Playing God
Aliah takes her arguments to Jim.... only someone probably should have told her that Jim can be a bastard when he's poked and Aliah.... she's definitely a poker.
Playing God
Jim/Blair, Rafe/OFC
Taming the muse: Cross examination
Summary: Aliah adores the fact that Blair is an open spirit raised by a
free-minded and strong woman. However, when she realizes that he is
denying himself love--specifically love for his police partner, Jim--she
feels a need to intervene. She knows what it is to want something you
can never have, and she won't let Blair suffer that way. If it takes a
little playing God, she is the woman up for the job.
( Part One ) ( Part Two ) ( Part Three )
Aliah sat outside Blair’s apartment door, thankful that his friend had offered a place to stay. Aliah remembered when he had lived in simply the world’s worst neighborhood. She had spent her early years surrounded by men angry about the racism that had taken the neighboring South Africa captive. She’d watched men fight over how to rule Basutoland as it turned into Lesotho. She watched the nuns desperately trying to protect the children from seeing any of it. It’d been a terrifying time, and she knew she was lucky that fate had put her in Basutoland and in the Catholic orphanage. However, all of that had paled to her fear when she had visited Blair at his old place just once.
The men standing on the streets had looked at everyone with this eye that had simultaneously judged and searched for weakness. They wanted victims. At the time, Aliah had offered them a cold look and walked faster. These days, she would never wander into that neighborhood. She was grateful that he had taken refuge with Jim before becoming the victim they sought.
But it took an odd man to invite another into his territory. Men were so aggressive about their space unless one was counting fraternity brothers or team members from some American football team. However, the rules that allowed for male sharing in American cultures were as unbending as this Jim Ellison himself. And yet he had bent and he had bent the rules. More than once, based on Brian’s colorful anecdotes. From the stories she’d heard, this Jim was controlling and passionate, protective and stifling, encouraging and brutally, painfully honest. Listening to Brian, Aliah wasn’t sure what to think of Jim Ellison.
Well, she would never find out by talking to Brian. The man was all charm and smiles and this odd shyness that probably would have made her overlook him two years ago. He certainly had no need to be shy. He had attributes enough to attract any woman if only he would share them with the world. Perhaps she should be grateful that he was so unassuming. It would minimize the number of women who might flock to him were he more assertive.
Clearing that from her mind, she knocked on the door. Almost immediately, the door came open and Jim stood there, leaning against doorjamb in a white wife-beater shirt. “I thought you were going to sit out there all day without knocking,” he commented.
Aliah bridled. She hated being seen as indecisive and to sit on a doorstep was the ultimate indecision. “Should I apologize for inconveniencing you?”
“If you feel like it.” Jim turned his back and headed into the loft-style apartment. Brusque. She could handle brusque.
“I don’t.”
Jim stopped in the middle of the room and crossed his arms, clearly challenging her, and she pushed herself up straighter using the wheels of her chair. One of his eyebrows rose.
“So, this is the place you share with Blair for… what… three years now?”
“Three and a half.” His expression never changed. The man would make a formidable poker player.
“I hear you once shared it with your wife.”
Jim’s second eyebrow rose, but he didn’t answer. Instead he stared at her, much like those boys who had lived in Blair’s old neighborhood, as though searching her for weakness. Aliah had been more bold then, but now she shifted nervously under the examination. Without warning, Jim dropped down on one of his chairs and crossed one leg over the other in a wide sprawling position that made it clear this was his territory.
“Drop the bullshit,” Jim suggested.
Aliah laughed. “Given your apparently unending patience for our Blair, your lack of patience with bullshit is rather surprising.”
“Are you suggesting that Sandburg is full of shit?”
“Yes,” Aliah answered. No embellishments, no excuses. She adored Blair, but the man could take a story and spin it so many different direction that a person could never see the truth beneath all the threats of obfuscations and prevarications and old-fashioned lies.
Now Jim did smile. It wasn’t a large smile, something more controlled and cautious. They did say that opposites attracted, and Jim Ellison was the perfect opposite of Blair and all his unbridled enthusiasm. “Maybe I like him more.”
“That would be my point.”
Jim leaned forward. “You came here to tell me that I like my roommate?”
“Are you always this obtuse?”
Taking a second to answer, Jim let his eyes wander the room for a moment before returning to her. “When I’m trying to nicely tell someone to get their very beautiful ass out of my business before they regret it, yes.”
