Jack And Jill: Dawn Of Forever Part 3

"I can't do this."

"Ryn, I'm sorry." He touched her hand.

She pulled away. "I forgive you." Her words were honest. She grabbed a broom to sweep up the gla.s.s, not risking another cut.

"But?" Jackson shadowed her every move.

"But nothing. I forgive you. Period." She moved around the dining room keeping her back to him.

"You forgive me but you acan't do this?'"

"Correct."

"Why?"

A palpable pain in his voice tugged at her heart. She inhaled a deep breath to break the hold he tried to get on it.

"I did the dysfunctional relations.h.i.+p thing. It nearly killed me. The next relations.h.i.+p I have will be with someone who adores me and wouldn't hurt a fly. I need someone who will sit on my porch swing, rub my feet, and discuss what color of paint I should use when I get the money to repaint my house. I need a guy who wants to be with me forever every day, not just some days. And I think I'm worth a proper proposal. My guy will drop to a knee and look up at me like I'm his whole world. He will promise to spend the rest of his life making me forget that any man touched me before him."

A s.h.i.+ver paralyzed her movement as the heat of his breath washed over the back of her neck.

"No man will ever erase my touch."

Truth. And Ryn knew it.

"Which touch? The one that made me love you or the one that made you leave me?"

Jackson stepped back with a sharp breath. Ryn waited for the release, the string of reasons why she was wrong, the promise that it would never happen again. Instead, he blew out her candle of hope with a long breath of defeat.

"I asked you to give me two weeks."

"No. You asked me to give you everything, and when I did you threw it back in my face. You told me what you did was unacceptable. And you know what? You were right. I don't know you and I can't be with someone I don't know." She pressed her lips together, closing her eyes for a brief moment to regain some control. "I'm sorry. You didn't mean to hurt me-physically or emotionally. I know that. I really do. I ... I just want something easy for once in my life."

"Ryn-"

"No. Please don't say anything. You know who I want? I want the guy that kissed his sister on the head and whispered, aYou've got this.'" A laugh of incredulity bubbled up her chest. She shook her head with a painful grin. "That sounds so ridiculous, doesn't it? That touch ... the one that made me love you? It wasn't even me you touched. I fell in love with you because of how you love your sister. Betcha never heard that one before."

"My sister hates me."

Ryn shrugged, bending down to sweep the pile of gla.s.s into the dustpan. "She'll forgive you. That love you have for her? It runs deeper than any hate, and it takes so much more to hate someone than to love them. Hate is so exhausting. Trust me, I know."

"You don't hate me?" He held open the trash bag for her.

She dumped the gla.s.s into it. "No. I love you. But for the first time in over twenty years I love myself more. For the first time in over twenty years I feel worthy."

Pus.h.i.+ng up on her toes, she kissed him on the cheek. He didn't move.

"Thank you, Jackson Knight. You gave me that."

"You don't have to watch me clean. Your place is next."

Jackson couldn't drag his eyes away from Ryn. Her words stunned him into total disbelief. He didn't give her up. He didn't let her go. And he certainly didn't want her to walk away and thank him.

Another guy? Ryn had things all wrong. Her guy, her forever stood in the same room. Jude Day wanted a lifetime of women for one night. Jackson Knight wanted one woman for a lifetime. But not just any woman. Ryn Middleton-he wanted her and only her.

"I know you're composing some epic speech. But I'm working and you're done swimming in my pond."

"Low blow." He narrowed his eyes, but she kept working as if she didn't just sucker punch him in the junk.

"Go." She chuckled. "I'm working."

"And why is that? I don't think you'll be getting paid to clean here anymore."

She drew in a shaky breath then glanced over her shoulder at him. "I just ... I just need to. For me."

Jackson nodded before leaving her to clean AJ's place for some sort of closure. He moved with the focus of a zombie through two piano lessons, giving undeserving praise to women who had no desire to do more than shamelessly flirt with him. They weren't ugly. Jude would have cla.s.sified them as doable. Maybe if Jackson would have bent them over Black Beauty and f.u.c.ked them like their eyes begged him to do, he'd forget about his sister leaving and Ryn rejecting him.

