“And breaking into his accounts was the only solution there?”
Mentally, I floundered. Obviously, I should have behaved differently. But in the moment . . . when jealousy hit me hard . . .
“Tenn, Ihadto know if he was cheating on me. Turns out, he had been planning on surprising me with a fun getaway to a concert.”Thatmemory was particularly painful. “My bad.”
Tennyson snorted. “Have you called my therapist yet?”
“Tenn, I don’t need therapy. I’m fine.”
His eyes said he didn’t believe me in the slightest. “You display a shocking inability to maintain an adult relationship.”
Ugh. “Not you, too?”
“Seeking help doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It means you’re smart.”
I slammed my mouth shut.
I already knew I was broken. I just didn’t need confirmation that I was broken beyond repair. A therapist would take one look at me and my pile of issues and run screaming. That was a level of rejection I wasn’t eager to embrace.
Jack already made me feel exposed and vulnerable. Imagine how bad things would be with an actual trained therapist.
Jack walked back through the wall. “Nothing. It didn’t come with us.”
“Would someone mind telling me what’s up?” I swung my head between the two of them. “What could justify Jack waltzing uninvited through other people’s bedrooms?”
Jack’s expression was textbook naive innocence. “But if I didn’t, how else would I know that you sleep with a pink, stuffed bear?”
“Mr. Chuffy?! Youstillsleep with Mr. Chuffy?” Tennyson choked on his Nutella and bread. Served him right.
Grrr. Tennyson would of course tell Dante and Branwell. And those three had never been ones to let go of good teasing ammunition.
I suddenly facedyearsof never ending Mr. Chuffy jokes.
Jack had just slam-dunked over my head.
Why did he do things like this to me? Why did Jack always lift the lid and stir the pot of my life?
I pointed a finger at Jack with his oh-so-innocent expression. “So help me, if you were corporeal at all, I would—”
“You two can argue once I’m gone,” Tennyson muttered. “For now, we have a problem.”
I turned my pathetic death stare back to my brother . . . a death stare that gradually softened as he described what had happened the previous afternoon with Jack—the scar along the fabric of reality, the fact that it ripped open.
“Soooo . . . these scars just appeared a few weeks ago? And the scar or rift in the fabric of our universe let through an oozing black sludge that tried to take you out?” I looked back and forth between Jack and Tennyson.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” Tennyson said. “Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to me. But the way Jack described it, it was shades of Chucky.”
Chucky. When Jack had been trapped in the shadow world, a darkness had surrounded him whenever Branwell had interacted with him. Not knowing how else to refer to it, Branwell had nicknamed it Chucky.
“We have never been able to explain why the darkness—or rather, Chucky—surrounded Jack in the shadow world,” I said. “It’s been an anomaly.”
“I didn’t notice anything like this oily slime while in the shadow world, either on me or in my surroundings. And when it appeared in Volterra, it didn’t feel particularly sentient, I have to say.” All traces of teasing Jack melted away. His face was studious, concerned.
This was the problem with Jack. He moved from too-seeing, snarky, teasing Jack to too-seeing, sincere, English Lord Jack in a matter of heartbeats.
Snarky Jack . . . drove me crazy. He had me on my guard 24/7. But self-protection was good. I knew how to channel and manage it. It was familiar. Comfortable.
But English Lord Jack . . . the man who sincerely listened to problems and gave thoughtful answers . . . the hot guy who swam in lakes in my dreams . . .
