Page 35 of The Other Side of Green

“Here, let me see.” Lyra tilted my face in the sunlight from the window, her fingers gently pressing the skin around my eye. “I think you need stitches.”

“No.” I held her gaze.

“Jack, don’t be a douche, go to the hospital.”

“Why? So I can sit in the waiting room next to your brother?”

“You don’t even know he went to hospital. Raven Smoake could be tending to him.” She pulled a face which would have made me smile if I could, and secondly if I wanted too. I didn’t. Lyra Lennox had crushed my heart and now she wanted to play nurses and patients again.

“Sit still.” She swabbed the cotton wool she’d found in Mom’s cabinet into warm water and then pressed it against my eyebrow. I winced. Big, fat pussy. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” My lips felt fat and useless. “I’d almost forgotten what it feels like to take a beating.”

Her shadowed gaze swept my face. “It’s not you, Jack. Fighting, anger, I know it’s not.”

“You say that, but I think we both know my genetics works against my favor.” She winced and I tried to look at her more closely. “What? You think four years playing piano and wearing expensive clothes erases everything I am? You know that’s not true.”

She shook her head, biting on her bottom lip. “I know it is. I have to believe it is.”

I caught her wrist, wrapping my index finger and thumb around her honeyed skin. “What’s going on, Lyra?”

“I told you, Jack. We made a mistake.”

I pressed my thumb into her pulse point, and she swallowed. “Lyra, hand on heart can you tell me all of that was a mistake?”

She dropped her gaze. “Yes.”

I thrust her hand away. “What did he say to you? Luca must have said something for you to shut me out this way.” I didn’t want to beg, or sound needy, only schmucks did that… but the words still came anyway.

“Nothing, Jack, he said nothing.”

“So what happened? You went to pack your bags and then had a sudden change of heart.”

Lyra sighed, warmth brushing across my face, I didn’t need cotton wool and water for her to heal my wounds. “I just realized we’d made a mess. You were about to lose everything: the bar, your job.” She hesitated and then squared her shoulders. “And then I thought of what Grams would say. All she wanted was for me to play violin.”

A flicker deep in the bright blue of her gaze told me the lie.

“But you said she’d understand.”

“That’s before she died, Jack!”

“So what, you think we can both go back to Berklee and you can carry on with your degree? I can go back to being your teaching aide?”

“No one knows about us.”

“Oh my god, Lyra. Don’t be so naive.”

She winced.

“The people who do know, Jensen Collins and his twisted daughter control everything.”

“Well, it looks like their reign might be over.”

I shook my head, and honestly my brain rattled. I needed Advil and sleep, not heartbreak and remorse. “Believe me, bad press is nothing to them. A few marches and protests? Sure, not the norm, but it will all wash away. They will expect you not to go back. Especially as you actually can’t play, and then soon, they’ll be back, offering more money, more incentives.”

“I can play.” She scowled, and I would have kissed the fuck out of those pouty lips if she hadn’t decided on me being a twisted pervert.

I laughed. “Can you?”