Aliah sucked in a breath. That truly was brusque. “Your business affects Blair.”
“Blair, yes. You? No.”
Narrowing her eyes, Aliah tried to decide how to handle this particularly prickly man. “I hear that the homophobia of a police station can sometimes force men to either avoid certain activities or hide those activities from others.”
“You hear that from Rafe.”
Aliah raised her chin and dared him to deny Brian’s story of homophobia and backup calls going out a little too late and men being perceived of as too feminine being harassed. Were she to rule the world, she would take anyone with that kind of outdated belief system and run them over with her wheelchair… or a Mac truck. Either would be appropriate for the sort of discrimination Brian had described.
“Interesting how you’ve taken a shine to Brian. Blair is terribly excited about you showing interest in someone who isn’t a psychopath.”
“Blair would never say that.”
“No, but he implied it. The stories about the guy in the feathers….” Jim shook his head and made a face to show just how horrified he’d been. Aliah could feel her face heat a little, but she would not be shamed by a man too afraid to love at all. She took risks with her heart, and sometimes she suffered. Life was messy.
“He was an artist,” she said, her voice brittle.
“That’s not the first word that came to my mind. So, you went from that to Rafe. Are you slumming?”
“How dare you!”
“How dare I what? Interfere in your love life?” Jim leaned back with a cat that ate the canary look that quite surpassed any smugness she’d seen from any other human being. And she had lived her life with dancers, and there wasn’t a more arrogant, smug, aggressive group on the planet, at least when you dealt with the stars of the profession. They all could have taken lessons from Jim Ellison, however.
Aliah carefully controlled her voice. “How dare you suggest that Brian Rafe is anything less than a gentleman that any woman would appreciate.”
Jim’s arm actually fell off the back of the chair where he’d propped it, and his face lost all smugness as he blinked at her as though unable to comprehend. How dare he have such a low opinion of Brian when Brian admired him so much. Aliah rolled her chair closer. “Brian Rafe is an artist in his own way, passionate about his work and about life. He certainly knows how to dress, speak, and treat women better than you.”
“Um, yeah. He does.” Jim almost sounded confused, and now Aliah was confused.
“Why are you dating him?” Jim came right out and asked.
“Why aren’t you dating Blair?” Aliah returned.
Jim leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’ll make you a deal. You answer my question honestly, and I’ll answer yours.”
Aliah cocked her head to the side. “And how are either of us to know the other has been honest?”
“Because we’re promising to be honest.”
The answer would be ridiculous under almost any other circumstance. Aliah lied well and creatively. She had done so often enough that she sometimes wondered if she could distinguish truth and lie in her own mind. However Jim had such a look of intensity on his face that she wondered if his offer were genuine. It wasn’t as if she had anything to hide with Brian, and she was under no obligation to believe Jim. She would listen to whatever story he concocted and use it as the launching point to explain all the reasons why he should embrace love in all its forms, including homosexual love.
“I like Brian.” She watched Jim to see what he would make of that.
“Even though he’s not your type? I mean, he’s not the bad boy or the artist or the complete loon in need of psychotropic medication.”
Aliah narrowed her eyes. Next time Naomi visited, Aliah would have to mention this conversation. The fallout would be amusing. “I like him. There is nothing more nefarious than that.”
“But you asked him out at first to get information on me.”
Aliah didn’t deny that. “Blair loves you, I love Blair. I see no fault in taking extreme measures to protect people I love.”
“Neither do I,” Jim said, and now his voice had a warning in it. “So, do you plan to drop Brian now that you’re getting your answer?” Jim leaned back, and now Aliah felt like the one being interrogated.
“I certainly plan to answer the phone if he calls,” she said.
“So, you’re waiting for him?” Jim shook his head. “That is not the woman I’ve heard described in excruciating detail over the last three years. The woman Blair has described would pursue him.”
“As you admitted, Blair is very capable of spinning the bullshit.” Aliah let the profanity drop out of her mouth in a flat American accent the didn’t match the rest of her lilting voice that had so much of the Sotho and French influence.
Jim shook his head. “Not about you, he doesn’t. Or rather he tries, but he’s not particularly successful. You know, he’s spent the last two years worrying about you.”
“My troubles are not his concern.” Aliah looked away. The last thing she wanted was pity from Blair. Blair or Jim. Her body was twisted and broken, but her pride was intact.
