It hurt to breathe. Like the sort of excruciating pain that made my bruised ribs feel like a pulled muscle. I coughed, the movement wrenching injuries that weren’t quite healed. I made a pained sound, and that was when I realized that I wasn’t on the floor of the bar. I was on someone’s lap.

“Shh, easy. Slow breaths.”

Jax?

Why was Jax holding me?

Wait, I’d called him. No, he called me. He said he was coming over.

“Open your eyes, sweetheart.”

That did it. I blinked, tears filling my stinging eyes, then spilling down my cheeks. I frowned. Why was I crying? But I wasn’t crying. Was I?

“There you are.”

The relief in Jax’s voice had me shifting my gaze to his familiar face. Familiar, and filthy.

“What happened?” Wow. Was that my voice? Why did I sound like a fifty-year-old chain smoker?

“What do you remember?” He shook his head even as he asked the question. “Wait. Don’t try to talk. You inhaled a lot of smoke.”

Smoke? Why was there smoke?

I felt like I had smoke in my brain.

What happened? I remembered that I’d heard a noise and that I called the police. I talked to Jax, right before going out into the bar, armed with my dad’s old boning knife.

The smell of gasoline had made my eyes water, but I’d still seen someone standing near the cash register. I’d taken just a step or two toward whoever it was when a burst of pain had exploded in my head, and everything had gone dark.

“Is my bar burning?”

I tried to sit up, and Jax wrapped his arm around my shoulders to help. When I was in an upright position, I found myself wishing that I’d kept my eyes shut.

My bar, my home, was burning. Two cops were shouting at a fire truck that was just now pulling up, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to save it. The tears that streamed down my cheeks now had less to do with the smoke and more to do with the fact that I was watching everything I owned burn.

Everything my dad had ever owned or touched. Every memory I had of him. Every memento.

“I’m so sorry,” Jax said as he held me. “I wish I could’ve done something to stop it.”

A paramedic stepped into my field of vision. “Let’s take a look at you two.”

“I’m fine,” Jax said. “Make sure she’s okay.”

The young man knelt in front of me and began going through all sorts of questions and tests. A light shone in my eyes. A stethoscope listening to my raspy breaths. But I wasn’t really paying attention to anything he was doing. I just kept watching the fire.

Firefighters had hoses out now, but it didn’t matter.

My home was gone.

“Miss, we need to get you to a hospital.”

I shook my head, then coughed against Jax’s shoulder.

“You should go, sweetheart,” Jax said softly.

I barked out a laugh that sounded more like another cough. “When did you start calling me ‘sweetheart?’”

“It’s a long story,” he said as he smoothed back my hair. “And I plan on telling you everything, as soon as you get checked out.”

I glared at him. What the hell was he doing? I kicked him out after he’d tried to use sex to buy my bar out from underneath me. Why had he called me in the first place?

And why was he holding me on his lap like I meant something to him?

“No hospital,” I said.

The paramedic sighed and held up a mask. “At least put this on while I take care of your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, but the words were distorted by the mask, so I wasn’t sure anyone understood me.

Or if it was even important.

The paramedic walked around behind Jax. “You’re going to need to go to the hospital too.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Jax said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Is that glass from a whiskey bottle?” The paramedic’s voice was incredulous.

I pulled the mask off. “What?!”

“Breathe,” he insisted, putting the mask back on my face. “It’s nothing.”

I glared at him.

“One of the bottles exploded,” he said. “That’s all.”

“No,” the paramedic said. “That’s not all. You have shards of glass stuck in your back.”

“Can’t you just take them out?” he asked, his tone impatient.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“I have a friend who’s a doctor,” Jax said. “Just yank out the pieces, and I’ll have him come by to stitch me up.”

“Are you taking them to the hospital?” A cop came over, and Jax’s arm tightened around me.

“They don’t want to go.”

“Well, I’ve never known anyone who could make Jax Hunter do something he didn’t want to do,” the cop said. “He’s got quite the reputation in some circles.”

“I’ll get the paperwork,” the paramedic said, resignation evident in his voice.

