“Do you think you could eat anything?” Leah asked. She perched carefully by his side, holding up a box of Ritz crackers. “I googled the best snack after a migraine and it suggested these. Among other things.” She screwed up her nose.
“What other things?” He marveled at her thoughtfulness.
“One site said mackerel.” She made a barfing face, which almost forced a laugh out of him. “And there was a lot of talk of legumes.”
“I’ve always been hazy on legumes,” he admitted.
“I know, right. Is it a pea? Is it a bean? Do we care? I took a guess you might opt for the crackers.” She waggled the box enticingly.
“I’ll try one,” he said, mostly because he wanted to please her. What the hell was that about? Leah looked delighted and satisfied in equal measure, so he pulled himself into a half-seated position and dipped his hand inside the box. “You can sit down,” he said gruffly.
Don’t leave. Please stay.The words echoed in his head and Jackson blinked heavily. Who was this version of himself?
He nibbled on the Ritz cracker, relieved when his tender stomach downplayed its objections. Leah climbed back on top of the quilt, taking a small handful of crackers for herself, and settled cross-legged on the bed. The landing light was on and the door was ajar, casting soft shadows on the floor. It felt intimate, yet relaxing. Like a moment stolen from time. Jackson’s mind wandered.
“You said you were scared to leave your ex-boyfriend once. What did you mean?”
Leah startled, her eyebrows dancing. “Wow. That came out of left field.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” He stretched out his little finger to brush against her jeans. She watched the small movement, head bent. And he couldn’t take his eyes off the curve of her neck. He had a sudden urge to know everything about her. All of her secrets. All of her pieces. “But, if you did want to talk—one friend to another—where better than the Bed of Truth.”
Her frown slid away and Leah laughed. She popped another cracker into her mouth. “Using that against me, huh? Well played.”
Jackson’s skin heated with the pleasure of her teasing. Hollowed out and drained, he was fixated on Leah’s touch, her voice, her features. The migraine must’ve come in and washed away every ounce of sense he had on its storm waves of pain, but he couldn’t stop. He drank in her animated face, the deep pink of her lips, the pale tips of her ears under her dark curls.
“I was scared because I’d spent a lot of time trying to avoid being homeless and I had nowhere to go if I left Matt.”
That was not what he’d expected. “Homeless?”
“Yep.” Leah passed him another cracker, her dark eyes unguarded and open.
“Why were you homeless? Where was your family?” The synapses in Jackson’s brain fired with the efficacy of sparks on soggy papier-mâché.
“My mom died in a traffic accident when I was three and my dad passed away when I was eight. He had a heart attack at work and never came home.”
Maybe it was a cracker lodged in his chest and maybe it wasn’t, but Jackson found himself short of breath. “No relatives?”
“None in the US. Possibly some distant ones somewhere, but no one my parents had stayed in touch with. I went into foster care. It was fine. Most of the families were nice.” Bland sentences, simple words. So much unsaid.
“And after foster care?” Jackson’s voice was rough.
“It was tricky for a while, but then I got a housing placement at a young adult center in Kalamazoo. That’s where I met Matthew. We pooled our resources when we moved on and rented a place together. It made financial sense but we weren’t a good match long-term. I’d felt stuck for a while before I met Esther.” Leah wiggled her finger into the loop of a loose thread at the ankle of her jeans. “Your grandmother was amazing. I was working the front desk in a tattoo studio at the time, earning next to nothing, but Esther and I got talking about books and writing and then she offered me a job. And somewhere to live.”
The side-eye she gave him was tentative. They both recognized the unstable ground she’d stepped onto—the “Danger: Keep Out” sign flashing above the bed. This house. Amity Court. It was here she’d found a home. And Jackson had resented her presence ever since he’d arrived.
“There are movie stars who slept in vans or bus terminals before getting their big break, so I’m in good company.” Leah shifted on the bed, twisting to drop the box of crackers onto the floor.
“Did you ever sleep rough?”
“Not for long.”So that’s a yes, then.“Mainly on other people’s couches,” she continued quickly, a shoulder shrug passing it off as unimportant. “And a shed. But that was just a couple of weeks.”
“Did you ever find a long-term foster placement?”
“A couple were semi-long-term. A year here and there. I think I was unlucky. And, well, you know more than most, I can be pretty annoying to have around. People who foster are amazing. It must be such a difficult thing to do. The housing staff were fantastic, too. I learned so much from them.”
“You’re not annoying.” Jackson couldn’t let that go unchallenged. He was beginning to realize how resilient Leah was, rolling with every punch that came her way and taking it on the chin. He rubbed at the ache in his chest. “You don’t deserve what happened to you.”
Leah blinked through her bangs. He was close enough to see the almond-colored freckle below her right eye and a tiny chickenpox scar in her hairline. “Nor do you,” she said solemnly.
