on my face I went back into the room Grady was reading in. Only he wasn’t reading any more. The children were all gathered around where he now sat on the floor among them, and two had climbed onto his back. A quick glance around the room at the smiling faces of the nurses and parents told me no one else saw a problem with this. Grady was laughing and playing along, but when one of the boys leapt onto his bad shoulder and he angled awkwardly to catch him I couldn’t watch any more.

“Okay, kids,” I said, stepping gingerly through the pile toward Grady. “No jumping on the hockey player, he’s not a jungle gym.”

As if my intervention snapped them out of their daze, the nurses quickly worked to gather their patients and the room cleared with lots of high fives and hugs, every one of their faces beaming up at Grady like he’d hung the moon.

“Are you okay?” I asked when they’d all left.

He gave his arm a rotation, testing it out with his eyes on me. “Feels okay. I didn’t mean for them to get so rough.”

“I know.” I nodded, grabbing the book off the floor. “But I’m pretty sure the Brawlers would frown upon you getting reinjured doing a silly reading program.”

The smile on Grady’s face stopped me in my tracks. “It’s not silly.” He stepped closer, his voice dropping as he studied my expression. “And you just said ‘Brawlers’ without throwing up even a little bit.”

My eyes floated closed as I let out an exasperated sigh. “Let’s go meet with the older patients before I decide to let the kids back in here to maul you.”

We’d managed to get through the whole morning without any mention of the pool incident, and I was starting to think we’d both wordlessly agreed to never speak of it again. But as we got into Grady’s car to head back to his place a fresh tension filled the air.

I’d never want to get between Grady and Joey. As obnoxious as it might be to me that my brother would be upset, the fact was that he would be. And they’d been friends too long for something stupid to cost them a relationship they both needed.

At the same time, I’d lost count of the number of times I’d been knocked sideways by the tiniest sliver of memory from that night. Grady’s hands on me, his mouth on me, the ache in his voice when he finally stopped holding himself back. It had me curling my toes and shutting my eyes while at work in the library, and doing much more hands-on coping when I was home alone, if you know what I mean. Whatever that had been between us had been building for a while, and I wasn’t sure we’d exhausted the spark enough to keep it from reigniting.

Just how much I wanted it to reignite was what scared me. Because it was a lot.

Once he was on the road, Grady began shifting in his seat, like he couldn’t get comfortable in the ridiculously supple leather of his overpriced luxury sedan.

With my nerves already fried from thinking about Adam being back, I finally couldn’t take it anymore and twisted to face him. “What? Whatever it is just spit it out, please.”

Grady sagged into his seat, not even looking in my direction. “That was really sweet of you to protect me back there.”

“It was a dozen six-year-olds, it’s not like I got you out of Alcatraz.”

He huffed out a laugh, but his scowl remained firmly in place. “I just . . . I don’t want what happened the other night to change anything.” He glanced my way nervously. “Between us.”

It had been a bad idea to turn his direction, giving me nothing else to look at but his conflicted expression, so I rotated back to the windshield again. “Nothing has changed.” Not even I believed myself, but I was hoping Grady would just let it drop.

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