“Well he’s afraid you have your head so far up your ass that you can’t smell anything but your own shit.”
Aliah’s head whipped around.
“I would normally put that nicer, but honestly, you annoy me,” Jim said. “So, Rafe clearly adores you, you clearly admire him, and if you two don’t see each other again I would have to suspect that one of you has a problem with the head and the ass. Generally that isn’t Rafe.”
“I shall take that under advisement.” Aliah was beginning to suspect that confronting the lion in its own den had been a tactical error. “So, will you now enlighten me as to why you aren’t dating Blair?”
“Nope.” Jim leaned back, that smugness returning to his face, and Aliah felt a helpless sort of rage well up. She’d bared herself to him, and he had the audacity to refuse to honor his end of the bargain. Jim sighed about the time that Aliah was mentally gathering appropriate insults. Some of them required a little thought to translate into English. “Aliah, we’ve been together for almost two years.”
“You… honestly?” Aliah found herself without words, which was a fairly unique experience.
“Honestly,” Jim said. “When you were in the hospital, Blair used to come home so angry and then he’d get scared. He’d always seen you as someone unbreakable, and seeing you hurting terrified the shit out of him.”
Aliah rubbed her hand over her useless legs.
“Not the wheelchair,” Jim said, interrupting her thoughts, and his voice had turned slower and gentler than she expected. “It never had anything to do with the wheelchair. Blair’s seen me blinded by poison at work. He’s worked with people with disabilities. He doesn’t give a shit about any of that. He was worried because you stopped living. He said you fought like hell to get back to dance, to teach it even if you couldn’t perform, but he said that after that, you just stopped. Blair never wanted you to know about us because he never wanted to hurt you by pointing out that he was moving on with his life, and you got stuck somewhere around step four of your recovery.”
Aliah wheeled her chair back, inexplicably grateful for the open apartment door because the room was too small and Jim was too large to be in the room with. She spun her chair and gave herself a hard push toward the door, hitting the edge with a rubber wheel so that she jerked to one side before she could get herself straightened out and head down the hallway.
“Aliah?! Shit.” Ellison was following her, and Aliah pressed the elevator button, silently cursing in Sotho as she listened to the mechanical beast groaning and clicking its way up the shaft. “Aliah, I didn’t mean… okay, maybe I was a little more blunt than I should have been because I still don’t like you. You remind me too much of Naomi.”
“She’s a great woman,” Aliah said, happy to focus on anything except this warped version of her own life which Jim had served up. Had Blair really said such things to him?
“She abandoned Blair when he needed her, and he still struggles with that. He may love his mother, but I sure as hell don’t have to, not when I’m the one who gets to deal with his raging fear of abandonment every time we have a disagreement.”
Aliah frowned at Jim.
“I can love the hell out of Blair without thinking he’s perfect, Aliah. No one has to be perfect. I sure as hell not perfect. Hell, when Blair hears about this, I’ll be sleeping on the couch for a week and I might deserve it.”
The elevator opened, and Aliah got in, rotating her chair to face the doors. Jim was watching her, but she limited herself to staring at his knees. When he put out a hand to keep the doors from closing, she could only clench her teeth, helpless to stop him.
“Shit, make that a month,” Jim said softly. “You put on a damn good front. I really thought Blair was exaggerating because you didn’t seem all that fragile to me.”
“I’m not,” Aliah snapped.
That made Jim pause, and Aliah took what satisfaction she could in winning that point. “No, you aren’t. But you are human, and that wasn’t a nice thing to say to a fellow human being. I’m glad to see you enjoying life, Aliah. I’m glad to see you dating Brian and he’s human too, human and far too fragile so please don’t play games with him.”
Aliah looked up at Jim’s face and glared.
“I only want one promise.”
“Or what?” Aliah demanded, knowing full well that she couldn’t handle this the way she once would have, kicked him in the genitals and stalked off while he writhed in pain. It was a pleasant enough thought.
“Or nothing. But don’t drive upset. Get a bagel downstairs, give yourself some time to calm down and focus on how much you hate my guts, okay?” He gave her an expression best described as pleading.
“You’re a moron who doesn’t deserve Blair.”
Jim shrugged. “I’ve actually told him that once or twice.” Pulling his hand back, Jim allowed the elevator doors to close, and Aliah was alone in the small space with too many emotions threatening to crush the breath from her.
