Page 105 of Dead Girls Don’t Forget

“You ready?” he asked softly.

“Yeah.”

He opened the passenger door for me, waited until I was in, then jogged around to the driver’s side.

The drive toward the gated pack community passed mostly with Jackson talking and me listening. Tonight he seemed to understand that was all I had in me, so he carried the conversation instead. He told me about Rick trying to chop wood shirtless despite the cold, and complained about Jason buying “artisan marshmallows,” whatever those were. At one point he reached across the center console and took my hand, his thumb brushing slow circles over my knuckles as he kept talking.

Outside, rain blurred Ridgeview into streaks of gold. Inside, Jackson's voice slowly pulled me back toward something that almost felt human again.

The bonfire was already going when we got there. Orange light flickered across the backyard and spilled over the tall wooden fence. Someone had dragged out camping chairs and blankets. The sharp smell of smoke hung in the cold night air.

Rick looked up first when we came through the side gate.

“Well,” he announced, pointing his beer bottle at us, “look who finally stopped ghosting society.”

“Be nice,” Jackson said.

“I am being nice.”

“You called her emotionally haunting.”

Rick considered that. “Affectionately.”

Despite myself, the corner of my mouth twitched.

Jason sat sprawled in a chair with a skewer of aggressively charred marshmallows.

“I told him if he kept texting you every twenty minutes you were legally allowed to file a restraining order.”

“I was concerned,” Jackson said, no shame in it.

“You were pathetic,” Lia corrected from her chair beside the fire.

Jackson smiled, his hand warm at the small of my back as he guided me to the empty chair next to his. I settled in and stretched my hands toward the flames while he sat so close his thigh pressed against mine, reaching for the bag of marshmallows by the cooler.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“I’m evaluating my options.”

“You’re getting fed anyway.”

Jackson seemed to have developed an obsession with feeding me.

He slid a marshmallow carefully onto the skewer and held it over the coals where it would actually toast instead of combust.

“You’re ruining your marshmallow,” he informed Rick, glancing sideways at the flaming mess on the end of the stick.

“I will not ruin them. I caramelize them.”

“You set them on fire and eat the carbon.”

“Maillard reaction,” Rick said with the confidence of a man who had learned a new word and intended to weaponize it. He pulled the stick back, the marshmallow still actively on fire, then blew it out with a proud look.

“Perfect.”

Jackson ignored Rick completely and handed me the perfectly toasted marshmallow, having already blown on it so it wouldn’t burn my mouth. It was good, and the quiet satisfaction on his face afterward made it clear he took real pride in getting it right.

The boys drifted into easy banter after that. The longer I sat there listening to them argue and laugh and insult each other, the more the tightness inside my chest slowly loosened.