Bang Read Online Free PDF Page B

scarred-up chest.
    For one long, horrible second, Jackson thinks she’s about to cry.
    â€œHey,” he says, smoothing her hair back off her forehead, tugging at the short, wavy ends. “Mari. Hey. It’s me, look at me.”
    Mari does. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. She looks cracked open all of a sudden, runny like an egg. “Oh God, Jack, I’m so sorry.”
    It sounds like she wants to say more, finally hash everything out in this shitty motel room, the shooting and the sex and the silence, how they blew up their partnership with ruthless efficiency. In all the years he’s known her, Jackson’s only seen Mari cry a handful of times.
    I’m sorry too , he thinks about telling her. Or even, It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault.
    But.
    He was shot in three places, is the truth of it, stomach, chest and collarbone, and every single one them aches when he moves. He had a collapsed lung, he pissed through a tube for four painful days and hauled himself through physical therapy so grueling that one time he passed out on the table. The nurses kept asking him about next of kin going into surgery. Jackson had them call his parents because he assumed Mari was already waiting.
    â€œDon’t,” he mutters quietly, and covers her mouth with his.
    Jack kisses like he does everything else in this life, Mari thinks. Focused and purposeful, like somebody who knows what he wants and has a plan for how to get it. It’s how he got to the top of their class at the Academy, it’s how he convinced his sister to do the inpatient clinic four years ago when she starved herself down to ninety pounds. It’s how he healed himself too, Mari imagines, though she guesses he’d be the first person to tell you she wasn’t there to watch.
    She tips her head back, letting Jack suck at her collarbone. She doesn’t realize she’s worrying the puckered scar on his chest until he reaches up and pulls her hand away.
    â€œSorry,” she mouths at the ceiling. Something stops her from saying it out loud.
    Things go faster after that, Jackson’s hands suddenly under her shirt, rolling up the cheap, pilling fabric. It’s old, the sweater, bought a million years ago when Marisol was in her twenties and still going out to bars. There’s a staticky whoosh as he drags it over her head and then his mouth is back on hers, biting like she did to him, quick and punishing. He takes her tongue between his teeth and she just lets it happen, lips slack, panting. Someone is shaking, but Mari’s not sure who.
    â€œJack,” she starts to say. But Jack’s hands are on his belt, and she stops.
    Just like that, he stops too, his body tensing when Mari’s does. “Are we—” He touches the plasticky join between her bra cups, hesitating. “Mari.”
    Marisol got a divorce because Jackson’s face had become more familiar than her husband’s, more familiar even than her baby girl’s. But she can’t for the life of her tell what he’s thinking right now.
    â€œMari,” he says, more urgently.
    Mari’s stomach growls underneath his hand, nothing in her belly but coffee. God, they should stop. This got them nowhere last time, and it’ll get them nowhere now. Mari told herself for years that it was familiarity, not love.
    â€œYeah,” she tells him. Then, “Hurry.”
    She lets him yank her bra up around her armpits without undoing the clasp, the underwire cutting into her flesh unflatteringly. He’s a full two clicks rougher than he was the last time. He was so terribly, terribly gentle that night in his apartment, like he’d never met her before, like she was someone who couldn’t be trusted not to fall apart.
    That’s not how he’s acting right now.
    Mari arches as he sucks at her nipple, then noses down to the soft underside of her breast and bites like he’s aiming to leave a mark.