“Shit,” she bit out.
And they both broke into a jog when they hit the stairs.
Chapter Seventeen
Every Kind of Love
Jagger
“You cold?”
“Nah.”
“It’s cold out here, bruh.”
“I’m fine.”
Even if Mal said that, Jag shrugged off his leather cut and put it over Mal’s back.
And Mal didn’t hesitate to settle into it.
They were out on Mal’s front stoop. Arch was inside with his mom, Shanta, and a couple of Shanta’s friends. Shanta was nursing a glass of wine and a phone conversation with her sister, Arch and Shanta’s girls were making calls and to-do lists.
Mal’s aunt lived in Phoenix, and she was going to head up.
They’d been to the hospital and obviously had come back.
Earlier, when they first got to Mal’s, Shanta had been understandably out of it. But she got it together, and that was when Arch kicked in and got the friends involved.
Mal’s grandmother had been battling cancer. It wasn’t looking good, but she was in treatment. However, she’d been battling that shit so long, her heart was weakened and it just…gave out.
So her life being shortened wasn’t the surprise, it being that short was.
It was getting late. It was definitely cold.
They should probably leave, but he wasn’t sure where Mal was at, and he didn’t feel good leaving him unless he knew the kid was good being left.
And Mal was being his usual quiet, so Jag wasn’t figuring that out.
“It’s why I was acting like a dick,” Mal suddenly said.
“Sorry?” Jag asked.
“At S.I.L., to Archie. When I got kicked out of group. It wasn’t the bullying or just acting out. It was Grams. I didn’t…” He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t…I guess I just wanted to be seen.”
“That tracks,” Jag said quietly.
Jag felt Mal’s gaze, so he looked at the kid when Mal kept talking.
“This is why the Harris brothers don’t matter. Their damage, it’s stupid. It doesn’t mean anything. Mom is…uh, was real tight with Grams. We were…we were all, uh, real tight. And this hurt her. Watching Grams go through this. It hurt her and I didn’t…I didn’t…”
Mal trailed off.
Jag didn’t say anything.
Mal kept going, and when he did, it was the first time since Jagger met him that he sounded like a little kid.
“There wasn’t anything I could do to make things better. She’s my mom, Jag, and she hurt, and I didn’t know how to make things better.”
Christ, he felt those words.
He felt them deep.
“I get that, buddy,” Jagger said quietly.
Mal shook his head, turned away, and there was a thread of disgust in his voice when he said, “You can’t get it. No one—”
“My dad died when I was three.”
Mal’s head whipped back around so he could look at Jagger.
“I don’t remember him, not at all,” Jagger told him. “But my mom loved him, brother. I mean, like, for real. Like, once-in-a-lifetime, lost-forever love. All my life, she was in pain. Every day of it. And I had to see that and couldn’t do dick about it. So when I say I get it, Mal, I’m not handing you a line of bullshit. I really get it.”
Mal just stared at him.
Jag held his gaze.
Then Mal turned away again, but after several long beats, he fell into Jag’s side.
Jag slid an arm around his shoulders.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Mal mumbled.
“She’s good now, happy. Found another love, and it’s once-in-a-lifetime too. And just to say, we’re lucky, because that’s what every kind of love is. You just gotta open yourself to it.”
“Yeah,” Mal said.
They were quiet.
Mal broke it.
“Sorry about your dad.”
Jag swallowed.
Nodded.
Realized Mal couldn’t see him nod.
So he said, “Yeah. And goes without saying, but I’ll say it, sorry about your gramma, bud. Losing someone you love sucks. And that’s just all there is to it.”
It took a sec, but eventually, Mal replied, “Yeah.”
After that, they sat together on the stoop, in the cold, until Archie came out and said it was time to get Mal inside, warm and with his mom, and then it was time to leave.
So they took care of Mal, gave hugs to his mom.
And they left.
* * * *
It was under his seriously watchful eye that he and Archie walked into her apartment after leaving Mal and Shanta.
Now, you could be the most mellow person in the world, and a night that intense was going to fuck with you.
In other words, this night had to have fucked with his woman.
But this was one of those times.
One of those times like she gave him, so it was one he had to give her.
A time for space.
A time for her to share with him when she was ready, if at all.
And like usual, it was fucking with him.
Because she just got in her brother’s face about his rampant grief running roughshod over their family, grief that was hers too and she didn’t get to wallow in it and let others take care of her like her brother did.
And for the last three hours, they’d been neck deep in the fresh grief of Mal and Shanta.
Archie had to be feeling it.
Now, she was wandering into her kitchen while Jagger turned on lights and watched her.
When she got into the kitchen, she looked at something on the counter, then she lifted her head, caught sight of him, but gazed around before she came back to him.
She raised a piece of paper and shook it.
A note from his parents.
“Your folks made the schnitzel. We have plates if you’re hungry.”
He could eat a whole roast pig.
“You hungry?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I’m good too,” he lied.
She nodded at that, and pointed out, “They also cleared the table. Cleaned the kitchen. You’re gonna have to give me your mom’s number so I can text her to thank her.”
“Will do, baby, but maybe now we should go to bed.”
She stood there, watching him across the apartment, and it felt like it was as closely as he was watching her.
He dropped his cut down his shoulders, tossed it on her couch, and asked, “You wanna go to bed?”
Not taking her eyes from him, she moved his way.
She stopped close, and still didn’t take her eyes from his as she touched him.
Putting her hands on his chest, she slid them up to the sides of his neck.
He put his hands on her hips.
She squeezed his neck. “You good?”
“I’m good, uh…you good?”
She didn’t answer his question.
Her gaze bored into his and she said softly, “Jagger, baby, you hungry?”
“I’m okay, Arch. You tired?”
She didn’t answer him again.
She urged, “Talk to me.”
He wanted it the other way around.
He wanted her to talk to him, tell him how it felt to lay it out for Elijah. How it felt to be around Shanta when her grief was so fresh and raw.