29. Jax

Jax

M y mother floats in a rainbow of light. I can't make out her face, but I can see the angle of her chin, and her dark hair, so similar to mine, floats like a halo around me.

"You haven't been listening to me."

She circles around me, and I turn to keep her in view. I lift my hand out to reach for her and see the hand of a child. I stare at my hand, almost forgetting that she's there until she moves in close and pushes my wrist down.

"Listen to me. What did I tell you?"

"Love is blind," I parrot.

"No." She hums, a sound so familiar but one I haven't thought of for years. "Do you remember that day we went on the picnic? We packed the night before, and I borrowed Taylor's car, and we drove out to the forest and hiked for hours until we found the perfect spot."

I smile, remembering. "It was like magic." There's something strange about how young my voice sounds. My mind does a strange little tilt as I try to orientate myself.

"It was the best day ever," Mum says slowly. "Those days were too few. I wanted…I had ideas, plans. Things went wrong. You can understand now, can't you?"

"Yes, Mum, I understand. It wasn't your fault. You were sick."

The colours flare brighter for a moment. I can almost sense her frustration.

"We went back to that spot a couple of times, but we couldn't find the magic of that day. It's funny that you can do everything the same way and try to recreate exact moments and fail so spectacularly. Chasing the high."

Mum sounds like she's lost, scared. I reach out, but the room spins in a whirl of colours, and we are standing in my childhood home. The beat up kitchen table with its two vinyl chairs and its empty cupboards. There's a notebook on the counter next to a kettle and my mum's keys that are over-packed with a million keyrings she doesn't need. I used to love the sound they made when she carted them around. The bedroom doorway yawns open, the room beyond it looming dark like a pit. It makes my heart race. I can barely take my eyes from it. There is something really wrong in that darkness.

Mum moans again and reaches for my hand. "Chasing the high. You have to remember. Everything you need to know to survive is in your mind. Wash the drugs, the feelings, everything you think you know, away, and let the past reclaim you."

I shake my head. "I can't do that. He'll kill me."

"Oh, baby, you're already dead."

I don't expect the hand that smashes into my cheek. The other hand grips into the back of my neck, nails digging deeper and deeper. I throw my head back and groan.

My mother reappears, her eyes so close to mine I can see the moment the tiny veins explode. She opens her mouth, and dirt and maggots roll out onto my chest.

"WAKE UP!"

I throw myself out of the bed, land hard on my knees, and scramble to the other side of the room. My cheek still smarts, and I raise my hand to the back of my neck. When I pull it away, there's blood on my hand.

The red on my fingertips smears down towards my palm, and today, after that dream, it seems ominous. I get up and find a neatly stacked pile of clothes on the chest of drawers that I hadn't noticed last night. I walk over to them and look at the pink lace panties and decide that murdering Dane might make me feel a bit better.

Rafael looks up when I sweep into the kitchen. He holds up a cup of coffee that I reach for gratefully while Dane snickers into his tablet. Rafe leans down and kisses my cheek. It's so unexpected and sweet that I just stand there thunderstruck. It takes effort to shake off the effects of that innocuous kiss, but I have to. I have somewhere I need to be.

"I have to go home."

"No!" Rafael shouts.

I cock my head to the side and watch him curiously. Red stains his cheekbones, and he meets my eyes with a look of determination that takes my breath away.

"You can't go back there. If someone is drugging you. No. It's too dangerous."

Rafael crosses his arms across his chest and glares past me.

"I see." With a frown, I purse my lips and hum, immediately recognising the same sound my mother used to make. I force myself to stop and focus on Rafe, but my blood feels like it's boiling in its veins. "You don't get to tell me what to do, ever," I snarl, finally snapping.

Dane whistles and leans on the counter to get a better view. I shift my focus to him.

"I really, really hate pink."

"But you're wearing them," Dane points out.

"Am I?" I give him an evil look and turn back to Rafael while Dane chokes on his coffee.

"I'm not completely unreasonable. I can be talked to, have things discussed with, but I am a fully grown adult woman who is capable of deciding things for herself. Do not give me orders."

"You can't go somewhere where you'll be in danger," Rafe shouts.

"Newsflash, Rafael, I'm always in fucking danger. This guy has been around for years, and if he wasn't, I have my mystery ghosts, and if they weren't enough, there's the psychopathic psychiatrist and the deranged detectives. My whole life is a balancing act, but it's my life. My choices. I'll fight everyone over the right to choose."

Rafe slumps. "I don't want to see you get hurt."

"Which is really sweet, but if you'd asked, you'd know I wasn't talking about that home," I cut through his moping dryly.

Dane is still dabbing at his shirt and gives me a long, slow up and down before meeting my eyes.

"What home, then?"

"My mother's."

***

The apartment is smaller than I remember. Cleaner, too. The old woman who lives here was more than happy to let us in. I think she must be really lonely because she hasn't stopped moving once, bustling around from spot to spot, offering drinks and double choc chip cookies that are delicious.

She's thin, painfully so, and her wispy hair is long and tied up in a bun. She reminds me of one of the ghosts. Maybe she already has one foot in the grave like us.

Everything about the apartment is wrong. There's carpet where there used to be floorboards, the tables round when it should be square. My vision blurs as the past doubles over the present, and I try to see what my mother whispered about.

Rafael distracts the woman, and I wander around, absently touching the walls, the windowsills. So much of my life was here, the important things. Laughter. The moment it ended was so abrupt. We were poor, I can see that now, really poor, but I was happy. I had no notion of what poverty meant.

Dane hovers just behind me.

"What did she say?"

"She said that I need to remember the past."

"Was there anything strange in the dream?"

I shake my head and freeze. "Wait, yes, there was a dark spot on the bedroom door."

