CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
JAX
WE MADE our way back to her little town.
She worked on her class, and I worked tirelessly to slot everything into place. After my talk on the Ferris wheel with my brothers and Rome, I had allies to help put everything into motion. Pieces moved fast but with the four of us working together, we predicted each movement correctly.
Aubrey didn’t pay much attention to my working in her apartment other than asking about my music app. I think she genuinely cared about my music career, so I told her it would revolutionize the way people listened to music and how artists could share it with them. Artists would have the ability to release their own hand-picked music to whichever followers they wanted, share private locations to specific followers for an intimate concert, and give artists more ability to control their careers with their followers in general.
I was prouder from her smile and praise than I had been when Stonewood Enterprises agreed the launch would be a huge financial success.
I helped her with her class too. She had my tutoring advice on hand whenever she liked. Every now and then, she’d saunter over with a question about her investment project.
Admittedly, the answers I gave were incoherent because her short-ass shorts we’re just way too damn enticing. After a particularly good phone call, I decided to dominate her just like I was dominating the workforce.
I took her against her countertop.
Another time, I took her against the table.
I took her all around that apartment.
We enjoyed each other and fell back into that comfortable place we’d been in so many years ago.
So that night, when Aubrey’s anxiety crept in, I didn’t know if it was because of her class tomorrow or something else.
It couldn’t be us. We worked too fucking well together.
Maybe it was the fact that Rome had stopped over and instead of us fighting, we’d sat down and talked business over a beer.
Whatever it was, I took my time fucking away her anxiety instead of dwelling on it.
I found that taking my time was more difficult than expected though. I had wanted to own her for so long, and damn, my body had missed hers. She had always said we were at war with each other or whispered things like, “I can’t keep fighting you.”
My girl didn’t understand she had just been fighting herself. She wanted to keep that recklessness of being with me bottled up in a neat little color-neutral package.
Her vibrance needed to shine though, and I made sure it would.
The next afternoon, Aubrey buzzed around her kitchen, not making eye contact with me and barely responding to my touch.
After only about two minutes, I found my anxiety rising so much that when she tried to open their refrigerator, I shot my hand out to hold it closed from behind her.
She looked over her shoulder, “Excuse me?”
“I’m not moving my hand until you tell me what’s going on. You’re jumpy as hell and it’s making me jumpy. I don’t do jumpy, Whitfield. This is supposed to be a vacation before my app launch this weekend.”
She scrunched up her face. “A vacation for you? You’ve been working this whole time!”
“I’m working much less here than I normally do. I consider this a vacation.”
“You should probably reevaluate your work habits. You work too much and this app launch isn’t going to give you any more time to yourself—”
I grabbed her by the waist and yanked her up against me. “You’re changing the subject. Answer my damn question.”
She huffed out a breath and looked toward the ceiling. “I’m still trying to figure out how much we can trust each other.”
I wanted to tell her she could trust me with every bone in her body but words didn’t bring that type of trust. We’d had it before, and I’d broken it. I’d broken both of us.
I was ready to put us back together, fix what was broken, earn back that trust, and have her as mine forever, but I knew my plans over the next couple of weeks would test everything we’d ever built. We had to get through that first.