“Why does your face look like that?” AJ asked, cruelly bringing me back to the present.
“I fucking said to not banter with me.”
He threw his hands up. “Dude, I wasn’t trying to. You just looked weird.”
“Well, so do you, so—ugh,never mind. Let’s go.”
I stomped past the back porch and forced myself not to look at the damage there, where both Bree and Liem had been injured. If I did, I’d start imagining how they would have looked thrown to the ground and bleeding while I was wasting days on a cruise ship.
And then I’d probably spend the next hour on all fours, puking my guts out instead of doing somethinggood.Instead ofmaking my own amends by ensuring that my best friend didn’t lose her memories, however conflicted they may be.
Or however dangerous they were to retrieve.
We came to a halt under the largest oak trees in the side yard, and I rounded on AJ to tell him the plan, but he was no longer there.
The sound of retching suddenly came from the other side of the tree.
Had I manifested that?
With a lot of reluctance and the resolve to breathe through my mouth, I peered around the trunk, finding AJ braced against it with one hand as he panted heavily. Sweat was beading on his forehead, and he no longer looked pale. He looked gray.
He eventually recovered enough to remove his suit jacket and wipe his entire face with it before tossing it onto the ground.
I gestured toward the scorched, broken home. “Surely you’ve seen this before today.”
Leaning back against the tree, he closed his eyes tightly and gritted between clenched teeth, “I was dealing blackjack when it happened.”
Bewildered, I just frowned at him. He opened his eyes then and fixed me with a fierce stare, and I subconsciously braced myself for whatever he was going to say next.
“I didn’t set the fire.”
I reared back. “What? Why—” I shook myself, my mind like the reel of a slot machine trying to come up with three matching pieces, but it didn’t make sense. “Why do you think you even needed to say that?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but I continued, “Do you really think that if I suspected you’d set Miss Barb’s house on fire, we’d be doing this?”
Throwing his hands in the air, he yelled, “I don’t even know what we’re doing here! You’re being weird as fuck! And no, I hadn’t seen this, to answer your question. It’s fucking awful!”
“Like that’s new! Get with the fucking program, Ace.” I gestured wildly to the house, forgetting to not use his nickname in my outrage. “Bree has been in red-tape hell about this place, and there’s almost no chance she’ll be able to get any of her things from the house before it just rots away or is torn down.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you called me or why you brought me here!”
I threw my hands up in frustration, both of us now flailing like a pair of demented inflatable tube men outside a car dealership, except our signage would read “Pull over and watch our personal drama unfold before we engage in illegal activities!”
“It doesn’t matter!” I yelled, matching his volume. “Are you going to help me with this or not?”
He glared at me before marching away, a harsh, muttered “Fuck!”leaving his mouth before he spun on his heel and barreled back toward me. “Fuck,”he repeated. “Fine.”
“Fine,” I parroted, ignoring the relief that he hadn’t left. I wasn’t sure I could pull this off solo. “I just need you to get me onto that branch and catch whatever I can salvage,” I explained, pointing at the thick branch that was maybe twelve feet above us.
AJ squeezed his eyes shut briefly, looking like he regretted his entire life. As he should. “You are one dumb motherfucker.”
I slapped him on the shoulder more forcefully than was friendly. “I know. Now, give me a boost, and remember. Tell no one.”
He raised a blond eyebrow at me. “Won’t it be obvious when you rock up with a bunch of trinkets that reek of smoke?”
My brain fritzed at the valid question, but I ignored him. “No more questions.”
“Lord, help me,” he prayed under his breath as he walked over to the tree and made a cradle with his hands. “Up you go, then.”