I turn towards the door and get a shiver, even though it's painted a glossy white and has dried flowers hanging from it. I can still feel that shadow from the dream.

"What did she do in there?" Dane asks.

I don't answer him, wracking my brain for the answer. "She had people come and go at night."

"Prostitution?"

I shrug. "I don't know, maybe. Maybe just boyfriends. Maybe they were doing drugs."

"Did you know anyone who went in there?"

I shake my head. "They were all strangers, adults, and she kept me hidden."

But there's something that's teasing the edges of my mind. I try to reach for it and turn slightly, and it's like I can see her again. I'm caught in that moment of when I found her. She's laying on the floor with her dress up around her waist. I crawl over to her, too scared to walk, and shake her shoulders. She doesn't move or respond, so I push her dress down. There's material tied around her upper arm. White, crusty saliva has dried down one side of her cheek, where her head lolled. But her neck is purple.

"Why is her neck purple?" Dane whispers.

I jolt, not realising I was talking out loud. "I think they must be hand prints. There's a cut on her cheekbone, and her lip is split. It wasn't there when she put me to bed."

I look through the memory with the eyes of an adult, sifting through and coming up with a conclusion that makes me wheeze.

"I think someone murdered my mother," I whisper.

Dane rests a hand against my lower spine. It's comforting and grounding. I shuffle closer to him.

"Let's go. I don't want to be here anymore."

Dane leads us straight to the door and effectively, politely, cuts the poor woman off before she can protest. Rafe gives her a kiss on the cheek and promises to come back with some recipes for her.

I hold it until we get outside, and then I can't anymore. I get the giggles. I know it's not normal, but I just can't seem to stop myself from laughing. There's this frantic feeling inside me, but the more I focus on Rafe and that lady, the more I float away from the fear. Sparrow would say this is a PTSD avoidance response. He would ply me with medications and therapy. That thought makes me laugh harder.

"What?" Dane asks slowly.

"He's like a ninety-year-old woman inside a thirty-five-year-old man." I wipe a tear from my eye, but Rafe's outraged expression sets me off again, and I laugh until I wheeze.

I look out the car window. "Stop."

"What?" Dane snaps.

"Just stop. There's something I need to do."

"Now?"

"Yes, now," I growl back, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror.

He pulls the car to a stop on the side of the road.

"Uh, Jax, there's nothing out here," Rafe points out.

"Exactly." I slide out of the car and march to the nearest building. I slip through the chain-locked door, squeezing through the gap, and head into the deepest, darkest corner.

"G?"

I turn in a slow circle, waiting, my heart thumping. He appears behind me, his hands skating over my hips, causing my body to break out in goosebumps. It is so hard to resist leaning back into him.

"Gideon," I turn in his arms, and his mouth slams down on mine.

Every doubt I had falls away. I don't care. He is mine. I'm his.

"Holy shit."

Dane's shocked hiss breaks into my mind, and I pull myself back. Gideon glares over my shoulder at the guys.

"We need to talk," I tell him.

No, we don't. I know what I need to know. He's mine, I don't care who he was or what he is.

I lead him over to Dane and Rafael, and the violence level seems to go through the roof, pulsing into the air around us.

"Guys, this is Gideon. G, this is Rafe and Dane."

They don't speak. I don't really expect them to. They stare at each other with a cold hostility that I don't think will ever be bridged.

"Gideon, can you tell me your name? The one you had before you died?"

His gaze is slow to return to mine, but when it does, he shakes his head.

"Oh." I'm disappointed, but not entirely surprised.

"Are you going to hurt her?" Dane growls.

Gideon snarls back. "No."

"Are you sucking her life force?"

Oh, my god, what kind of question is that? I'm embarrassed and furious. I want to slap him.

Gideon steps closer to Dane and shakes his head.

"Are you helping her stalker? Are you her stalker?"

Gideon makes a move that is clearly a threat.

"Did you put all the scars on her body? There's a fucking huge one on her thigh and burns on her chest and stomach. Was that you?"

Blood drains from my head. I feel sick.

"No," I whisper. "It wasn't him." They aren't listening to me. At all. My scars, I forgot about them. Did he see the brand? Has he figured out that those strange markings are a dahlia yet?

"Did you brand her, you sick fuck? Did you put that freaky looking flower on her hip?" Dane roars, refusing to back down.

I think I'm going to pass out.

Gideon snarls. It's vicious and cold and sends shivers up my spine.

"Why haven't you crossed over?" Dane fires at Gideon.

I'm so angry I have to blink just to clear my vision. "Dane, stop-"

Gideon moves so quickly I almost miss it. He flicks his arm out and just taps Dane on the back of the head.

It wasn't hard, it couldn't have hurt him, but Dane goes white. Even in the darkness, you can see his face bleached of colour. He takes a cautious step back, then another, until he spins on his heel and storms from the building.

I exchange a baffled look with Rafe. Gideon runs his hand from my shoulder to my fingers and steps back.

"No! Wait-"

But he's gone.

"What the fuck?" Rafe breathes in an awed whisper. "He talks! That's incredible."

I rub my aching temples and wonder if getting blind drunk would help. "What the fuck indeed, but which part? That whole thing was a clusterfuck."

Rafe slowly turns his head to look at me. His smile is slow to spread across his face, but then he has me in his arms and kisses me hard. His kiss is more tentative, more languid than Gideons. Rafe kisses me like he wants to get to know all of me slowly. Gideon just consumes me. Dane kisses me with challenge.

Rafe pulls back and presses his face against my neck.

"We need a drink. Yup, that's gonna help. Let's get out of here."

I take one last look at the shadows, but I can't see any sign of my wayward spirit. I don't know what Gideon's playing at, but I don't like this new game.

"Yeah, a drink. Or seven."