Playing God
Jim/Blair, Rafe/OFC
Taming the muse: Cross examination
Summary: Aliah adores the fact that Blair is an open spirit raised by a
free-minded and strong woman. However, when she realizes that he is
denying himself love--specifically love for his police partner, Jim--she
feels a need to intervene. She knows what it is to want something you
can never have, and she won't let Blair suffer that way. If it takes a
little playing God, she is the woman up for the job.
( Part One ) ( Part Two ) ( Part Three )
Aliah sat outside Blair’s apartment door, thankful that his friend had offered a place to stay. Aliah remembered when he had lived in simply the world’s worst neighborhood. She had spent her early years surrounded by men angry about the racism that had taken the neighboring South Africa captive. She’d watched men fight over how to rule Basutoland as it turned into Lesotho. She watched the nuns desperately trying to protect the children from seeing any of it. It’d been a terrifying time, and she knew she was lucky that fate had put her in Basutoland and in the Catholic orphanage. However, all of that had paled to her fear when she had visited Blair at his old place just once.
The men standing on the streets had looked at everyone with this eye that had simultaneously judged and searched for weakness. They wanted victims. At the time, Aliah had offered them a cold look and walked faster. These days, she would never wander into that neighborhood. She was grateful that he had taken refuge with Jim before becoming the victim they sought.
But it took an odd man to invite another into his territory. Men were so aggressive about their space unless one was counting fraternity brothers or team members from some American football team. However, the rules that allowed for male sharing in American cultures were as unbending as this Jim Ellison himself. And yet he had bent and he had bent the rules. More than once, based on Brian’s colorful anecdotes. From the stories she’d heard, this Jim was controlling and passionate, protective and stifling, encouraging and brutally, painfully honest. Listening to Brian, Aliah wasn’t sure what to think of Jim Ellison.
Well, she would never find out by talking to Brian. The man was all charm and smiles and this odd shyness that probably would have made her overlook him two years ago. He certainly had no need to be shy. He had attributes enough to attract any woman if only he would share them with the world. Perhaps she should be grateful that he was so unassuming. It would minimize the number of women who might flock to him were he more assertive.
Clearing that from her mind, she knocked on the door. Almost immediately, the door came open and Jim stood there, leaning against doorjamb in a white wife-beater shirt. “I thought you were going to sit out there all day without knocking,” he commented.
Aliah bridled. She hated being seen as indecisive and to sit on a doorstep was the ultimate indecision. “Should I apologize for inconveniencing you?”
“If you feel like it.” Jim turned his back and headed into the loft-style apartment. Brusque. She could handle brusque.
“I don’t.”
Jim stopped in the middle of the room and crossed his arms, clearly challenging her, and she pushed herself up straighter using the wheels of her chair. One of his eyebrows rose.
“So, this is the place you share with Blair for… what… three years now?”
“Three and a half.” His expression never changed. The man would make a formidable poker player.
“I hear you once shared it with your wife.”
Jim’s second eyebrow rose, but he didn’t answer. Instead he stared at her, much like those boys who had lived in Blair’s old neighborhood, as though searching her for weakness. Aliah had been more bold then, but now she shifted nervously under the examination. Without warning, Jim dropped down on one of his chairs and crossed one leg over the other in a wide sprawling position that made it clear this was his territory.
“Drop the bullshit,” Jim suggested.
Aliah laughed. “Given your apparently unending patience for our Blair, your lack of patience with bullshit is rather surprising.”
“Are you suggesting that Sandburg is full of shit?”
“Yes,” Aliah answered. No embellishments, no excuses. She adored Blair, but the man could take a story and spin it so many different direction that a person could never see the truth beneath all the threats of obfuscations and prevarications and old-fashioned lies.
Now Jim did smile. It wasn’t a large smile, something more controlled and cautious. They did say that opposites attracted, and Jim Ellison was the perfect opposite of Blair and all his unbridled enthusiasm. “Maybe I like him more.”
“That would be my point.”
Jim leaned forward. “You came here to tell me that I like my roommate?”
“Are you always this obtuse?”
Taking a second to answer, Jim let his eyes wander the room for a moment before returning to her. “When I’m trying to nicely tell someone to get their very beautiful ass out of my business before they regret it, yes.”
