“Should think not,” Jack mutters gruffly. “This is your house. All I’d have to do is wait until you miss your dog for you to come back.”
I give a mock gasp and press a hand to my chest dramatically. “You’d keep my dog hostage as a means of luring me home?”
“You want a fair game”—Jack flashes me some teeth—“don’t compete against professional rule breakers.”
“Rule breaker?” I snort. “That what you are?”
“I kill people.” Jack says like it’s a defence of his point and an explanation in one. “That’s against the law, and laws are just rules with a superiority complex.”
I squint at him. “Are they, though?”
“Yeah,” Jack replies with a flippancy that is truly astounding. “Everyone knows that, Leo. It’s indisputable fact.”
I squint harder. “Is it, though?”
Jack ignores the non-question and prods at me again. “If you’re not disappearing into the night, where are you going?”
“Need some water.” I appraise him for second. “Want me to bring a glass back for you?”
Jack shrugs one shoulder carelessly. “Yeah, alright.”
“Cool, see you in a sec.” I make to leave the bed, but Jack catches my chin between his fingers before I can and draws me back down towards him. He angles my face so he can slot his lips against mine, giving me a shockingly gentle kiss that I’m incapable of not leaning into. His mouth is warm and soft under mine, his kiss lingering and tender. Almost sweet.
When Jack releases me, I feel a little dazed, blinking owlishly down at him for second before I get my bearings. Jack looks far too smug, and I have to flick him on the nose as punishment.
“I need to stop giving in to you,” I tell him, trying not to laugh at the splash of outrage on his face from being flicked. “You’re gonna get all egotistical and too big for your boots or whatever.”
Jack doesn’t seem worried about it. He lays back and raises both of his large arms above his head, flexing his impressive biceps as he stretches. With his messy blond hair and the relaxed smouldering he sends my way, he looks like one of those magazine ads for men’s cologne or underwear or whatever else they can sell using shirtless, sexy men laid down on a bed.
“But I like it when you give it up for me,” Jack says in a purposeful rasp, pale-green eyes glowing like a cat’s in the dark and full of glittering amusement.
I snort in the face of his playful conceit, sexual arrogance built on top of an underlining threat of danger always present just below the surface. It shouldn’t be so alluring, let alone attractive. I’m like one of those young girls that people online aggressively complain about, getting all swoony over the bad boy—the one who no sane person would look at and think they were a good idea. Someone worth taking a risk on. The fact I am taking that risk should be a warning sign of some kind, maybe.
This time, Jack lets me go when I move to get off the bed, grabbing a nearby pair of blue jogging bottoms to stick on. I can feel Jack’s eyes on me as I leave the room, the naked skin of my bare back prickling with his attention. I consider it a win that I don’t turn around to catch him watching me.
King isn’t asleep in his bed in the kitchen, so I peer into the living room to check if he’s there and find him asleep on the sofa where we left him, the sneaky little menace. I feel a prick of guilt for not taking him out again before going to sleep. Damon told me he had already taken him out once after he fed him in the morning, and I doubt King is going to starve after having stayed with Damon and Rex for so long. I trust Rex to have restraint, but Damon probably gave him a treat every single time King made cow eyes at him. I resolve to take King on an extra-long walk tomorrow morning to make up for it.
Going into the kitchen, I grab a tall glass from the cupboard and fill it with cold tap water. I’ve drained half a glass when the front door opens, and mum comes half stumbling into the house. I know it’s her just by the way she struggles to get the key in the lock. She makes her way into the kitchen and stops to stare at me for a minute when she realises I’m standing by the sink.
Mum looks surprisingly well put together, her makeup barely smudged, no sick or other fluids on her light-blue party dress. It’s skintight and clings to her skinny frame in a way that worries me. She needs to eat more, but every time I try to make a thing out of it, she gets mean about my own eating habits, and I’d honestly rather not deal with that tonight.
“You’re back, then,” Mum says with a definite slur to the words although not as bad as I might have expected. “Alive,” she adds, like it needs clarifying.
“Well, I’m not a ghost,” I respond dryly. “Don’t get excited.”
Mum breathes out loudly through her nose and makes her way around the kitchen island to lean against the counter diagonally across from me. She crosses her bony arms and looks up at me with an inscrutable expression. There’s a window behind us and a full moon in the sky that illuminates her face.
I eye her warily, debating the merits of making a mad dash for the stairs so I can escape whatever unmooring interaction this is about to turn into.
“You were gone a while this time,” she comments, and I can’t quite get a read on her tone. It might almost sound concerned if she were anyone else. But I’d be an idiot to trust such a thing from her. “They didn’t have phones where you were?” And here we go. She makes a derisive snorting sound. “Where did Anabelle send you?Space?”
“Damon told me you’ve been behaving,” I offer with equal neutrality. “No run-ins with the fuzz or druggie boyfriends trying to steal your jewellery for cocaine money. So. Thanks for that.”
Mum wrinkles her nose at me, her arms tightening around herself. “You’re a disrespectful little shit, you know that?” She huffs. “I bet you’re not like this with Anabelle. You think she’s so much better than me, with her fucking government job and headcase wife and the stick firmly shoved up her arse.”
Ah, so it’s going to be one of those conversations. I’ve heard some variation of this at least half a million times over the course of my life. Mum has got serious issues with Anabelle and her perceived notion she’s the fuckup when compared to her sister—and always has been.
For the sake of saving myself from a drunken rant I’ve heard far too many times, I rest back against the sink and give Mum something she’ll like to hear. “I shouted at her in a meeting today.”
