Page 99 of Slash & Burn

I shoved my door open so hard he had to jump back out of the way. “Not now, Joe.”

He wore a bitter smirk. “Like there’s gonna be a better time?”

“I can’t handle you right now, so why don’t you just get it off your chest so I can go?” My hands were shaking, too many emotions hitting me at once.

Joey took a few steps away, but I knew he wasn’t done. “What was the point of all this, Holloway? She’s fucking wrecked and you’re what? What is this?” He waved his hand at me, disgusted.

I didn’t want to hear him say Jill was wrecked. Not when I could still feel her in my arms, taste her lips on mine. “I don’t know what you want from me. You want me to say I fucked up? That I was wrong? Fine.” I threw my hands up. “I fucked up, Joey, okay. I fell in love with your sister even when I knew there was no fucking way she’d want to be a part of my life.”

Joey froze, his eyes pinning me hard. “You left.”

I sighed. “I had to go back to work, man. But it wasn’t over. It didn’t have to be over.”

The way he was watching me I started to pity the people he came to arrest. There was little about Joey that was soft or kind unless he wanted to be. Not like Jill. She was compassionate and warm as a default.

“Youloveher?” He said it like it was incomprehensible to him.

“Yeah, I do.” I leaned back against the side of my car, the fight falling out of me. “Doesn’t matter though. She’s right. You were both right.”

Joey let out a sigh so loud it drew my gaze. “Jesus, Grady.” The pity that laced his words only made me feel worse.

“It’s fucking killing me that she’s hurting,” I told him, the words like knives in my throat.

He came to lean against my car next to me. “She is,” he paused, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “But, she’s not like she was before. She’s still upright. Hell, she might be about to open that damn store finally.” He huffed out a laugh, like he was impressed.

“She is?” Jill not mentioning that landed like another punch.

“Yeah. So, I wasn’t right about everything. Last time she stopped eating and shit. This time,” he paused, looking me over like I was a sad sight. “I think she loves you too. But you left her better than you found her, so she can keep going.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Jill had never even come close to saying that to me. She made me feel loved plenty of times, but she’d always watched her words. And right then, I realized how much I’d needed to hear that.

“I only ever wanted her to be happy.”

“I know. And she was. I’d never seen her like that, not since we were kids.”

A rush of emotions hit me, and I crossed my arms over my chest, barricading myself from them. “Will you tell me when the shop opens?”

Joey shoved off my car, his hands on his hips like normal. “Sure. I’ll text you.”

“Thanks, man,” I said, yanking my door open. “I’ll see you around.”

“Grady,” Joey called. He looked apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “I’m not.”

CHAPTER 39

JILL

I’d slept with my Brawler’s jersey next to me in bed. In fact, I’d slept with both mine and Grady’s which felt like a rather pathetic and worrisome thing to admit, so I was quick to put them both away in the morning, just in case LeAnn or my mom—or god forbid, Joey—stopped by unannounced, as was often the case these days. They were worried about me, but the looks of grave concern had passed. Now it was just heightened precautionary status.

But even if I looked okay enough, and was functioning well enough, I still felt like an empty shell.

Seeing Grady had been both what I wanted and the worst thing that could have happened. It reopened all the wounds I’d felt since he’d left. Missing him was like an attempt to free dive, the harder I buried my heartache the more the pressure built. I was holding my breath all the time, and going through the motions was wearing me down.

As I walked up the block toward the bank, I watched a handful of leaves get caught in one of those mini tornados. They swirled around each other up against the side of the building, rising up into the air only to be dropped back down and start over again. That’s exactly how I felt; like the winds of loss had a hold on me and spun me up and down, completely out of my control. My old therapist would have said this was grief. But I didn’t care if it had a name, I just wanted it to end.

Making my way up the sidewalk my eyes locked on an unpleasantly familiar face. Adam was staring at me, as if he’d just spotted me, too, and was calculating the odds of whether I’d be willing to walk right past him or if I’d deviate from my path.

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