Page 127 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
“Christ, Ed!”
“C’mon, help me get her to her feet. There’s a restroom in there.” He jerked his head to another door on the opposite side of the room. “Get her cleaned up, let me know if you need me to call an ambulance. Otherwise the limo can take her to the emergency room. I’ll reschedule the press conference—”
“No!” Jack choked between sobs. “We’re having the goddamn press conference!”
“Dolan, you can’t go on television lookin’ like you went twelve rounds with Mayweather!” Ed slung an arm around her waist, Nola took the other side, and they lifted her as she held onto their shoulders. She wobbled a moment, then shook her head to clear it, and wrenched herself out of their arms.
“Five minutes!” she cried, hysterical. “Don’t cancel it!”
Nola and Ed exchanged a glance, but didn’t contradict her. They’d seen her in this mode too many times, knew it was useless to try to talk her out of something once she had her mind made up. She knew she had to pull herself together, however, or Ed would never let her go in front of the cameras, no matter how vehemently she argued she could.
She stumbled to the restroom, locked the door behind her, crossed to the enamel sink, and sagged against it, breathing as if she’d run a sprint. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, at her bloody face and haunted eyes, thinking one word over and over again.
Hawk.
She lowered her head and closed her eyes. Blood from her nose dripped with a soft, regular plash into the sink.
She did love him. He was the man she loved, the only man she’d ever loved, and she’d left him behind in a jungle on another continent, with no way to contact him, no way to let him know she remembered everything, including them.
Especially them.
She suddenly realized he’d been relieved she didn’t remember her past because he’d rather have her forget him
than remember all the pain, all the sickness she’d forgotten. Even though it must have killed him to have her forget, he preferred that than seeing her in pain.
That seemed like the most beautiful and the most awful thing in the world.
Shaking violently, she turned on the faucet, splashed water onto her hot face. She washed away the blood, feeling for a break in her nose but not finding one, not that it mattered if she did; she didn’t give a damn how she looked. Suddenly all she cared about was an enchanted man who lived in a rainforest thousands of miles away with his enchanted rainforest family, hiding from the rest of the world.
Hiding because of people like her. People like she’d once been. People full of so much anger and hate even their ignorance had a hard time carving out space for itself.
Jack pinched her nostrils between two fingers and ripped a wad of paper towels from the wall dispenser. When the blood flow stopped, she tossed the towels into the trash, then slowly removed her jacket, slung it over the top of the toilet stall, and unbuttoned her shirt.
She turned around and looked over her shoulder.
Pink and white and distinct, the raised welts stared back at her almost accusingly, every ripple and pucker blatant evidence of all she had lost and gained and lost again, that fragile, magical hope that had filled her full to bursting in those lazy, loving hours in Hawk’s arms. He’d given her hope, and so much more. He’d given her a dream so huge it was at once terrible and beautiful, a thing so precious and bright it outshone all the horror and hopelessness of her life.
Peace. He’d given her a taste of peace, and she thought that even one small sip was a gift of immeasurable value, because at any moment in the long years that would come, she could remember that feeling. She could take it out and hold it in her hands and cherish it, and remind herself that once, however fleetingly, she had been loved.
Jack re-buttoned her shirt, her fingers trembling, a roar like a thousand wing beats in her ears. She donned her jacket, wiped away the rest of her tears, smoothed her hands over her hair, and stood there for a moment longer, looking at herself in the mirror.
“What am I supposed to do now?” Jack whispered hoarsely to her reflection.
Just tell them the truth. Whatever you remember. I know you’ll be fair.
The truth.
She nodded, hearing Jenna’s ghost-like voice in her head. “All right then, dragon lady. Fuck it. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
Then she turned away from the mirror, withdrew her prepared speech from her jacket pocket, tore the sheets of paper in two and threw them in the trash, and went out to meet the press.
“Hawk!”
Someone was calling his name, but Hawk couldn’t be bothered to find out who, or why. He couldn’t be bothered with much of anything at all, as he’d determined he was going to spend the rest of his life right here in this room, on this bed, staring up at this ceiling, while the world and everything in it passed him by until one day he’d die and be done with it all.
Or, as he’d realized during his trek through the jungle, he might get lucky and be killed in the invasion. The thought of death in battle—where he could, at least, take down as many of the colony’s enemies as possible before forfeiting his own life—was the one thing that had ultimately made him turn back. He could use a few people to kill right about now.
He was aware that his reaction to Jacqueline’s leaving had blown far past Shakespearean levels of melodrama into the ridiculous, but he didn’t give a damn. She was gone. His life was over. Whether he eventually died of a broken heart or at the business end of a gun was just splitting hairs.
