Today's Promises by S.R. Grey Read Free Book Online

another, remember?”
    He groans, then sneaks a peek over at me from under his arm. I touch the little crescent-shaped scar beneath his right eye, a present from his biological father, when he got too enthusiastic with his belt.
    “If something’s going on, Flynn, you should want to talk to me about it.”
    “Fuck.” He jumps up from the bed and heads over to the closet where he hung his coat when he first came in. After a few seconds of frantically fishing through the pockets, he pulls out a slightly crumpled cigarette.
    I sit up, alarmed and surprised. “Flynn, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    He ignores me as he scans the room. “Where’s that lighter we use to light candles with?” he asks.
    “No, no, no.” I wave my hands around as I jump up. But when he gives me a look to not go ballistic, to let this one slide, I sit back on the edge of the bed.
    Giving up, I say, “The lighter’s in the bathroom, next to the candle on the toilet tank lid.”
    “Thanks,” he murmurs.
    Flynn disappears to the bathroom, and less than a minute later, he reemerges with the cigarette, now lit, dangling from his lips. The tip glows an angry orangey-red in the dim lighting of the room.
    “I’m only smoking this one, babe,” Flynn assures me.
    “Okay,” I whisper, not convinced.
    He walks over to the window in our room and starts fidgeting with the latch. “I promise, Jaynie. This is it.”
    “Flynn…” I shake my head. We have a thing about promises—don’t make ones today that you can’t keep tomorrow.
    When I open my eyes, Flynn has the bottom half of the window pushed open, though it’s just a crack. Still, even that tiny bit is enough to allow the cool breeze to drift in. When winter’s icy fingers reach me over on the bed, I’m filled with a sense of dread.
    Flynn gestures that I should come over and sit next to him on the hardwood floor.
    “Come on, Jaynie,” he says softly. “I’ll blow all the smoke out the window. We can even light some candles afterward to get rid of the smell. But, really”—his steel-gray eyes implore me to understand him on this one thing—“I need this smoke to calm my ass down.”
    “Why are you so on edge?” I ask, treading carefully. Sometimes it takes a little extra patience to get Flynn to talk. He’s not like me. I always tell him everything. Well, unless not telling him is my only option.
    “I want to come clean with you on what actually happened today over in Forsaken.” He looks away. “The whole story, that is. Not just the part about the interview and running in to Crick. Those were good things.”
    “So…there is something bad.”
    He looks away. “Yes.”
    Folding my arms across my chest, I blow out a breath. “Damn it, Flynn, I knew there was more to this.”
    “Jaynie, just be quiet and get over here.”
    “But, it’s cold,” I murmur, resistant.
    He reaches for a hoodie that’s on the floor, some piece of clothing one of us discarded and never bothered to pick up. “Here,” he says, “put this on. It’ll keep you warm.”
    Before I give in and go to him—because I will, in fact, always go to Flynn—I say in a soft voice, “You went up there, didn’t you? You went back to that goddamn place where we endured so much torment.” My voice rises, as does my frustration. “You returned to the place where I lost my baby.” I stifle a sob. “…the place where we lost our baby, Flynn.”
    “Jaynie, just come to me, please.” His voice is a whisper, a comforting caress. God, I need him. He’s the only person who can ever understand my pain, especially when it comes to this subject.
    So I go to him.
    And I let him slip the hoodie on me.
    I then sit on the floor, across from him.
    I also let him smoke his damn cigarette in peace.
    Flicking an ash into a discarded paper cup, he tells me how after lunch, on a whim, he asked Crick to drive him up to the Lowry property.
    “Why in the world would you ever want to go back up there?”