“Probably because he still thinks you’re Bora, and Bora is always a bitch to him. I’ll explain things to them later. Didn’t think you’d want to be around when I did it.”
“No. No. Not at all. It’s embarrassing enough.”
He snickers softly before kissing the top of my head, and I lean against him a little more.
“Besides, Cody is intimidating. The last thing I need is to be around him after he has ammunition.”
Jax is still laughing when he starts pulling me away.
“If Cody says anything, just ask him why he’s having to grow out his hair again.”
Cody’s hair is nothing more than a little fuzz, as though he used to be bald.
“Why does he have to grow it out?” I ask, loving the way his hand holds mine with such ease.
“Cody won’t fight me because he knows he’ll lose, but he had an ongoing bet that no one else could kick his ass. He loves keeping his head shaved, so that was the stakes. If anyone beat him, he had to grow his hair out. You have no idea how many people tried surprise attacks—this excluded me. As I said, I can easily kick his ass.” He winks, and I try not to be impressed. “The rules were that it could only happen in the gym, but no one could get the better of him. Then… along came Britt.”
My feet stick to the ground, and Jax has to stop abruptly so he doesn’t yank my arm off.
“Britt? Britt as in Dane Sterling’s sister?” I ask, dumbfounded.
He grins widely while nodding.
“She showed up for self-defense classes, but she didn’t wait on class to start. She left him in the fetal position with a bloody nose and a wrecked set of balls, and she walked back out, acting very unimpressed with Cody.”
I burst out laughing as he tugs me to start walking again, and we fall into an easy stride as conversation picks up. Apparently he employs some of his high school friends, and he refused to go to private school, even though he had the grades and money to attend, because he didn’t want to be a “snob.”
“I went to private school,” I tell him, snickering when he looks like he’s swallowed his foot.
“Yeah, sorry. It was a stereotype I believed until I started hanging with some of the Sterlings.”
He rubs the back of his neck, and he has the grace to look like he regrets that comment.
“Snobs are in public schools too,” I go on, just to be mean.
“I know. I shouldn’t have—”
When he sees my smile, he stops talking and rolls his eyes.
“Funny,” he grumbles, but he smiles as he guides me inside the café.
For once, things between us don’t seem so complicated, even though the chain of events that led us here were anything but simple.
Chapter 26
JAX
Bo is reading a book on the deck, while I remain stuck down by the fire Cody has burning on the beach. For the hundredth time, I hear his same old stories, and I sip my beer, watching Bo instead of listening to him.
As though she feels my gaze, she looks up, and she smiles at me before looking back to the page she’s on.
“Must be a good
book,” Dustin says, sitting down beside me as he looks over at her too. “Any chance she has a sister?”
I choke on my beer, and he eyes me as Cody comes to stand in our line of view of Bo. But he mostly block’s Dustin’s view of her. I can still see her just fine.
“Hey, fuckers. I’m in the middle of the best part,” Cody growls.