Maybe that odd feeling in his chest was not a tightening, but a release. Years of tension loosened, the organs in his ribcage aching, shifting to fill the space.
“My stepfather used to beat the daylights out of my mam,” he said, all on one breath. The faster he said it, the faster he’d get through it, the sooner his heart and lungs would have the room they needed to function. He could feel it already; the words were a knife to his overstuffed chest, and everything was spilling out like water from a split flask. He told him everything. How his mother had sheltered him from her husband’s fists; how the beatings had slowed once Ger grew tall and broad enough to give his stepfather pause. How fiercely Ger had wanted to protect his mother, the way she’d always protected him. Thepuintcoins they’d been tucking away over the years, their little escape fund.
Jack’s hand was a vice around his own, but Ger just went on and on exhaling truth after truth after truth, barely pausing to take the breaths he’d been aching for just an hour ago.
Ger told him how, despite his years in the Eisalaan Gard, he had only ever intervened in one fight before tonight. Just one. And to call it a fight would suggest that his mother had been in any shape to fight back. She didn’t have the strength to lift her head, even when Ger broke his stepfather’s grasp on her neck. Their shouts had drowned her out in the thirty-second scufflebefore silence fell over the kitchen. And then she lay there, sobbing quietly at the ceiling while her husband’s skull spilt onto the tiles like the yoke of a broken egg.
Gerry, what did you do?
He told Jack about the funeral, where the Priestess had spoken quite poetically about thetragic accident, and how the Goddess had a plan for us all. How there in the pews, Ger’s mother had held his hand through his next bout of shuddering, breathless panic, but she hadn’t looked at him. She avoided his gaze for so long, in fact, that to this day, he couldn’t recall the blue of her eyes; whether it was ice or ocean. A year later, she’d given him the entirety of their escape fund, and Ger had moved away to enrol in the Gard.
To be the protector he’d always hoped he could be.
There was more he could have said. More hewantedto say, excuses and explanations. But it was easier to stop the flow of the words now that some of the pressure in his chest had eased. So, with that confession hanging heavy in the air between them, Ger stopped and took a long overdue breath.
In the silence, Jack breathed too, one long, stiff exhale. But all he said was: “What makes it better?”
Ger tilted back against the wall, physically rocked. “What?”
“I mean, if it happens again. What can I do to help?”
His head gave a single shake, a tic of confusion—disbelief.
“You want to help me? After what I just told you?”
Jack didn’t quite shrug, but the line of his shoulders dropped, softening along with his brow. He rolled from his crouch to his knees, gathering both of Ger’s hands in his now as he gazedup at him with far too much understanding. So much light and warmth that it made Ger’s ravaged chest warm with a glow he was not sure he deserved.
“You told me that you stopped your mother’s abuser from ending her life,” said Jack. “And that he happened to hit his head in the struggle. You told me that despite the scars he left, you feel soimmenselyguilty over his accident that sometimes it suffocates you. So what I’m asking, Ger, is if I can help you feel as safe as you should have felt all along. What can I do?”
As he studied Jack’s face, searching for a fracture, a flicker in the earnest look on his face, Ger was distantly aware of the surprise shaping his own expression.Shouldhe be surprised? Adeline’s reaction had been much the same, but then Ade loved him in a way that couldn’t be reasoned with. The bonds of their friendship ran so deep there was never any question of what they might do for each other. Jack, on the other hand, was someone who—
Liked him.
Liked him a lot?
Liked him, even now, even after he’d done his very best to fuck it up.
That knowledge was a heady thing, just disorienting enough that Ger could admit to himself that he liked Jack, too. Liked him a lot. Liked him even if it was terrifying to know there was something solikeable, so good and unguarded, tucked away in the warmth of these kitchens. Because Jackwasgood. The kind of good that stood up to abusers with his chest full of unimpeded breath. Spent bitter mornings foraging in the wild to ease the aching bellies of those around him. Found reasons to smile despite their wintery hellscape. And it was comforting toknow that even as a shell of his former self, someone like Jack could look at him and smilethatsmile. That he could still make someone’s breath catch, even if he had barely enough of his own to spare.
Jack’s soft expression flickered, uncertainty tightening at his features with every passing second that Ger didn’t respond. It was that look, more than anything, that really drove it home, a nail through his heart, the warm glow giving way to a bitter flood.
Ger fuckinglikedhim.
And right now, that could lead them nowhere good.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Adeline
She could tell something was wrong from the moment he walked in the door. Adeline felt the split-second panic in a bolt through her limbs, snapping her upright from the settee until she was moving across the living space, racing to the frost-framed door.
“Ger?”
Her hands locked on his arms, holding him still as she looked him over for injury or upset. He’d been assigned to help Imogen and her team as they began digging the tunnels—had it gone wrong somehow? Had someone noticed his too-keen attention? He seemed physically fine, unharmed, and his every breath unimpeded. But when she raised her eyes, she found his gazelocked on hers so intently it made her rock back a bit. He looked like he’d drunk a vat of coffee, blue eyes nearly manic beneath a charge she didn’t understand. Before she could ask, though, Ger broke her hold on him to reach up … and cup her face,verytenderly, in one hand. Her breath caught in an awkward splutter.
“Let’s just go, Ade,” he said softly, gaze overbright as it flicked feverishly over her own. “We can justgo, you pack up, and I’ll get us out through the kitchens, and we’ll find a way past the ports—”
“What are you talking about?”
