Page 58 of Jump

“Then the depression.” Jack steps forward, his hands down, not even trying, and places his leg behind mine before slamming me to the canvas. My head raps against the floor, and my lungs empty on a long whoosh that hurts my throat. “If I had to guess,” he stands over me, “I’d say that was the summer you disappeared and went on a ‘if I die, I die’ mission with the smokejumpers.”

He lowers to one knee, places the other on my chest, and sets his elbow against my throat.

Game over.

“Now you’ve accepted it. You’ve buried her, you bring her flowers, and acknowledge, in a healthy way, what happened. So you thought the hard stuff was done—only for every other prick around here to still be in the denial and pity stage.”

My eyes burn, though I can’t be sure of the exact emotion behind it. “I was with a woman a couple of months back,” I choke out, my voice hoarse beneath grief and Reilly’s elbow on my windpipe. “Seven months after Ainsley passed. We didn’t exchange names. We didn’t speak of the past. She had no clue who I was, and I had no clue who she was.”

“It was freeing, wasn’t it?” He drops back on his ass, knowing he has the submission… and the title, if this were a championship fight. Lifting his knees and resting his elbows on top, he sweeps his fingers through shaggy, midnight black hair. “To not have her look at you with sympathy in her eyes.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and nod. “It felt really good. But she knows now; knows who I am and what I’ve been through. And though she doesn’t drag on about it or make me feel gross the way the rest of town does, she still insists on acknowledging what happened. She won’t just be with me anymore.”

He licks his lips to moisten them, and though he winces when he brushes over the split his brother-in-law put there, he nods and considers his response.

“Britt…” After a long pause, he looks up and meets my eyes. “My wife. She stepped into my world after Steph. Into shoes that had been set out years before. Into a family,” he adds, “who expected me to marry the first.”

He takes a deep breath, and releases it again on a sigh so his chest shrinks. “She was even put through the wringer by my fans, because they knew Steph. They romanticized what she and I had. Britt was thrust into a world made for another woman.” He shakes his head and sniggers almost silently. “Hell if that wasn’t cruel and unusual punishment.”

I kinda follow where he’s going with this. Sort of. But… “I don’t get how that applies to Viv.”

“Viv?” His brow shoots high at the revelation. “Your roommate?”

I clamp my lips shut and say nothing.

But I’ve already said too much.

He laughs. “You poor, stupid motherfucker. It applies to her because Ainsley was here first! She died a fuckin’ hero, man. Everyone knew ‘Ruiz and Cootes’. So you can’t blame Viv for feeling a little skittish about stepping into those shoes. Maybe she wants you too, bro. Maybe she wishes she still didn’t know, so it could be like it was that first time you were together. Because now, not only will she forever be compared to Cootes, but she’ll feel insensitive if she doesn’t pay her respects before you fuck.”

“God.” I flop back against the mats and close my eyes. “So I’m never getting laid again, unless I move to Alaska and change my name?”

“Pretty much.”

He pops to his feet, so I hear his sweaty soles touch the mats. Then his hand wraps around mine and draws my eyes open.

“Or you could just talk to her.” He yanks me from the floor and catches me when I sway. “Word hasn’t traveled yet that you even hooked up—and trust me, that kinda news spreads fast in this town.”

“Fucking busybodies,” I grumble.

He claps my shoulder and settles back on his right foot. Fight stance.

He’s gonna kick my ass again for fun.

“For as long as the cat is still in the bag, you and she have time to talk. To figure out who you are. To try to understand what you are to each other. But that window will get smaller.”

He slices a jab through the air that separates us and taps my chin so I see stars.

“Use this time to figure it out in private, bro. Because once it goes public, you’ll have all your little fangirls screaming in her face and demanding you choose loyalties.”

“I don’t have fangirls.” I wipe blood from my bottom lip and look over the tops of my gloves at Jack, The fucking Jackhammer, Reilly. “That experience was uniquely yours.”

“Yeah, well…” He jabs again, and circles when he catches me long before my brain registers the strike is coming. “It sucked. And it fucked with us in a way that could have ruined everything.”

He jabs a third time, but I’m no old dog, so I duck this time… and almost drop when my legs struggle with the shift in weight.

“Britt was almost killed because she and I weren’t in a good space, and I wasn’t there to protect her.”

My eyes fire with rage as I straighten out and circle.

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