Page 75 of Punchline
“It’s the government,” Marek said. “What do you expect?”
That prompted some cursing. Then?—
Jake.
He looked exhausted, and he had a couple of bruises on his face, but he was here. And his gaze locked right on me.
The instant he saw me, what seemed like years’ worth of tension vanished from his back and shoulders, and he exhaled as he stepped toward me, arms out. “Oh my God, I’m glad to see you.”
I practically melted into his embrace, relieved he was here and that he very clearly wanted to see me. When he wrapped those strong arms around me I could barely breathe, but I managed to murmur, “Me too.”
He kissed my forehead, then drew back and looked meup and down. His gaze halted on my cast, then flicked to my eyes. “He didn’t fuck up your arm, did you?”
I shook my head. “No. It hurt, but everything stayed where it belonged.”
Even more tension left his body, and he pulled me in tight again.
Had he… spent this whole time worrying… about me? While I’d been freaking out that he was surrounded by criminals and being treated like shit, and probably scared and angry… he’d been worried about me?
Of course he was worried about you, kokot,a voice in my head snapped, and that voice sounded an awful lot like Marek’s.
Whatever. I just sighed and held Jake close.
He was home. That was all that mattered.
CHAPTER 24
JAKE
Look, I’d be the first person to admit that I had a hard time letting things go. Whether it was working through trauma or dealing with my dysmorphia, having good mental health was a work-in-progress in my life, and my therapist was way more understanding of my backsliding than I was. “Little steps,” she liked to say to me when all I wanted was to take one giant leap forward and put whatever it was I was dwelling on out of my mind for good. “Little steps make for steady progress.”
It sucked that she was right. I wanted to be able to brush things off, to push them aside and go on with my life the way Carson seemed to. The bad stuff just didn’t get its claws into his brain the same way it did mine, which was clear from the fact that the first time we met up in person after I hurt him, he walked right up and hugged the shit out of me before saying, “It was so great of you to do that video, man, you didn’t have to.”
I didn’t have to try and make sure Carson didn’t drown in debt for the injury I caused? I didn’t have to be there for him as a friend when it seemed like he was down to almostnone of them? I didn’t have to stick by his side when the organization he worked for told him they weren’t responsible for his medical care?
Fucking bullshit.
I knew this thing with the EFC and Ethan could be like a black hole in my brain, consuming all my attention in the same way until I exasperated my boyfriend so much he thought better of being with me. It wouldn’t be the first time my OC tendencies had made someone push me away, so from the moment I was back with Ethan I took steps to distance myself from what had happened. I went on a social media blackout—nothing was getting through my guardrails. I stayed off the computer and my phone as much as possible, and I screened all my calls. We ended up staying at Ethan’s place instead of mine, since mine still had three boxes of EFC bullshit I needed to get rid of.
It helped. It was nice, even; I could focus on Ethan and making sure he was all right while avoiding the triggers that would draw me back into thinking about the fight that had landed me in jail. Not even for a night, but still. It wasn’t a happy memory.
It was made even worse because the last thing I saw when I was being escorted out by the cops was Ethan, pale and sweaty from pain as he sat in the chair waiting for the paramedics while another cop grilled him about what had happened.
But he’s okay. He’s going to be fine.And the guy who’d laid hands on him was going to be nursing a broken jaw for six weeks, so there was that. Plus the charges were dropped, which I hadn’t expected, so…
“Are you going in to the gym today?” Ethan asked around a yawn as I set a cup of coffee in front ofhim. He’d slept in late, which was what he needed, but I’d been up for hours already.
“Yeah,” I said. “Beth is back, and I wanted to check in with her before I step in for classes.”
Ethan shook his head. “Didn’t Carson say that the gym has had, like, twenty new people sign up since the fight? She’s not going to be mad aboutthat.”
That was perilously close to topics I was trying to avoid thinking about. “Still,” I said. “I want to make sure.”
“Jake.” He put his good hand on my arm as I reached for the half and half. “That fight wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.” I did know that, just the same way that I knew I could have handled it better despite that. Just the same way I knew that Ethan was a grown man who could take care of himself, and that Dimon’s goon hurting him had been more accidental than anything. Just the way that fact didn’t matter to me becausefuck that.
“Maybe we could—” His phone buzzed, and he stopped to check it, then rolled his eyes. “Fuck’s sake,” he muttered.
