I frown. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”
“You think fucking on the bike in broad daylight is the kind of care you need right now?” he asks, tugging me toward the front door.
“Maybe.” I mean it. Maybe that is care, for me. Fast and rough and choking on his knuckles while some old bat watches from behind a lace curtain.
“That’s why you’re mine,” he says, opening the door. “Now get your ass inside before I rail you against the siding and traumatize that old bitch into hospice. Benji’s out of bail money.”
Benji paid your bail?
I stumble like he hit me. Because he did. Emotionally. In the part of me that still believes good things are punishment in disguise.
I follow Jett inside anyway, because he said mine, and because I still need to know how a man like Jett cares for someone.
Because he’s me. Just… taller, meaner, and better at hiding it. He doesn’t know how to love without claws. Doesn’t believe in happy endings and this open-hearted, no-exit-sign bullshit.
Doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust me. But he’s still here. Ready to fuck until we figure it out or break trying.
He stops just inside the door and turns to hand me a brown paper bag. In fat black Sharpie, it says: POST JAIL CARE KIT.
My brain stutters. “What the fuck is this?”
“It’s aftercare,” he says. “For when you get fucked by the system.”
I stare at him. Step back, suspicious. “You gift-bagged my trauma?”
“You left me a few,” he shrugs. “Didn’t say thank you. Don’t make it weird.”
“Oh, I’m the weird one now?” I shoot back, palms out like I’m warding off holy water. “You don’t hand deliver a stalking bag. You leave it somewhere slightly menacing. A landmine. A threat wrapped in tissue paper.”
He lifts the bag and shakes it at me like it’s a weapon. “You left mine to fuck with me. This is returning the favor.”
“Ohhh,” I say, tilting my head. “So it’s revenge gifting. I can work with that.”
“Open the fucking bag.”
I take it. It’s heavier than it looks. I unroll the top and peer in.
A tiny pink beanbag unicorn stares up at me like it knows things. Okay. Pink. He remembered that. And fuck me, I melt. Like a dumb bitch who thinks maybe she deserves things.
There’s a pack of Skittles, a bag of chocolate-covered cashews, pink fucking brass knuckles with a crown etched into the handle, and a keychain.
I flip it.
JETT’S on one side. DON’T TOUCH MY SHIT on the other.
I look up at him slowly. “This is a lot.”
“So are you,” he says.
I hate how fast I fold. How fast my insides go liquid sweet when he says shit like that. He knows I’m too much and still wants me.
“Now I’m gonna bathe you,” he says, stepping in like a storm front, hot, mean, and probably carrying an emotional tornado warning. “I got some vanilla sugar bullshit. That’s what you smell like.”
My mouth goes dry. “Okay. Are you going to fuck me?” I ask, already dizzy from the weight of him in the room.
“Yes,” he says. “Not sure how sweet that’ll be. But I’m trying.”
And that’s what undoes me. Not the bag. Not the brass knuckles. Not the sugar scrub or the threat of another blackout orgasm.
