Today's Promises (Promises #2)(13)

“Yeah, it’s amazing what good nutrition can do,” I deadpanned.

Crick, fumbling with his smokes, nodded.

Lighting up, he held the pack out to me. “You want one?” he asked from around the filter of the cigarette he’d wedged between his lips.

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m good.”

And I was good, at that time.

It was the events that followed that freaked me the f*ck out.





Jaynie



When I emerge from the bathroom, fresh from the shower I eventually got around to taking, my hair is wet, and my skin is damp and sticking to my oversized sleep tee.

Since he didn’t check on me, not once, I know for certain something is up with Flynn. He’s still so damn distracted, in fact, that he doesn’t even notice that I’m back in the room.

Seated on the edge of the bed, in just his boxer briefs, he’s peering down intently at a small piece of cardstock in his hand.

A business card, maybe?

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Oh, hey, you’re back.” Flynn quickly opens the drawer of the nightstand next to our bed and tosses the card in. “And that”—he gestures to the drawer—“was nothing.”

I let out a little snort. “Since when do we save ‘nothing’?” He shrugs, and I add, “That’s not a very good hiding spot if you plan on keeping whatever that is a secret from me.”

He falls backward onto the bed and covers his face with his arm. “Jaynie,” he says on a sigh, “can you just let this one go?”

“Not a chance, bud.” I walk over to the bed.

As I stretch out next to him, lying on my stomach, I remind him, “We don’t keep secrets from one another, remember?”

He groans, then sneaks a peek over at me from under his arm. I touch the little crescent-shaped scar beneath his right eye, a present from his biological father, when he got too enthusiastic with his belt.

“If something’s going on, Flynn, you should want to talk to me about it.”

“Fuck.” He jumps up from the bed and heads over to the closet where he hung his coat when he first came in. After a few seconds of frantically fishing through the pockets, he pulls out a slightly crumpled cigarette.

I sit up, alarmed and surprised. “Flynn, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He ignores me as he scans the room. “Where’s that lighter we use to light candles with?” he asks.

“No, no, no.” I wave my hands around as I jump up. But when he gives me a look to not go ballistic, to let this one slide, I sit back on the edge of the bed.

Giving up, I say, “The lighter’s in the bathroom, next to the candle on the toilet tank lid.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs.

Flynn disappears to the bathroom, and less than a minute later, he reemerges with the cigarette, now lit, dangling from his lips. The tip glows an angry orangey-red in the dim lighting of the room.

“I’m only smoking this one, babe,” Flynn assures me.

“Okay,” I whisper, not convinced.

He walks over to the window in our room and starts fidgeting with the latch. “I promise, Jaynie. This is it.”

“Flynn…” I shake my head. We have a thing about promises—don’t make ones today that you can’t keep tomorrow.

When I open my eyes, Flynn has the bottom half of the window pushed open, though it’s just a crack. Still, even that tiny bit is enough to allow the cool breeze to drift in. When winter’s icy fingers reach me over on the bed, I’m filled with a sense of dread.

Flynn gestures that I should come over and sit next to him on the hardwood floor.

“Come on, Jaynie,” he says softly. “I’ll blow all the smoke out the window. We can even light some candles afterward to get rid of the smell. But, really”—his steel-gray eyes implore me to understand him on this one thing—“I need this smoke to calm my ass down.”

“Why are you so on edge?” I ask, treading carefully. Sometimes it takes a little extra patience to get Flynn to talk. He’s not like me. I always tell him everything. Well, unless not telling him is my only option.

“I want to come clean with you on what actually happened today over in Forsaken.” He looks away. “The whole story, that is. Not just the part about the interview and running in to Crick. Those were good things.”

“So…there is something bad.”

He looks away. “Yes.”

Folding my arms across my chest, I blow out a breath. “Damn it, Flynn, I knew there was more to this.”

“Jaynie, just be quiet and get over here.”

“But, it’s cold,” I murmur, resistant.

He reaches for a hoodie that’s on the floor, some piece of clothing one of us discarded and never bothered to pick up. “Here,” he says, “put this on. It’ll keep you warm.”

Before I give in and go to him—because I will, in fact, always go to Flynn—I say in a soft voice, “You went up there, didn’t you? You went back to that goddamn place where we endured so much torment.” My voice rises, as does my frustration. “You returned to the place where I lost my baby.” I stifle a sob. “…the place where we lost our baby, Flynn.”