When they asked him those difficult questions about that night, I had a feeling that he’d been sad when they’d asked him about my parents, scared when they’d asked him about the fire, and humble when they’d asked about his bravery. He emerged smiling and patting one of the officers on the back.
Our stories must have corroborated because after they asked me a few questions they let Mrs. Stonewood take us home.
When we reached the car, Jax didn’t slide into the front seat like he had on the way there. He opened the other back door and folded in right next to me. When he turned to look at me, for the first time since I’d known him, he stared at me like there was something he couldn’t read about me.
His hand went to my thigh and squeezed.
It was the worst time for my body to react. We’d just been in the station telling the police how my father burned down my family home. In that room, my statement of how he’d beaten my mother and me before saying he was burning the whole place to the ground would be the statement that solidified his guilt. That along with evidence of lighter fluid and a match found in our home. They’d moved quickly on pressing charges against him so that my mother’s reservation would feel they did her justice. They wanted me to feel justice too, or so the investigator told me.
Yet, I wasn’t worried about any of that. I was a lover seeking her first thrill. Exhilaration shot through every one of my veins from where his hand laid. When he squeezed, it was like he injected me with a stimulant. My breathing picked up, my heart pounded faster, the hairs on my arms seemed to sway toward him.
He stared at me, his eyes shifting back and forth like he was trying to see through me. Typically, he could but I wasn’t usually this guarded.
Then he sighed as if in defeat. He raked his gaze up and down my body. When his eyes met mine again, he mouthed, “Okay?”
For the first time, the man couldn’t seem to read what I was thinking. He couldn’t see through the mask I’d made after being questioned by the cops. It was the first time I thought he cared about me.
And right there, in that car, I fell tragically in love with him.
I thinned my lips, pulling them between my teeth and nodded.
The whole way home, his thumb rubbed a circle on the inner seam of my thigh. The movement was slow, soothing, and reassuring. We were in this together, I thought.
I was mistaken. I didn’t see him for a whole week after that.
Jay and Mrs. Stonewood would come to my room throughout the week, but he never would. I thought he forgot about me and that twisted the knife deeper in my nightmare of a life that week. I mourned the loss of my mother and him.
Like I’d had him. As if he’d been mine.
When I wasn’t contemplating my hell, I was overthinking how stupid I’d been for thinking he’d ever been interested.
So, when he stood in the doorway calling me a child, something different shot through my veins. It was better than being numb and feeling like I was in a nightmare. I let it course through me and fill my heart, making it beat faster and faster.
“I need to talk to Aubrey, Jaydon,” he commanded his little brother, never one to ask. “Give us a minute.”
Jay hesitated, for the first time, unsure of what to do with Jax and me. Before, it’d been Jay and me against the world, and now this new dynamic created instability. He looked to me for guidance and I had a new fire that he probably saw in my gaze. I nodded and he conceded, leaving us alone.
“The family’s worried about you,” Jax said, once he closed the door behind his brother. He seemed bigger in the enclosed room, like he was taking up all the damn room in there. I sat up, trying to embody just as much space and power as he exuded.
“I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will,” he stated matter-of-factly.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“But, they don’t.” He pointed toward the closed door. “You need to start acting like you’ll be fine, Whitfield.” His words cut through the air, loud and deep. He strode toward me, like he wanted to shake me and then paced back. With his back to me, I saw him pull at his hair before he turned back around.
“I can’t!” I yelled at him, waving my hands around the room. “You think this is easy for me? You think you can relate? I just lost both of my parents.”
He stepped up close to me and bent down, putting a hand on either side of my hips. “That man never deserved to be called your parent, and he’ll rot in prison thinking just that. Let’s be real, Peaches. You lost one parent. And at least you fought me to save her.”
He whispered the last words. I saw the change in his eyes. The blue in them lightened like they had iced over and froze all his emotions in.
I couldn’t help it. My hand went to his jaw to soothe him. I rubbed over the ticking muscle.
He looked right through me as if he was haunted by something from that night.
“Jax,” I whispered because we were so close. I felt his breath on my lips, I could practically taste the mint he’d just had. I knew that if he didn’t back away, I’d make a fool of myself.