Under My Skin (Stark International Trilogy 3)

I do not remember taking my hands off the wall. I don’t remember sliding to the ground. I know only that I am curled up against him, my jeans pulled up but not fastened. My body glowing. My skin wonderfully sensitive.

“Thank god for you.” His voice is low, rough. “Thank god you’re a better fighter than I am.”

I can’t help my smile. But when I speak, I’m completely serious. “I won’t ever stop fighting for you. You need to get that through your thick skull.”

“I think you’ve managed to drill it in.”

This time, my smile turns into a laugh. “I think you did that,” I say, making him laugh, too.

His arms tighten around me, and I know we should get up. We’re sitting on the hard concrete with the scent of gasoline and oil lingering in the air and the roar of planes in the distance. But I don’t want to move and neither does he. Not yet. And so we simply stay still, lost in each other’s arms.

I’ve closed my eyes and am drifting when his voice pulls me back. “I went there,” he says, and I stiffen in his arms. “I was in his house the night that he was killed.” The words are flat and firm. As if Jackson is simply taking care of business, announcing this bit of news like someone else might state the weather.

I open my eyes and swallow, not sure what I should say. Not sure that I want to hear more.

“I already told Charles. There will be evidence,” he says. “A fingerprint. A security camera. Who knows? But they’ll find it.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “And whatever the police know, you will know first.”

“All right.” There is no point in arguing. Of that, I’m certain. I shift on the ground, needing to sit up so that I can see him. “Why did you go?”

“Why do you think? To threaten him. To tell him to give me the photos or pay the consequences.”

“You’ll tell the police that?”

His smile is so tender it melts my heart. “No. If I tell them anything at all, I’ll tell them it was about the movie. But the pictures—what he was threatening to do to you—that much stays hidden. I promise.”

He is already hugging me close, but I hug myself now, too, needing the comfort to support me for what I’m about to say. Then I draw a breath for courage. “Are you going to take the Fifth? Because if you don’t, you have to tell them everything, Jackson. Hold something back, and if it comes out it’ll bite you in the ass.”

“Sweetheart, they’re going to swallow me whole, and we both know it.”

“No.” I grab hold of his arm and cling to him. “You’re going to be cleared.”

He makes a noise, somewhere between a laugh and a derisive snort. “We can try to believe that, baby. But we both know it’s not true.”

“It has to be.” I say the words defiantly. And before I can stop myself, I hear myself asking the one question that I know I shouldn’t. “Did you kill him?”

“What does it matter?” he asks. “The system is capricious. You know it as well as I do.”

A faint dread washes over me, not because I’m afraid that Jackson killed him, but because he is right. If he did kill Reed, the system will make him pay, even for the death of a monster. And if he didn’t kill Reed, it won’t matter. He will be an innocent man falsely convicted, punished for the potency of his hate rather than the reality of his actions.

“Would it change anything?” he asks me. “If I killed him, would it change anything between us?”

“No.” I say the word fiercely, because he needs to know how much I mean it. That there is even some small part of me that hopes—maybe even believes—that it is true. And, yes, that is humbled and excited by the knowledge that Jackson would kill to protect me.

He closes his eyes—just for a moment—but I see some of the tension escape him. When he looks at me again, I see a vulnerability that he rarely shows.

“I’m scared.” His voice is low, and even this close, I have to strain to hear him. “And that’s not an emotion I’m comfortable with. But lately I’m becoming more and more familiar with it. I’m afraid of losing you. Ronnie. My freedom.”

I can hear the pain and the confusion in his voice, and I understand it. His daughter is in limbo as much as Jackson’s freedom is. And for a man who needs to hold tight to control, limbo is a horrible place to be.

“I can survive anything. I’m certain of that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not scared of where this is going. And I don’t like you having to see me carry all this shit.”