Read Online Into the Fire by Suzanne Brockmann - Free Book Online Page B

counselor for hot teen girls. Jesus save him. This was one of those nights that made him wish he kept a scrapbook. This would be a ten-pager, for sure. Scumbag that he was, he’d devote an entire special section to that nipple that was now securely covered by the blanket.
    Christ, he had to give himself double scumbag points for thinking about that while she sat there, sobbing away.
    He focused. “You know, it’s good to cry,” he told her because she was fighting her tears again, trying to force herself to stop, pulling a length of paper from the roll and using it to wipe her shiny face and blow her runny nose. “Everyone needs to do it every now and then. Get all the hurt and shit out of your system. Just…go for it. Flush Jerry and Richie and all their crap away.”
    She turned to look at him, with big, dark, wounded eyes in a face that was pale in the dimness. “Do you cry?” she asked.
    “Well, no,” Izzy said. “Because I’m a guy and…Yo, Powderpuff, don’t be such a pushover, believing everything that comes out of everyone’s mouth. Of course I cry. I’m human, and humans cry. That’s the way it works. Anyone who tells you that they don’t cry is a liar. We get the big brains, and the emotional shit comes standard. And yeah, okay, maybe I try to work it so that I don’t cry in public—I know you’re on
that
train with me. But you’re not in public right now. You’re in my living room, which is private.”
    A little too private, especially considering he was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts.
    And yeah, now she’d noted that factoid, too, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the scar on his chest as well. It was ragged and still angry-looking—even after all this time. It was a real chick-repellent, which was why, more often than not, he kept his T-shirt on.
    “That must’ve hurt,” she said, which surprised him. Most people looked but then looked away. Pretended it wasn’t there. Nothing to see, move it along…
    Izzy nodded, trying not to feel self-conscious as she continued to look at him. “Yeah.”
    “What happened?”
    “I tried to stop a bullet with my chest, only my superpowers weren’t working, so I kinda got shot. Hurt like a mother, if you want to know the truth. Did I cry? Hell, no. Not one tear. But I cried a shitload when I found out a friend of mine died, in that same…event. So…”
    Eden met his eyes in the dimness, and Jesus H. Christ, there was that spark again. Izzy tried to look away. And failed. “He was a good man. Frank,” he told her quietly. “He deserved to be mourned, so yes, I cried.”
    “Jerry doesn’t deserve it,” Eden told him vehemently, as her tears started up again. “He deserves…He’s never touching me again. Never.”
    “Good plan.”
    She pulled off another length of toilet paper and forcefully blew her nose. “I hate that I can’t stop crying about him.”
    “You’re not crying about him,” Izzy told her. “You’re crying for you. For…lost innocence.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Lost innocence? Get real. I lost my innocence when I was fourteen. Theresa Franklin’s older brother took me for a ride in his car. Of course, I didn’t exactly say no, so…”
    Holy shit. “I’m not talking sex,” Izzy said. “I’m talking about…you know, love. You said Jerry told you that you were the one. And you know, maybe, in that moment when he said it? Maybe he meant it. But you believe in something different. Something bigger and…better. Something that I think most people don’t believe exists. They give up on it, you know? After they’ve lived through too many Jerries of their own.”
    She was listening to him, watching him with those luminous, tear-filled eyes, and he was unable to stop himself from reaching out and pushing her sleep-tangled hair from her face.
    “But see, here’s the thing,” he told her, gently using his fingers to comb out her hair. “It does exist. I’ve seen it, Eden. It’s rare, but it’s