“Shit,” said Jack, looking her up and down, searching for any evidence of injury, as if he hadn’t had his nose smashed into his forehead by a falling crucifix and woken up completely fine the next day. “Were you OK? Did you… pass out?”
Carla flipped her bangs out of her eyes. “I think I died.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Jack’s heart lurched.Carla caused her own accident.Diedas a result of said accident. And now she sat before him, whole and hale and smirking, clearly amused by his horror. “You…” he started to say. But his breath came in frantic gasps. He pressed his forehead to the table, struggling to calm down.
“Whoa, hey,” said Carla. Her chair scraped against the floor. A hand landed on his shoulder. “Hey, hey, it’s alright. Look, I didn’t die, OK? I have a pulse and everything. Want to feel it?”
“No,” Jack groaned, but she caught his hand and pressed it to her wrist, where he felt her heartbeat, strong and fast.
“It’s a good thing,” Carla insisted as Jack flinched away. She dropped his hand. “If something happens, you’ll come back.”
Had he bled out that night in the shower? Had he actually died? It felt impossible, but he remembered the blood—egregious, unbelievable amounts that stained the tiles red.
There was no way.
“Look, I know all of this is really weird, OK? I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out,” Carla rambled. “You want a drink? Or like, I don’t know, a valium? I think Fat Frank left his here last week. I bet it’s still in the cupboard.”
“No,” Jack said, forcing himself to take a deep breath. It shouldn’t be such a shock to learn that Carla came back. Thetime loop ensured that nothing really changed, that consequences were eternally delayed.
But what happened when it ended? Would Carla still be alive? Or would Jack find himself staring into the empty eyes of a corpse, lying spattered with blood in the roadway?
What if he was dead, too? Would housekeeping find him in the shower, naked and drained of blood, bloated from the still-running water?
WouldBorisbe the one to find him?
Jack’s stomach twisted. He didn’t want Boris to see him like that. Didn’t even want tothinkabout it.
“It’s gonna be OK,” Carla told him. “I promise. Take a deep breath.”
“Like it’s so easy,” Jack rasped.
Her laughter rang out loud and piercing. “See, you’re already feeling better.”
“I don’t know about that,” Jack said, lifting his head. Carla watched him with worried eyes. A part of him, tense and raw, finally relaxed. If she wanted to care about him, he’d allow it.
He’d spent the last few weeks with no one else. If Carla was only pretending to worry, that was alright. Anything was better than endless days stuck in a town where nobody knew him, and everyone judged him as some sort of dangerous outsider. In the city, he was unremarkable. Here? Everyone thought they saw through him. OK, maybe he suffered from anxiety or something, but there was no fucking reason for everyone to act like he was some kind of horrible monster that had stumbled from the woods and into their vulnerable little town. With every passing day, Jack felt more and more a freak.
“You just go through life like that,” said Carla, unimpressed. “Without any medication or anything?”
Jack blinked at her. “Yeah? I don’t panic every day.”
“You don’t?” She squinted at him like she saw through his facade, carefully propped up with a little bit of charisma and a dash of charm. “You sure seem like you do.”
“I’m not always stuck in a time loop in an unfamiliar town,” Jack pointed out.
Carla nodded. “I guess it’s a lot to process.” She gave a wistful sigh. “At least I’ve spent plenty of time here. Even if it’s boring as shit.”
“You don’t like it here?” Jack tried not to dwell on the fact that he wasstuck. That he couldn’t afford to do much of anything. Exploring was his only option, and he feared he might grow sick of it.
“No,” Carla grumbled. “There’s nothing to do out here. Ronnie thinks it’s romantic, but he wouldn’t know romance if it chewed off his dick.”
Jack choked on a laugh. “That’s, um, not romantic.”
“Are you saying I wouldn’t know romance, either?” She quirked an eyebrow. The teasing delight in her eyes sent a flash of heat through his belly.
