I was never sure how people put their lives back together until I had to.
I mean, what had happened at Addison’s house, that wasn’t the kind of stuff you just…got over. Even though what had happened had only taken a matter of minutes to play out, it had imprinted itself on my memory in a way I couldn’t make sense of.
Elijah was in a coma, and had been for the month since the incident had happened. I prayed for him every night—I wasn’t much of a religion person, and I was sure he wasn’t either, but I had to do something. If he hadn’t become involved in this, it never would have happened. I was the one who had to call up Scott, and tell him that the man he’d looked up to for years and years was fighting for his life. I knew that every second he spent unconscious was another where making a full and complete recovery was less and less likely.
I did my best not to linger on those thoughts—after all, it hadn’t been me who’d brought that poker down on to his head—but sometimes I had dreams where I was the one swinging it. The blood-curdling crack it had made when it came into contact with his skull haunted me. I couldn’t get him out of my head, and couldn’t convince myself that I had done enough to stop what had happened. I went in to visit when I could, but I tried to avoid his family—I was probably the last person they wanted to see.
And beyond Elijah, I had my own injuries to attend to. Not just physical—no, those scars seemed to even themselves out soon enough. But the ones that spun around my head only seemed to get worse as time went on.
I knew I should have been over it by then. Nothing had really happened to me, after all—it had just been a matter of making a quick escape and hiding out until we knew that the police had secured the area. For all Jazz’s talk of the police not liking to work with people like him, they had done their level best to get us to safety after all of that went down. Jazz kept his head down and didn’t reveal anything about himself to them, but I still found myself thankful they were there at all. I wondered if they hated us too—if they felt as though we’d taken one of their own from them. Judging by the cards and flowers on Elijah’s bedside table at the hospital, he had been well-liked by almost everyone he’d ever met. And now, I had no idea if he was even going to wake up at all.
Ian. This had all come down to Ian. I had never seen him before that day—in fact, Jazz hadn’t even described him to me. I supposed I had the image of this great beast of a man, a terrifying specter more like the monsters Ella and I came up with than a real human being. So when we saw him—lean and skinny and tall, his eyes too big for his head and his teeth too big for his mouth—the reality of the situation came into focus.
I still remembered the feeling I got when he looked at me, the exact same one I had had when I’d first seen the photographs—that sensation of wanting to tear my skin from my bones, to make myself look as unappealing as possible just to get his eyes off of me. His eyes were so dark they were almost black, and looking into them felt like staring deep into some void that I knew I would never find the bottom too. It made my soul ache to think of him. I might have felt sorry for him, once upon a time, might have wondered what made him this way, reached out to see if there was anything I could do to help. But now, all I wanted was him gone. I found myself looking over my shoulder at every opportunity, double-bolting doors and glancing in the rear view mirror to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I felt like this paranoia was consuming my life.
I had moved in with Jazz more or less completely after it happened. The thought of being separated from him and Ella was just too much to bear. We stayed up at the safe house—the thought of going back to that place where Ian had spent so long watching us was unthinkable. We holed up there and made it our home—even though every day we spent there reminded me what Elijah had done for us, and what he had gotten in thanks.
We drove Ella to school every day, trying to keep some form of normality; the school had been informed of what was going on, and they seemed nervous around the three of us. We were there right as the bell rang for the end of the day, scooping her up and taking her home—there was no going around to her friends’ houses, no visits, no trips, no nothing. We needed to know where she was at any given second of the day. I hated having to exert this kind of control over her, but we needed her safe. We needed her away from Ian.
I had started feeling ill, too—not constantly, but not long after I woke up and often far into the day. I was too busy with Ella and what little work I was still able to do given the situation to really give it much thought, but it was there, gnawing away at me all the way through the mornings. I knew I should have got it checked out, but I was too scared to go to any of the places I used to frequent, and that included my doctor.
It was late one evening when the call came through—the phone buzzed as I was reading with Ella, and I practically leapt out of my skin. I was jumpy now, jumpier than I’d ever been before. What had started out as some intriguing mystery-adventure had ended up practically stealing my life from me. I hated myself for letting it get to me like this, but what else was I supposed to do? Put myself in danger for the sake of pretending that my life was still even remotely normal? I continued to read to Ella, but I watched Jazz carefully.
“Hello?” He left the room with the phone pinned between his ear and his shoulder. He was making dinner, and his hands were otherwise engaged.
I tried my best to keep reading and to listen in, but I couldn’t do both at once; Jazz’s voice continued to nag at me through the wall as he spoke. But he didn’t sound angry or upset—no, if I could read his tone at all, it was…happy? That wasn’t something I’d heard in a long time.
