CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
JAX
TELLING AUBREY we were leaving may have been a little too direct. Asking her to leave though, would not have been an efficient use of anyone’s time. She had no other option. I wasn’t letting her leave with anyone else.
Decisions had to be made, and I was going to make them for both of us.
When I looked in her eyes, I thought she understood that. If she couldn’t avoid me feeling her up in a bar with a crowd of people around her that would normally make her panic, there was no way in hell she could avoid going home with me.
Or so I thought.
The thing about a stubborn woman is she almost always fails to see it the right way. She will fight the inevitable until the bitter end, hoping the pendulum will swing in her favor at one point or another.
Our relationship wasn’t structured like a fucking pendulum though. It was a circle, always leading us back to the same point at which we belonged.
We belonged together.
In a bed, if I had anything to say about it.
So, when she avoided looking my way as she entered the VIP area again, I contemplated throwing her over my shoulder and leaving the bar with her that way. Fuck what the paparazzi would say.
Fuck what my brother and Roman would do.
I just wasn’t sure the damn skirt she wore would cover her perfect ass if I did just that.
Instead, I watched her disregard our whole encounter as she sidled up to Bastian and Jay. I reasoned that she might be saying goodbye to them at first and I told myself not to get frustrated.
Then, they were ordering more drinks and Jay was spinning her around to the beat of a song. Katie and Vick jumped in for another drink. And another ten minutes passed.
Isabel came to sit next to me. We didn’t talk. She just leaned into me as she checked her phone. When Vick approached us, I was hoping she would say the night was wrapping up. Instead, she shouted, “We’re getting another round of shots. You want one?”
Isabel looked at me with a bored expression on her face. My face, I know, didn’t hide my rage very well as I glared back at Vick.
Vick stuttered, “We’re just trying to have a good time. We’re trying to make the most out of the situation.”
The situation? The situation was that Aubrey needed to stop drinking and come home with me. The situation was very straightforward.
Instead of explaining that to her, I grunted and Isabel waved her away.
“She seems to be a lot of extra work for a man who is so efficient, don’t you think?”
She had a point. For anyone else, I would have moved on. Aubrey wasn’t anyone else though. She’d been the girl I grew up with, the girl I wrote songs about, and the only one I ever loved.
She wasn’t anyone else, she was everyone else to me.
“Do you think I want to discuss this with you?” I glared at Isabel, knowing most people withered under my stare. She was no different. Her eyes jumped away from mine and tried to focus on anything but the attention that I knew Aubrey and I created in VIP.
No one was immune to that force. I witnessed the glances as eyes jumped between us.
When Rome’s stare met mine, neither of us looked away. The silent understanding that we had come to ping-ponged between us. He loved her, maybe not in the way that I did, but it was there. Its presence boiled my blood. My infatuation with Aubrey swirled around in a cloudy, thick mist, mixing with jealousy.
As Jay put his arm around her, it got even cloudier. I didn’t want anyone’s hands on her, not even my brother’s in a platonic way.
I kept watching them until Aubrey finally looked over. No guilt or remorse hid behind her forest-green gaze. When she saw Isabel planted next to me, all I saw was fire burning that forest down.
A stubborn woman shouldn’t be attractive. Yet they’re fiercely beautiful when they set their mind to something. Aubrey owned me, and probably every other man that could see her.
She stood tall and flipped her dark wavy hair over her shoulder before she took long strides that accentuated her legs over to Isabel and me. When her black stilettos stopped inches from my own shoes, I took my time dragging my gaze up her body.