The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“It’s better that way.”

She watched him, closely enough to see his self-inflicted injuries. “There are so many things I can fight you over, but not letting me love you enough isn’t one of them. What will you do?”

Hope his heart continued to pump, hope his chest didn’t cave in and his knees held him upright. “Work the phones. Hit the road.”

“What about Martha?”

He’d have to give her up too, at least until he found a place to land. “Would you take her for me?”

Derelie glanced toward the bedroom, to where only this morning they’d woken, legs tangled, lips following. She stood, cutting though skin, tissue, muscle, bone when she turned her eyes on him. “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m a dog person.”

“We’d never have made it,” he said, hands reaching behind him for the edge of his desk, his forced humor as destructive to him as her cool acceptance.

“Just as well we broke up. I’ll pack a bag. Let me know when you’re going to be out and I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff and leave my key.”

This was how it had to be.

She went to the bathroom, then the bedroom, and he followed her movements through the sound of her opening and closing drawers and closet doors, a zipper, a clip, the sound of a suitcase wheel on his hardwood floor.

She rebuffed his help. She worked efficiently, calmly, and in no time packed most of her stuff to go and rolled her case over to the door.

He shut Martha in the bedroom. “Let me carry that downstairs for you.”

She kept her back to him, hand to the door handle. “I’ll take the elevator.”

“I’ll walk you out.” He wanted one last look at her face, one last chance to hold her.

“Please don’t do that.” Her voice shook, her breathing was messed up.

Ah fuck. “Derelie.”

“I have one last question.”

Martha pawed the bedroom door. Questions were the beginning of them. Fitting a question ended them. “Anything.”

“Was it real, you and me, us, being in love, or did you just get carried away by the moment and decide to sweep me off my feet for the headline?”

It was the challenge of her, the depth, the quick sweet intimacy and the promise of what they could’ve become had things been different.

“It was real, but things have changed.”

Martha switched from pawing to heaving her body against the door. Derelie turned the front door handle and tipped her bag onto its wheels. “The only thing that’s changed is that I discovered you’re a coward.”

She rolled her bag into the corridor at the same time as Martha forced the bedroom door open and shot toward freedom. Jack grabbed one back leg, earning an angry yowl, and swept Martha into his arms.

When he looked up, Derelie was pulling the door closed behind her. “Goodbye, Jack. Good luck finding what you’re looking for.”

He didn’t find it in the ball of frustrated fur in his arms, or at his desk, or in the number of calls he made and emails he sent. He didn’t find it in bed, where he had trouble sleeping alone, or the bottles he tried to drown himself in. Martha sensed his self-destructive mood and stayed clear of him. He flew out to New York and did a round of coffee meetings and planned the same for Washington, but with the suit hanging over his head, he was too hot to touch.

He’d had an email from Roscoe with a curt I’ll get back to you when I know something. Madden said he had nothing to add. Jack couldn’t wait much longer to find his own legal counsel.

He hung out a writer-for-hire shingle, built a website and found its contact page flooded with spam and conspiracy theorists who wanted him to donate his time to their particular search for justice. For the want of a way to get paid, he could write about secret societies in control of the world, cults who could predict the end of the world, or shape-shifting extraterrestrial reptilian humanoids who wanted to eat the world.

He read Derelie’s daily stories and saw the future of journalism in her words. He watched their Swoon video on endless loop like it would help him make sense of his life. The wonder in her smile, the laughter in her eyes. He remembered Barney’s images as well. In them he was the alien. A different man who looked at ease. Then after his longest absence from the Church of the Cocked Fist, he requested a fight and got put on the schedule.

“Thought I’d see you sooner than this, Haley,” Barney said, when he arrived. “A month since you lost that job. Why now?”

“Does it matter?” It always mattered to Barney, and it wasn’t about losing his job. “I lost her.”