Chapter Fifteen
Ariella
Out of nowhere, he kissed me. I opened my mouth to ask Jaxson what the hell he was doing when his tongue glided into my mouth, which only made me further speechless.
Sweat trickled down my forehead, and my heart raced as I stopped moving on the dance floor. My body responding to his tongue in my mouth and his hands around my hips, pulling me closer, tighter, harder. He was nestled up against my thigh. I swallowed the lump in my throat and slowly pulled back.
Jaxson stared at me. His fingers moved over my lower back and slid beneath my shirt. I shivered from his touch. My insides melted and made my knees trembled.
“Looks like he’s gone,” Jaxson said, though his eyes never seemed to leave my gaze.
“What? Oh, right.” Was that why he had kissed me intimately, to ward off the drunk loser who wouldn’t take no for an answer? I’d been handling it. Then he swooped in and locked lips with me. I leaned closer, and my breath caressed his ear with a whisper. “I guess I should thank you for coming to my rescue.”
Emma hadn’t been the least bit helpful. She was nowhere in sight, and I’d just been dancing with her a moment earlier. “Where’d Emma go?” I untangled from Jaxson’s embrace.
“She probably left when I started kissing you.”
“Emma likes you,” I said. I didn’t want to come between that if they were involved. His hands didn’t untangle from mine, his fingers caressing my lower back against my bare skin in soothing motions. His touch had a way of being hypnotic, lulling me closer to him.
“What Emma and I had, it ended long before you got here,” Jaxson said.
Did Emma know that? She’d called him her boyfriend when they’d first gotten to the bar. Did she just want it to be true? “I work with Emma. She’s one of the few friends I’ve made in town.” She was the only friend I had anywhere. I had alienated everyone back home, and I didn’t want to do that here. This was my second chance, a fresh start where almost no one knew my past.
“Did she tell you she’s Izzie’s birth mother?” Jaxson asked.
“What?” I took a step back, the news hitting me like a knife to my chest. The bar was steamy, suffocating. I slipped from Jaxson’s embrace and down the hall, needing to find the door outside. I needed air. I needed to cool off before I got sick from the news.
Stumbling through the throes of customers, I found my way down the hallway and out a back exit into the frosty night air. Darkness enveloped the sky. The new moon offered no light, and while stars had been abundant, it didn’t help me see so much as my hands in front of me. I leaned forward, taking several deep breaths. I didn’t need to see to know that I was on the verge of throwing up. It probably had more to do with the adrenaline spiking through my system than anything else, but I was worn and exhausted.
“Ariella,” Jaxson said, hurrying outside and after me. He rested a warm and reassuring hand on my back.
I wanted to pull away from him, to tell him not to touch me, that I didn’t belong with him, but I couldn’t do it. The words didn’t come. My body was too tired to speak, too exhausted to explain my racing thoughts: I could never make him happy, not in the way Emma could.
“Just breathe,” he said, rubbing my back over my sweater. It was frigid outside without a coat, and only now had I felt anything but the heat of an inferno raging inside of me. “You’re shivering. Do you think you can make it back inside? I can find us a quiet place to sit down.”
Nodding, I didn’t speak. I forgot that he probably couldn’t see much in the darkness. “Yes,” I said.
He led me back into the bar, through the crowd of guests, both locals and out-of-towners vacationing and staying at the resort. Jaxson took my hand and wordlessly led me up the back staircase.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked, fatigued from the adrenaline rush earlier. Some people found the fight-or-flight reflex stimulating. I found it exhausting. I never understood people who liked bungee jumping or throwing themselves out of an airplane with a parachute. I preferred a far less exciting lifestyle.
“Lincoln has a place upstairs. We can crash there for a little while. It beats outside, and when you’re feeling better, I can drive you home.”
He probably thought I couldn’t hold my liquor, and while I was a lightweight, one had nothing to do with the other.
Jaxson unlocked the door, flipped on the light, and led me inside, a hand on my lower back as he guided me to sit down on the sofa. “Thank you,” I whispered, staring up at him. He seemed to be on a mission, opening the fridge, helping himself to something. Apparently, Lincoln wouldn’t mind.
“Drink this,” he said, bringing me a bottle of water. “Do you need crackers too?” He handed me the water and then, before I could answer, started tearing apart the cabinets searching presumably for crackers.
“This will be fine. Thank you.” My hands trembled as I sat on the couch. I struggled to open the stupid bottle of water. Most people never noticed the tremor, but when my adrenaline beat me at my game of trying to be tough, it because pretty obvious.
“How many drinks did you have tonight? Did that jerk come anywhere near your drink?” Jaxson frowned. His brow furrowed as he came to sit beside me on the sofa. “Shit.”
“What?” I asked. Had he just now noticed the tremor? “No, I didn’t let anyone but you near my drinks tonight. I only had two. It’s not that big of a deal.” I shoved the plastic water bottle and my hands between my legs, hoping to stop the shaking, but it wasn’t just my hands trembling. My legs were bouncing too. Fuck, I hated my body. It betrayed me whenever I had a surge of emotions that made my heart race. Sitting down had helped immensely, and while the tremors hadn’t settled, I no longer had the pit of my stomach heavy like I was going to throw up or pass out.
He took notice of the bottle unopened in my grasp and took it from me, loosened the lid before he handed it back. “Is this my fault?”
Why was he jumping to that conclusion? How could it possibly be his fault? “Jaxson, you’re not making any sense.” I sipped the water, using two hands to keep from spilling the contents all over me. The damned tremor wasn’t helping me either. Why couldn’t I live a normal life like everyone else? Why did I have to be unfortunate enough to be in my mid-thirties with an autonomic nervous system that hated me? I had dealt with it on my own for years, but it freaked out new people.