Jazz and I were officially together by then. Of course we were. I adored him in ways I had never adored a man before, and he returned all my feelings without reservation. But I couldn’t help but think about how unfair it was that we’d had to conduct the honeymoon phase of our relationship amongst all this horror and destruction.
Where we should have been getting to know each other, slowly moving towards living together as a family—we were thrown together, skipping out on all the sweetness and lightness. It felt like we were doing it backwards—moving in and getting serious in the hopes that things would lighten up later and we could start dating properly. I was falling for him, but this whole thing was confusing and messy and not exactly how I would have done it had I had a choice in the matter. Still, that didn’t stop my heart flipping whenever he casually pulled me in for a kiss while he was cooking. I mean, this was still Jazz, after all.
A few minutes later, Jazz emerged from the bedroom and slowly put the phone back in its cradle. He wore an unreadable expression, and I patted Ella on the head and got to my feet.
“I’ll be back in a second, okay sweetie?” I glanced over at her, but she was already buried in her book. She was a line to sanity in all of this—as a kid, she could adapt to anything as the new normal without a second thought. I wished I could be as fluid as she was.
“Who was that?” I nodded towards the phone, and Jazz turned back to the cooker. He shot a look over at Ella, lowered his voice, and then spoke.
“It was Scott,” he began. “He said…he said they caught Ian.”
“What the hell?” I leaned forward, my heart pounding in my chest. “When? Where? How?”
“At the halfway house,” he went on. “An hour or so ago. He was stalking around there, they think to try and figure out where we were after we left the house.”
“And they arrested him?”
“Addison spotted him and called the cops, and they managed to get him this time.” His eyes were wide, and I could tell that this was all still sinking in—that it didn’t feel real quite yet. “He’s in custody. He’s…he’s gone.”
“Are you serious,” I breathed, but it wasn’t a question. I knew Jazz wouldn’t joke around about shit as serious as this, and I knew Scott wouldn’t either. My head was spinning, and I gripped the counter for support. “Does this mean we can go back?” I looked up at him. I missed my apartment, and the thought of a night in my own bed was tantalizing. The thought of a night in bed with Jazz, even more so. In fact, my brain was already ticking over with the possibilities of what we could get up to now that the constant, nagging fear of the last few weeks had finally lifted.
“I…I think so.” Finally, a grin broke over his face. He closed his eyes and let his head drop back, relief oozing off of him in waves. He caught my hand in his, and brought it to his lips, planting a kiss at the center of my palm carefully, as though I was something delicate that he didn’t want to break. Then, he pulled me into a hug before striding over to see Ella. He picked her up in one swift motion and pulled her in close—she seemed surprised, but happily hugged him back.
“Honey,” he murmured into her hair, “I think we’re going home.”
Ella smiled at him, and I knew she couldn’t really grasp the seriousness of what he’d just said. As far as she was concerned, the three of us had just been taking a little holiday away—that we could have gone back at any time if we wanted to. She didn’t understand how profound this was.
Jazz put her down again, and turned back to the food, dialing quickly and tucking the phone under his ear as he had done earlier.
“Who are you calling?”
“The cops,” he replied absently. “Just going to let them know that we’ll help out any way we can. Anything to get that…”
He trailed off, and glanced over at Ella, an almost comically guilty expression on his face. Of course, he couldn’t say what he really felt in front of her. Mainly because how he really felt would be riddled with curse words and insults so nasty that I wasn’t sure even I would have heard all of them. I would have argued that she’d heard way worse coming from the Marauders, but then, I saw the way they treated her—if someone cursed in front of their little mascot, I had the feeling that they would break their nose where they stood.
Jazz had hidden all this from them, at least so far—he’d still been attending meetings once in a while, just enough to keep them from questioning things too closely. But I could tell that the fear of everything Ian might do if he found us was creeping into every aspect of his life—who was he to say that Ian hadn’t got one of them on his side and was gleaning information at every turn? Not to mention the fact that they would likely hunt Ian down and tear him apart themselves if they found out what was going on. It was safer this way, although Jazz had admitted that he felt guilty about hiding something this enormous from them.
Jazz called around—the cops, the motorcycle club, everyone—to catch up on everything that had happened and let everyone know that things were going to be okay. His face seemed to open up over the course of the next hour—I hadn’t noticed the tension he’d been carrying in his forehead or his jaw until it fell away. He was all smiles, taking long strides around the kitchen as though he owned the place. I had never seen him this happy in all the time I’d known him—but then, this was the first time since we’d met that this had all been put to bed.
We were free from the horror of whatever had been pursuing us. Now it was just us, this little ramshackle family, left to put all the pieces back together at our own pace. I knew it would take a long time to bounce back from, that it would be months until I stopped checking over my shoulder every time there was a noise I didn’t recognize, but I would get there. Ian was done with. That was all that mattered.
