Endless Knight (The Arcana Chronicles #2)(28)

I buried my head in my hands. “I don’t want to!”

“I understand that now. Something comes over you. It’s still you, but you got a problem. Peek?n, look at me.”

I glanced up.

“If you got a problem, I can work with that.”

I wasn’t convinced. “Being with you hurts.”

“But sometimes it’s good. Real good between us. You thought my kiss was ‘perfect.’?” His gaze flicked from my lips, to my neck, to my collarbones . . .

“I never told you—” Realization dawned. “Oh, my God.” My jaw dropped, my earlier suspicion confirmed. Yep, just as humiliating as I’d feared. “You took the Alchemist’s recorder!” Which contained the tape of my life story.

Jackson flashed me a shameless grin. “Ouais. Been listening to it for days. That was one reason why I got held up that morning in Requiem. I was sourcing for some earphones, so I could listen under my hood.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I played a big role in that tale, wanted to make sure you got me right.”

“That’s why you’ve been so up and down?” The angry looks, the troubled looks. The smirks?

“Some things you said pissed me off.” Expression darkening, he grated, “Had to listen to you talking about your boyfriend. Bad enough the first time around.”

Brand had been a good guy. Immature, maybe, but he’d had a good heart. His and Jackson’s personalities had been as different as day and night. The two had hated each other.

“But then you’d turn around and say something good. Like when you were nice to Clotile. You smiled at her and waved hello, when not another person in school was kind to her.”

I could’ve been nicer to her, wished I had been.

“Or when you described our kiss at the pool at Selena’s house.” Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. “I must’ve worn a groove in the tape listening to that over and over.”

The way his lids went heavy and he shuddered, you’d think he’d had an eargasm. My breaths grew shallow in reaction. And suddenly I was very aware of my nakedness, of the cooling water. Of Jackson peering at my damp skin.

“That tape was private!”

“You’d tell this Arthur guy, a stranger, our story?”

“By that point, I was fairly sure he would never tell another soul.” My skin began to glow with remembered fury, glyphs winding along my arms, across my chest. Were my eyes turning green?

Jackson stared at the changes in me. “You showing me these . . . these glyphs to scare me off?”

Huh. He had the lingo right.

“It woan work. That tape let me wade into this Arcana thing, let me learn about it little by little. Like you did. And I heard you say that I was your anchor.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You pulled back from killing that Irish kid—once you saw me. Do you deny that?”

At length, I shook my head.

“You need me, and now I know it,” he said. “You warned me it wasn’t ever goan to be easy with you. I’m still signing on.”

“Why would you? This is deadly and weird and terrifying.”

“So is this whole world!” He shoved his fingers through his wet hair. “Here’s how messed up in the head I am: I can accept this game better than I can your secrets. At least now I know what I’m up against.”

Part of me was delighted that he wanted me. Part of me thought anything between us was doomed. “Let’s just be realistic about our chances—”

“You wanna know what I’m feeling? Lemme tell you, bébé. Amusement. You’re acting like we got some kind of choice in this matter. You’re just as screwed as I am—because we’re both too far gone for the other.”

I bristled. “Liking me is akin to being screwed? I thought you were smoother than this, ladies’ man, with all your gaiennes.”

He shrugged. “The other night after we kissed, I told myself to just keep walking. That this shit was too heavy for me and none of my business. I told myself not to think about you.”

I’d told myself the same and had just as little success.

“Hell, you expected me to desert you anyway. But I got sicker with each step, like someone had strung up my guts with barbed wire. And I realized you got me by the balls. Stupid to fight it. Doan give a damn what you are.”

“Be still my heart,” I said in an arch tone, but I was softening toward him, as ever.

Yet then I remembered more of what I’d said on that tape. Such as how jealous and hurt I’d been when he’d flirted with Selena. Or how I felt like I’d lost my ever-living mind when he’d kissed me.

Was that what he’d been smirking over? “I still can’t believe you’d violate my privacy like that!” In school, when Jackson had wanted to see my journal, he’d stolen it. When he’d wanted to listen to my messages to my boyfriend? He’d stolen Brand’s phone.

Jackson kept running roughshod over me, and I was sick of it. “You need to leave.” My glyphs were so vivid, they lit the room more brightly than the fire. “I want to get dressed.”

“Doan let me stop you. I ain’t leaving until you admit how you feel.”

“You’re going to blackmail me?” Now it was a matter of principle. He’d crossed the line by listening to that tape, and now he expected me to reward him for it?