I hated that he was right. I should have worn that dumb shirt. I wasn’t admitting a thing though.
I shrugged and kept walking. When I turned to find the culprit of the rustling behind me, I saw Jax in glistening glory without a T-shirt on. His abs were more defined every time I looked at them, and the sweat exaggerated the V that dove into his pants.
Suddenly, he shoved the shirt over my head.
“Oh my God, Jax. I can put on a shirt.”
“Might be true, but I’ll maul you in the park if you keep looking at me like that.”
My laugh burst out around us, and I found my heart absorbing that echo so much that it couldn’t silence any thoughts anymore.
“I wanted to be casual with you because I figured that was all I could handle,” I blurted out.
He eyed me with surprise.
“I’m trying to be open and honest. I found out not too long ago that my mom wasn’t always open about important things. Finding that out now has me realizing I need to be better about not repeating the same mistake.”
I waited for his response while the wind rustled around us and the sun spilled through some of the leaves. One little sparrow hopped across the pavement in front of us and I focused on how it pecked at the ground for just a little food.
He nodded. “It’s something we both need to do. We can’t forget. Whatever force there is between us, it’ll destroy the fucking world, Whitfield, before it lets us forget about it or be casual.” His words rumbled out of him. “We’re inevitable.”
Inevitable.
He’d said it before in describing us. And so had I.
Inevitable.
It used to scare me with its finality. It used to be the end for me.
Inevitable.
Now it seemed solid, concrete, reliable. It signaled an end but also a beginning.
“I guess I agree, even if that means overcoming all of our history and the baggage we’re carrying with it,” I replied.
He stopped walking and turned me to face him. “You mean that?”
I cleared my throat and looked down at my hands. “Whatever we are, even if it’s a casual thing, I don’t want you being casual with anyone else. That force you talk about, it will destroy whoever you’re casual with in the future if it’s not me.”
His eyes twinkled. “If another man calls you ‘little dancer’ or touches you the way Bastian did in front of me again, Whitfield, there won’t be any force needed for me to dismember him slowly and deliberately.”
We finished our run and I got ready with Jax doing work I didn’t care enough about to listen to. Every step I took in his home lifted me up until I was walking on clouds.
We had issues bigger than mountains, but being high up in those clouds, I thought we could overcome them.