Jazz continued with dinner while Ella and I began to pack up—it didn’t take long, but I wanted to make sure that we had everything before we left. There was no way I wanted to come back here—yes, it had been our home for a while, but it had almost been temporary, with the promise of something real and homey hanging over it.
We ate dinner together around the small table that sat against the far wall of the living room; we would usually crash in front of the TV, exhausted from another day of worry. But this time, we took our places around the table and ate together, talking about Ella’s day and what we were going to do when we returned back to the house. For the first time since the incident at Addison’s house, I felt myself relax completely. Jazz squeezed my knee under the table a couple of times, a reassurance that we were still on, that we hadn’t solely been based on the drama. I covered his hand with mine and squeezed back. This all felt so right—I had been worried that when everything fell away, we’d be left with nothing to keep us together, but I had been wrong.
Ella grabbed her coloring books from her bag and sat on the table filling them out; we helped, letting her stay up later than usual so we could finish out one of the books. I think Jazz would have happily sat there all night long with her if he could; he kept on glancing up and staring at her, as though he couldn’t truly believe that she was safe now.
Eventually, Ella let out a huge yawn and placed down her pens.
“Shall we finish packing and get off home?” Jazz suggested, and Ella nodded happily. I could see that little glimmer of excitement in her eyes—I felt it too. The two of them retreated to her room to finish up. I stayed where I was for a moment, staring off into space, and trying to recall the last time I had had a moment so small and simple and satisfying as this one. I began to clear off Ella’s stuff absentmindedly, packing it all away for the return to the house later that evening. It felt like years had passed since we’d last spent an evening there—and while I would be heading back to my own apartment soon enough, I wanted to get some time with Ella and Jazz at theirs before I did so.
With everything packed, Jazz clapped his hands together and stood in the middle of the living room. He scanned the place carefully for a moment, and then shrugged.
“Looks like we’re ready to go!” he exclaimed, and I could hear the bubbling excitement in his voice—it mirrored the joy in my head. Ella mimicked his clap and grabbed her dinosaur plush and held it tight to her chest.
“How long till we get there?” she asked seriously, and Jazz laughed and crouched down in front of her.
“Not long at all, my darling, I promise.”
We signed out of the safe house, and took my car all the way back through the city and to the house that I had first met this family in. How long had it been? Three months, four? Time had seemed to slip away, as if real life was only starting now.
Ella was asleep in the back of the car when we got there, and Jazz scooped her up and carried her towards the house while I grabbed as many bags as I could carry to take back in. As soon as we were through the door, Jazz flicked the light on and let out a satisfied sigh.
“It’s so good to be back,” he murmured, turning to smile at me, his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Ella—but it had been a futile effort, as she squirmed in his arms and came to.
“Daddy?” she muttered sleepily, and he made for the stairs.
“Come on, let’s get you ready for bed,” he reassured her, his tone gentle. I watched as he carried her towards her room, and wondered how desperately he’d longed for this moment. It was what had attracted me to him in the first place—the clear indications that he was an amazing father, a compassionate man, and a strong leader. I went out to the car to carry in the rest of the bags—I knew I should have been thinking about heading back to my place, but now that Jazz and I were alone again and free from all the stresses of the last month, I wanted to take advantage of the situation.
Jazz put Ella to bed and came back through to take a seat next to me on the couch. I turned to him with a smile, and he leaned forward to plant a kiss on my lips.
“Mmm, minty,” I murmured, keeping my eyes shut for a moment so I could enjoy the feel and the taste of him on my lips.
“Ella wanted me to brush my teeth with her. Can’t exactly say no.”
“Well, you taste good.” I laid my head against the side of the couch and fluttered my lashes up at him. I hadn’t much felt like hooking up since that day more than a month ago, and, while Jazz and I had shared a bed, it hadn’t gone much further than cuddling in the mornings for a while. But now, my libido was back with a vengeance—now that everything else was out of the way, I finally had space to get horny over this gorgeous guy once again.
“Not so bad yourself,” he retorted, shifting closer to me. He placed a hand on my waist, his fingers inching up the fabric of my shirt a little so he could trace his thumb across my bare skin. The feeling was exquisite; sometimes, it was the small touches that turned me to jelly more than the big gestures.
He leaned over and kissed me again, and this time, it was with more intent. His mouth moved slowly against mine, and I inhaled deeply as our tongues met. Even now, the smell of him was enough to send shivers down my spine, enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. It was as though his scent was enveloping me, and I couldn’t get over how good it felt. Being this close to him…I had wondered if we’d ever do this again, if the pain of what had happened was too heavy for us to carry. But, as he slid his hand further around my back and pulled me closer, I knew I had been a fool to think it at all.