Burn for You

I gave him scary crazy-lady eyes. “You will not tickle me. Ever. Understood?”

He tilted his head and whispered in my ear, “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s not in the contract.” Then he dug his fingers into my ribs.

I screamed and tried to twist away, but he was too strong. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me clear off my feet so we were nose to nose, my arms pinned to my side, my feet kicking uselessly around his shins.

“It isn’t fair that you’re so giant,” I groused. “And freakishly strong.”

“I’m not that strong, but thank you.”

“Honey, you’re holding up my entire weight like I’m a loaf of bread. One of the airy kinds, like sourdough.”

He chuckled and kissed the tip of my nose. “Honey?” he drawled.

He lowered his lashes, smug as all get-out. I wondered with irritation why those kind of thick, silky, black eyelashes were always wasted on boys who didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to have them.

I sniffed like a snooty aristocrat. “It was a slip of the tongue. I’m getting lightheaded from lack of food. I could faint at any moment.”

He pressed a soft kiss to my lips and chuckled again. “I see. You’re still in fibbing mode. All right, I’ll let it go until”—he checked his watch, which meant he was now holding me up with one arm—“noon. Deal?”

I muttered, “Showoff.”

He laughed and set me on my feet. “After breakfast,” he said, leading me by my hand from the room, “you have your choice of horseback riding, bowling, tennis, fishing, boating, or touring the botanical gardens or rickhouse.”

“Rickhouse?”

He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “It’s where we house all the ricks, obviously.”

I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”

The rest of the day was a fairy tale, and I was Cinderella.

We ate breakfast in a sun-filled room Jackson called the “solar,” serenaded by songbirds flitting in dozens of large cages hung at various heights around the room. The hovering servants seemed friendlier today, even daring to smile pleasantly at us when they brought our food and cleared out plates. Even more surprising, Jackson smiled back.

He seemed like a different man than he was yesterday. Lighter. Less burdened by ghosts. His parents seemed different, too, though they didn’t hover. They greeted us warmly when we came down to eat, made light conversation, and then took their leave with a promise to see us for dinner.

I got the feeling they were leaving us alone together and not avoiding us, which are two very different things.

Jackson gave me a tour of the estate on a golf cart emblazoned with a giant B on the front, rear, and roof, which I found hilarious. As if anyone could mistake who it belonged to. The botanical gardens were a marvel of engineering, designed by an anal-retentive botanist with a fetish for nude statuary and hedge mazes. Had I been there alone, I would’ve been hopelessly lost in five minutes.

We drove by the stables at top speed. Jackson pointed them out with a jerk of his thumb. I was glad I hadn’t taken him up on his offer to go riding, because there were obviously still a few of his ghosts lurking in the tack room, waiting to shriek and rattle their chains.

Lakes. Trees. A beautiful white church topped by a steeple. Acres upon acres of wooded pathways and hidden putting greens and spectacular sweeping vistas dotted with wildlife. More than once we had to swerve to avoid a startled jackrabbit or white-tailed deer. Moonstar Ranch was a placed steeped in magic, and my feeling of being immersed in a fairy tale grew as the day wore on.

All the while my engagement ring flashed and winked on my finger, sending prisms of light in starburst patterns everywhere like a promise of good things to come.

We talked, laughed, held hands shyly, smiled at each other with our eyes. In the rickhouse—a massive concrete rectangle where the family stored their private reserve—Jackson kissed me in a cool, shadowed corner behind a soaring wall of bourbon barrels stacked twenty high on metal racks. We ate a picnic lunch under the shade of an enormous willow tree on a hill overlooking a sparkling lake. We made plans to have dinner with his parents. I wanted to make them Mama’s famous jambalaya with a blackberry-and-bourbon cobbler for dessert.

When we went back to Jackson’s room to change for dinner, my cell phone was ringing. I’d left it on the dresser, too distracted from what had happened between us in the shower to remember to bring it along.

“Hello?” I swatted away Jackson’s attempt to pinch my ass with a laugh.

“Bianca,” said Eeny. Her voice caught on a sob.

The words fell down on me like bricks thrown from the top of a building.

So sorry.

She’s gone.

There was nothing we could do.

I tried to inhale but couldn’t. I tried to speak, but a gasp of anguish was all I could muster. My body went hot, then freezing cold. I began to violently shake.

“Bianca?” Jackson’s voice rang sharp with concern as he looked at my face. “What is it?”

I dropped the phone and sank to my knees on the floor. “Mama,” I rasped, choking on the word. “She’s dead.”

From that moment on, so was I.

The fairy tale was over.

THIRTY-FIVE

JACKSON

I’ve suffered through my share of painful moments. Before now, I thought I knew all pain’s ugly faces, all the ways it can cripple and scar.

But with one phone call I discovered that there’s no worse pain in the world than watching someone you love suffer and being powerless to make the suffering stop.

I kissed her and held her and rocked her, I promised I’d do everything I could to help. Words. All of them useless. None of them changed a thing or broke through the new encasing of ice swiftly crystallizing around her. From the moment Bianca took that phone call, she went cold. All the life was sucked out of her. All the fire was extinguished. What was left was a shell-shocked husk.

She didn’t even cry, which somehow made everything worse.

“I need to get back as soon as possible,” she said hollowly, sitting on the floor with her back against the side of the bed. I crouched beside her, holding her clammy, limp hand, fighting a terrible slipping feeling inside me, like a landslide in my chest.

“Of course. The plane can be ready within the hour. I’ll make sure the bags get packed.”

She closed her eyes. She didn’t speak again until we got back to New Orleans, except to say good-bye to my parents, who were as distraught as I was when they heard the news. We left Moonstar Ranch the same way we came, by limo and private jet, but everything had changed.

I could tell by the way Bianca stared with flat eyes at the ring on her finger that what had happened between us was “before.” This was “after,” the new reality in which her mother was dead, taking Bianca’s reason for us to be together to the grave with her.

So yes. I thought I knew Pain before. I thought I knew Loss.

But those two ruthless bitches were just getting started with me.

THIRTY-SIX

BIANCA

It was raining when we touched down in New Orleans, the sky the same ugly lead gray as my soul.

I didn’t know why I felt so numb. Shock, I suppose. In any case, I was grateful for the way all my senses were dulled, because I knew there were a thousand invisible knives of anguish hovering all around me, hungry for their moment to slash and draw blood.

They’d get their moment, of that I was sure. But for now I was safe in a cocoon of soft white noise where nothing could reach me. Not even the torment in Jackson’s eyes.