Page 46 of The Kings of Kearny

Chapter Eleven

All thoughts of sexfled from my mind the second we walked through my door. There was no way Jakob could have fucked me on the floor because it was covered in glass. I lifted my head and stared in horror at the wreck of my apartment. I was only gone a couple of hours. That didn’t seem like enough time for someone to do this amount of damage.

My coat hanger had been ripped off the entryway wall with so much force that the anchors I’d used to secure it had torn out a chunk of drywall. The picture of Gran and me that once hung opposite it was shattered beneath our feet. Someone had taken a knife to my couch and yanked half the stuffing out of it. The apartment was too small for a dining table, but I had a pair of barstools tucked beneath the overhang of the kitchen counter. All that was left of them now were two piles of sticks that would better serve as kindling.

I turned to take in the rest of the carnage. My mattress had been dragged off the bed frame and given the same stab and rip treatment as the couch. Papers littered the floor. Books had their pages torn out of them. Someone had yanked my pretty curtains off the windows, rod and all, creating still more holes in the drywall. Most of the kitchen cabinets were missing their doors, but a few hung by a single bracket, swaying in the breeze that blew in through the busted windows. I leaned forward and craned my head to the right. Remnants of my dinnerware lay in shards across the kitchen floor.

“Guess I’m not getting the deposit back on this place,” I said, because if I didn’t make a joke, I would start screaming.

Jakob shut the door behind me. “Stay here.”

My apartment was a studio. The only places someone could hide were in the bathroom or the closets. Jakob’s boots crunched over glass as he strode past me. I watched him check the closets first. No one there. He pushed open the bathroom door and recoiled, covering his nose.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, reaching out with his leg.

I had no idea what he was doing until I heard the sound of the toilet flush. Whatever was in there was so bad that he’d used the toe of his boot to touch the handle. Yes, Iwouldstay right here, thank you. I had no desire to see anything that could make a man like Jakob Larson dry heave.

He shut the door behind him and came back to me. I must have looked truly freaked out because he put his hands on my shoulders and bent down to look me in the eye. “No one’s here. You’re okay. It’s just stuff.”

I nodded over and over again. Yes, I was okay. Yes, it was just stuff. But it wasmystuff. And now it was all gone. The pretty curtains I picked out with Gran at Home Goods. Those handcrafted stoneware plates and mugs I bought from a local pottery studio. That frigging Ikea couch I saved up for, with the fold-out mattress so Nina could crash here if we got too tipsy down at the pool during our day off. Gone. All of it. Just like that. Someone had broken into my home, violated my safe space, and ruined everything I owned.

It made me feel untethered.

Unsafe.

I sniffed, a lump forming in my throat.

Jakob slid his arms around me and pulled me in tight. “I’m sorry, Krista,” he said, voice low. “It’s my fault for dragging you into this.”

I shook my head and sniffled again. “It’s not your fault. I agreed to help.”

Three years ago, I wouldn’t have given in to the threat of tears. I would have shoved them down, buried my pain deep, and let it eat me from the inside out. Tough girls don’t cry. Soldiers don’t cry. But that nice Army shrink who taught me about tricking my brain into enjoying a small amount of pain during sex had also shown me the consequences of bottling up emotions, so I stood there within Jakob’s arms and allowed myself to break down for a few minutes.

The past two days had been awful, minus the brief moments of bliss this man had given me. It could have been worse. So much worse. Someone could have gotten to Gran. My knee could have given out during that fight in the elevator. If I’d been stubborn instead of listening to the sense in Jakob’s words, Gran and I could have been in this apartment when someone broke in. Those thoughts, more than anything else, drove my tears. It was the what-ifs that always scared me the most. It had been this way since the plane crash. What if my crewmates hadn’t gotten to me in time? What if I’d been trapped there and burned to death?

That psychologist had taught me not to repress these thoughts but to follow them all the way down the rabbit hole to the bitter, ugly end. Because doing so freed me from the torment of those thoughts and lessened the residual anxiety.

Jakob rubbed my back while I let myself think of every worst-case scenario that could have happened. He didn’t once try to calm me down or tell me not to be upset. He didn’t get awkward or make a joke about the fact that my tears had soaked through his shirt, and that, more than anything else, made me want to stick around and find out if there really could be something more than just sex between us.

By the time my tears started to dry, I felt better. Everything was still awful, my apartment was still trashed, but Gran and I were alive and safe.

As the sadness and fear drained away, anger rose to fill the gap.

I shifted within Jakob’s grip. He leaned back and looked at me. My face was probably puffy and red; I’d never been a pretty crier. Jakob didn’t seem to mind. He reached out and rubbed the last bit of wetness from the corner of my eye.

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