Aliah sucked in a breath. That truly was brusque. “Your business affects Blair.”
“Blair, yes. You? No.”
Narrowing her eyes, Aliah tried to decide how to handle this particularly prickly man. “I hear that the homophobia of a police station can sometimes force men to either avoid certain activities or hide those activities from others.”
“You hear that from Rafe.”
Aliah raised her chin and dared him to deny Brian’s story of homophobia and backup calls going out a little too late and men being perceived of as too feminine being harassed. Were she to rule the world, she would take anyone with that kind of outdated belief system and run them over with her wheelchair… or a Mac truck. Either would be appropriate for the sort of discrimination Brian had described.
“Interesting how you’ve taken a shine to Brian. Blair is terribly excited about you showing interest in someone who isn’t a psychopath.”
“Blair would never say that.”
“No, but he implied it. The stories about the guy in the feathers….” Jim shook his head and made a face to show just how horrified he’d been. Aliah could feel her face heat a little, but she would not be shamed by a man too afraid to love at all. She took risks with her heart, and sometimes she suffered. Life was messy.
“He was an artist,” she said, her voice brittle.
“That’s not the first word that came to my mind. So, you went from that to Rafe. Are you slumming?”
“How dare you!”
“How dare I what? Interfere in your love life?” Jim leaned back with a cat that ate the canary look that quite surpassed any smugness she’d seen from any other human being. And she had lived her life with dancers, and there wasn’t a more arrogant, smug, aggressive group on the planet, at least when you dealt with the stars of the profession. They all could have taken lessons from Jim Ellison, however.
Aliah carefully controlled her voice. “How dare you suggest that Brian Rafe is anything less than a gentleman that any woman would appreciate.”
Jim’s arm actually fell off the back of the chair where he’d propped it, and his face lost all smugness as he blinked at her as though unable to comprehend. How dare he have such a low opinion of Brian when Brian admired him so much. Aliah rolled her chair closer. “Brian Rafe is an artist in his own way, passionate about his work and about life. He certainly knows how to dress, speak, and treat women better than you.”
“Um, yeah. He does.” Jim almost sounded confused, and now Aliah was confused.
“Why are you dating him?” Jim came right out and asked.
“Why aren’t you dating Blair?” Aliah returned.
Jim leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’ll make you a deal. You answer my question honestly, and I’ll answer yours.”
Aliah cocked her head to the side. “And how are either of us to know the other has been honest?”
“Because we’re promising to be honest.”
The answer would be ridiculous under almost any other circumstance. Aliah lied well and creatively. She had done so often enough that she sometimes wondered if she could distinguish truth and lie in her own mind. However Jim had such a look of intensity on his face that she wondered if his offer were genuine. It wasn’t as if she had anything to hide with Brian, and she was under no obligation to believe Jim. She would listen to whatever story he concocted and use it as the launching point to explain all the reasons why he should embrace love in all its forms, including homosexual love.
“I like Brian.” She watched Jim to see what he would make of that.
“Even though he’s not your type? I mean, he’s not the bad boy or the artist or the complete loon in need of psychotropic medication.”
Aliah narrowed her eyes. Next time Naomi visited, Aliah would have to mention this conversation. The fallout would be amusing. “I like him. There is nothing more nefarious than that.”
“But you asked him out at first to get information on me.”
Aliah didn’t deny that. “Blair loves you, I love Blair. I see no fault in taking extreme measures to protect people I love.”
“Neither do I,” Jim said, and now his voice had a warning in it. “So, do you plan to drop Brian now that you’re getting your answer?” Jim leaned back, and now Aliah felt like the one being interrogated.
“I certainly plan to answer the phone if he calls,” she said.
“So, you’re waiting for him?” Jim shook his head. “That is not the woman I’ve heard described in excruciating detail over the last three years. The woman Blair has described would pursue him.”
“As you admitted, Blair is very capable of spinning the bullshit.” Aliah let the profanity drop out of her mouth in a flat American accent the didn’t match the rest of her lilting voice that had so much of the Sotho and French influence.
Jim shook his head. “Not about you, he doesn’t. Or rather he tries, but he’s not particularly successful. You know, he’s spent the last two years worrying about you.”
“My troubles are not his concern.” Aliah looked away. The last thing she wanted was pity from Blair. Blair or Jim. Her body was twisted and broken, but her pride was intact.