He'd lost himself in so many women over the years. Meaningless s.e.x became a cleansing of sorts. That release that lasted mere seconds gave him a sense of relinquis.h.i.+ng control. Ryn thought hating someone was exhausting-so was needing control. s.e.x should have meant more. Life should have meant more. But they didn't.

Jude Day killed people, more people than his sister could ever have imagined. Jude Day f.u.c.ked women, but not for the reasons anyone would have imagined. His parents gave him the fairytale and then they ripped it away. Love, the kind that's not bound by blood, it didn't exist. He hated Jessica for pretending that it did. She would break Luke or Luke would break her. The inevitability happened the day Luke sobbed over her empty casket.

Jessica let Luke go because she thought it was the right thing to do. Jackson knew Luke would never see it that way. Jude Day never gave women the chance to break him. He could never be his father.

Jessica never knew her dreams of normalcy and love were built on illusions. She idolized their parents' marriage. Sunny Day's blood ran through her daughter's veins. Their mother loved another, then she built a family on pillars of altruism and loyalty.

Had Jessica and Claire not been kidnapped, Jude would have told her the truth. Before Claire died, they had no secrets. After she died, Jude's life revolved around protecting Jessica from herself, her past, and anyone who might shatter her dreams.

"Jackson?"

He lifted his head from his arms crossed on the ledge of the piano. It wasn't like him to not hear things, but Ryn stood before him.

"Hey."

"Were you sleeping?"

Relinquis.h.i.+ng a sad smile, he shook his head. "Just ... deep in thought."

"Oh. Well, do you want me to come back?"

"Nope." He stood. "I'm gonna take off. Go for a ride on Jillian's bike. Supposedly it's good for clearing the mind."

"It's like ... thirty degrees outside."

He shrugged then giving her an easy nod, walked past her toward the back door.

"Jackson?"

"Yes?" He turned.

"Are you upset with me?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because of the cold shoulder and curt nod."

Tipping his chin down, he chuckled and shook his head. He would never understand women.

"My body temperature runs pretty warm, so it's unlikely I gave you the acold' shoulder. And it was just a nod, not a acurt' nod."

"So ... we're good?"

He sighed. "Are you good, Ryn?"

"So you are upset with me."

"Oh for the love of-" His frustration released as a growl. "Cheese cubes on a blanket, stable boy my a.s.s," he grumbled. "I don't speak awoman'. Never have. Never will. When it comes to relations.h.i.+ps I have a master's degree in f.u.c.king. You were the exception, but clearly I should go back to what I'm best at. So you go enjoy your porch swing ma.s.seur with an eye for the perfect paint color, and I'll do what I do best. For a brief moment in time I believed monogamy was possible for me. So thank you for reminding me why that's not possible. It seems as if we've both helped each other realize our self-worth."

The tears in her eyes would not break him. No woman would break him.

Ryn blinked them away. "I ... I deserved that."

Jackson forced a breath out his nose-a half-suppressed, cynical laugh. "No. You didn't. But until you realize that, you'll always be the victim."

Chapter Five.

Darkness.

Finally. The lights were off or Jillian had died. The latter being her preference. The desert heat pulling every ounce of moisture from her body intensified as she came to. The question of Heaven or h.e.l.l for the duality of Jessica and Jillian seemed to be answered.

"Welcome back. Hungry?"

Of course, the psycho daughter of Edgar Brighton would be in h.e.l.l too. Or maybe she was the Devil. It all began to make sense until the wretched smell of animal carca.s.s infiltrated Jillian's nose.

"Sorry. The chef doesn't accommodate vegetarians."

Jillian opened her eyes, taking a slow survey of the room. "Oh my G.o.d," she whispered.

"So you remember this place? I thought you might. I had two places in mind when I planned this years ago, but this one felt like the best fit to give you closure. The other place would have given me closure, but I'll make this work for both of us."

The odds of leaving that room alive for a second time felt stacked against her. Jillian's captor was one sick b.i.t.c.h.

"I can't tell you how disappointed I was that they painted the floor. The thirteen-year-old blood stains would have added to the effect I'm going for, but I bought it anyway."