“While we’re waiting for that, how about we get you two off the ground, and I’ll take your statements while we wait.”

I stood up, and the world spun. I would’ve fallen over if Jax hadn’t caught me. As soon as he was on his feet, he picked me up. I tried to tell him that I was perfectly capable of walking, but it was only a few feet to the cop car, and then he was putting me on my feet.

He opened the back door and then, to my surprise, sat down, leaving his feet on the ground. I remembered the glass in his back and hoped he wouldn’t forget and lean back.

Before I could offer to pull out the pieces, he reached for me and pulled me onto his lap. I should have stayed standing, or asked for another place to sit, but in that moment, I needed comfort.

And I wanted Jax to give it to me.

“All right, who wants to go first?”

“I will.” My voice sounded so strange in my ears as I told him everything that had happened up until the point where I’d been knocked out. “If you talk to Detective Lambert, he’ll get you up to speed on the rest of my case.”

“Here,” Jax said quietly. He helped me put the oxygen mask back on before he turned to the cop. “Like she said, I called her, and she told me that she heard someone in the bar. I told her to hide and that I was on my way. I caught a cab, and by the time I got here, there was smoke already coming out of the building. The front door was open.”

He hesitated, and I felt him tense under me, telling me that there was something he didn’t want to say out loud.

“Mr. Hunter?”

He glanced down at me, blowing out a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Syll.”

What was he apologizing for this time?

“When I was heading inside to get Syll, someone came running out. He ran into me.”

Even as the cop asked Jax if he recognized the guy, I knew what Jax was going to say.

“It was Billy Outhwaite,” Jax said. He looked at me, another apology in his eyes.

“Who’s Billy Outhwaite?”

“My ex-boyfriend,” I volunteered the answer. “We broke up earlier this week.”

“And you saw him too?”

“Hey, now,” Jax leaned forward.

I held up my hand. “It’s okay. It’s a legitimate question.” I turned back to the officer. “No, I didn’t see him. I saw a figure, and then someone knocked me out from behind.”

“So, he had a partner?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“He’s been seeing one of the waitresses at the bar,” Jax said. “Ariene something.”

I gave him a sharp look, and he had the decency to look sheepish.

“Do you think she could have been with him?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “She didn’t strike me as the arsonist type.”

“That’s enough,” Jax said as he put the mask over my mouth again. “You don’t know how long you were breathing that shit.”

“Mr. Hunter.”

Jax looked up at the officer. “I’m not done with my statement. I’m sure you want to hear about how I went into a burning building and found her laying on the floor, knocked out and bleeding from that cut on her head. I picked her up and carried her out. And it took another five minutes for you guys to show up. What’s up with that? Wrong part of town to get a quick response?”

My eyes widened.

“Mr. Hunter.” The cop looked just as surprised as I was. “We ran into an accident. We couldn’t get around it.”

“I guess I’ll just need to suggest to the commissioner that if he wants my continued support, he’ll need to make certain more cars are assigned to this part of the city. If you guys had been doing your job in the first place, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Jax.” I put my hand on his cheek.

What was he doing?

“I-I think that’s enough for now,” the officer said as he took a step back. “If you think of anything else, please come down to the station. We’ll give you a call, Miss Reeve, if we find anything.”

He walked away, leaving us sitting in the back of his squad car alone.

I pulled off the mask. “What was that all about?”

“What?” Jax tried to put the mask back on, but I pushed it away. “You need to–”

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “If you tell me why you called me, I’ll be good and keep the oxygen mask on until we sign whatever the paramedic has for us.”

“Fine.” He put the mask back into place. “I called you because I wanted to talk to you about what happened. I missed you this week. I’ve been miserable, and I thought you and I could talk about what this is between us.”

What the hell?

“We can do that later, after we’re safe at my place, clean and warm, and bandaged up.” He took a slow breath, then looked directly into my eyes. “But I do want to tell you what I realized on the way over here.”

My heart was suddenly pounding louder than the chaos around us.

“I’m in love with you, Syll, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to prove it to you.”

Well, shit. I had not seen that coming.