“Well he’s afraid you have your head so far up your ass that you can’t smell anything but your own shit.”
Aliah’s head whipped around.
“I would normally put that nicer, but honestly, you annoy me,” Jim said. “So, Rafe clearly adores you, you clearly admire him, and if you two don’t see each other again I would have to suspect that one of you has a problem with the head and the ass. Generally that isn’t Rafe.”
“I shall take that under advisement.” Aliah was beginning to suspect that confronting the lion in its own den had been a tactical error. “So, will you now enlighten me as to why you aren’t dating Blair?”
“Nope.” Jim leaned back, that smugness returning to his face, and Aliah felt a helpless sort of rage well up. She’d bared herself to him, and he had the audacity to refuse to honor his end of the bargain. Jim sighed about the time that Aliah was mentally gathering appropriate insults. Some of them required a little thought to translate into English. “Aliah, we’ve been together for almost two years.”
“You… honestly?” Aliah found herself without words, which was a fairly unique experience.
“Honestly,” Jim said. “When you were in the hospital, Blair used to come home so angry and then he’d get scared. He’d always seen you as someone unbreakable, and seeing you hurting terrified the shit out of him.”
Aliah rubbed her hand over her useless legs.
“Not the wheelchair,” Jim said, interrupting her thoughts, and his voice had turned slower and gentler than she expected. “It never had anything to do with the wheelchair. Blair’s seen me blinded by poison at work. He’s worked with people with disabilities. He doesn’t give a shit about any of that. He was worried because you stopped living. He said you fought like hell to get back to dance, to teach it even if you couldn’t perform, but he said that after that, you just stopped. Blair never wanted you to know about us because he never wanted to hurt you by pointing out that he was moving on with his life, and you got stuck somewhere around step four of your recovery.”
Aliah wheeled her chair back, inexplicably grateful for the open apartment door because the room was too small and Jim was too large to be in the room with. She spun her chair and gave herself a hard push toward the door, hitting the edge with a rubber wheel so that she jerked to one side before she could get herself straightened out and head down the hallway.
“Aliah?! Shit.” Ellison was following her, and Aliah pressed the elevator button, silently cursing in Sotho as she listened to the mechanical beast groaning and clicking its way up the shaft. “Aliah, I didn’t mean… okay, maybe I was a little more blunt than I should have been because I still don’t like you. You remind me too much of Naomi.”
“She’s a great woman,” Aliah said, happy to focus on anything except this warped version of her own life which Jim had served up. Had Blair really said such things to him?
“She abandoned Blair when he needed her, and he still struggles with that. He may love his mother, but I sure as hell don’t have to, not when I’m the one who gets to deal with his raging fear of abandonment every time we have a disagreement.”
Aliah frowned at Jim.
“I can love the hell out of Blair without thinking he’s perfect, Aliah. No one has to be perfect. I sure as hell not perfect. Hell, when Blair hears about this, I’ll be sleeping on the couch for a week and I might deserve it.”
The elevator opened, and Aliah got in, rotating her chair to face the doors. Jim was watching her, but she limited herself to staring at his knees. When he put out a hand to keep the doors from closing, she could only clench her teeth, helpless to stop him.
“Shit, make that a month,” Jim said softly. “You put on a damn good front. I really thought Blair was exaggerating because you didn’t seem all that fragile to me.”
“I’m not,” Aliah snapped.
That made Jim pause, and Aliah took what satisfaction she could in winning that point. “No, you aren’t. But you are human, and that wasn’t a nice thing to say to a fellow human being. I’m glad to see you enjoying life, Aliah. I’m glad to see you dating Brian and he’s human too, human and far too fragile so please don’t play games with him.”
Aliah looked up at Jim’s face and glared.
“I only want one promise.”
“Or what?” Aliah demanded, knowing full well that she couldn’t handle this the way she once would have, kicked him in the genitals and stalked off while he writhed in pain. It was a pleasant enough thought.
“Or nothing. But don’t drive upset. Get a bagel downstairs, give yourself some time to calm down and focus on how much you hate my guts, okay?” He gave her an expression best described as pleading.
“You’re a moron who doesn’t deserve Blair.”
Jim shrugged. “I’ve actually told him that once or twice.” Pulling his hand back, Jim allowed the elevator doors to close, and Aliah was alone in the small space with too many emotions threatening to crush the breath from her.