They were in San Diego, in the same bas.e.m.e.nt where Claire died. The red glow of heating elements from at least a dozen s.p.a.ce heaters gave the dungeon a dim light like a piece of meat under the broiler. Jillian preferred the bright lights and icy water that left her blind to her surroundings and the memories they evoked.

Psycho b.i.t.c.h perched on a stool in the corner, holding a personal fan up to her face.

"You knew Four."

"Four." She laughed. "I heard that's what you called him. Monsters don't deserve human names and all that c.r.a.p, right?"

Correct a.s.sumption by Psycho b.i.t.c.h. The bow and arrow on the floor next to the stool caught Jillian's eye. She tipped her chin to see the wound on her shoulder minus the arrow.

"No. I didn't know Edwin Harvey until he cut your BFF forty-four times."

Jillian bared her clenched teeth like a rabid animal.

Psycho b.i.t.c.h shrugged. "What? Is that not how it happened?" She rolled her eyes. "I'm kidding. As I told you earlier, I know more about you than you do. Now, Matthew Green? I did get the chance to make his acquaintance, but just via phone conversations. It took me a little while to track down that slimy little worm, but when I found him he couldn't resist a hundred grand to kill you."

"I killed him."

Psycho b.i.t.c.h shrugged. "I thought you might. It was a win-win for me either way. If he killed you, I wouldn't have had all the fun I'm having now, but the end result would have been the same. And if you killed him, which you did, then I didn't have to dish out a hundred grand and you-Jillian Knight-officially had blood on your hands, and it opened the door to f.u.c.k with your brain when I decided to send you all those messages."

"It's all about the mind-f.u.c.k."

"I spent five long years in a mental inst.i.tution so yes ... I get a high from manipulating everyone else's brains."

She sighed. "Anyway ... as I was saying, Edgar took pity on me after I graduated college. My exemplary grades in school earned me a job with G.A.I.L., working in intelligence and logistics. A behind-the-scenes position. Before Jude Day was allowed to snap anyone's neck, I made sure the intelligence we had was accurate. Very few people saw or knew me. I had a small cubicle and a computer with security access that rivaled the Pentagon. Edgar gave me a code name, and that's all anyone knew."

The heat. Jillian's brain lagged several steps behind the long explanation. Hunger and dehydration vied for her attention more than the story behind Edgars's stepdaughter and her road to insanity. The bowl of brown sludge on the floor brought bile inching up her throat.

Dog food. Psycho b.i.t.c.h didn't miss a thing, including Four feeding Claire dog food.

"G.A.I.L. did a psychological evaluation on you afterward. The report said you refused to eat. Are you still a vegetarian? I bet I'll break you of that. I bet you'll be licking the contents of that bowl before you die."

Jillian had a lot of bets going on too. She bet Four's murder would look like child's play compared to what she had planned for Psycho b.i.t.c.h. Jessica Day had been young, still valued her life and possessed a few give-a-f.u.c.ks in her conscience. Not Jillian Knight. She would blow up the whole city of San Diego to seek revenge on one person.

Jessica had two parents, Luke, and a brother that loved her. Jillian had the memories of a dead lover, a brother that had lost the last breath of his humanity, and a feeling of certainty that Luke hated her. How could he possibly not?

Day A small horse disguised as a black and white Great Dane sat next to the bed like a statue-a drooling statue. Jessica peeked open one eye, puckering her lips to blow Jones a kiss as she reached for the birthday boy.

Naughty intentions curled the corners of her lips-lips that she wanted to wrap around the world's most beautiful c.o.c.k. She never imagined thinking of a p.e.n.i.s as beautiful, until Luke. Everything about him screamed beautiful, perfect, and slightly a.n.a.l-retentive ... in a s.e.xy way. She loved early-morning-mussed-hair Luke, but during their nearly two years together, she'd also come to crave the stunning, polished man in a suit. He bled authority, control, and an overall f.u.c.k-me vibe.

Her hand found smooth, folded sheets and a fluffed pillow. Jackknifing to sitting, she frowned at his side of the bed with its military-style order: sheets pulled tight and tucked under his side, the top folded down a perfect six inches with no sign of wrinkles.

"Luke?"