Maybe David had been right after all. There was still a hole in her heart she’d never be able to fill, but the jagged edges she’d been living with for so long had been smoothed down and the pain, that had become so much a part of her she’d nearly forgotten it was pain, had eased. Plus, she had some kick-ass emo lyrics if she wanted to get another band together.

Classic rock, this time.

When CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” started up, she laughed—it was always nice when someone got the joke—and unclenched her fists before her fingernails cut half-moons into her palms. Twenty-two months. Now that was a punch line.

The apartment door opened, and she moved to stand by the mirror rather than be caught waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She frowned at the emphatic thud, thud of Jack’s descent. For all the comments about his size—fine, for all her comments about his size—Jack usually walked as though he weren’t carrying around a metric shit ton of weight. He didn’t throw anger at her when he turned the corner and took the last two steps down into the hall, but he definitely looked angry.

“You okay?”

He nodded, a quick up and down jerk of his head, smoke trailing from his nose. “I’m fine.”

Charlie looked past him at the mirror where her reflection stood surrounded by flame. Not exactly fine. “My guess, Allie’s pissed at me and took it out on you.”

“She wasn’t . . .” His posture suggested that if he’d had his tail he’d have been lashing it. “She wasn’t entirely wrong.”

And that, Charlie realized, was why Jack was angry.

“I wasn’t running after you . . .” The smoke thickened. “. . . like I was begging for crumbs of your affection.”

“Whoa. Allie said that?” Allie did not get to say that, not to Jack. Ignoring the fact that Jack had no need to beg for Charlie’s affection, slamming Jack because she couldn’t slam Charlie was a top of the charts bitchy thing for her to do. The music a low rumble, Charlie had one foot on the bottom step when Jack grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“I don’t need you to fight my battles. Anymore,” he amended when Charlie raised both brows. “And stop humming, the building’s shaking.”

About to protest that she wasn’t doing anything to the building, she realized the vibration she could feel through her feet matched the vibration she could feel in the back of her throat and swallowed the sound.