He seemed to know it too, because he snapped back out of my touch and focused a steely, determined gaze on me. “Mom’s in shambles because she thinks you’re suicidal or some shit.”
The callousness of his words shot me out of bed. I got up in his face. “Fuck you. That isn’t what she’s thinking.”
“You got a mouth on you all of a sudden, huh?”
I just glared at him.
His eyes shifted back and forth, reading every line on me as if he was putting it all together. That look, I started to realize, was the way he looked at me when he needed to know where we stood, when he needed to know everything about me.
The slow smile that followed his assessment had me putting my hands up to his chest to shove him out of the room. He caught them, as if he’d read my next move already.
“Go for a jog with me, Peaches.” His voice was like sugar granules, sweet and rough at the same time.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, L.P.” I tried to yank my hands away, but he held them on his chest with little effort.
“Come on,” he coaxed, but he wasn’t looking me in the eyes. He was looking at our struggling hands.
“Jax, let me go.”
“Not until you agree to come for a jog with me. It’s the least you can do after shoving and swearing at me.”
My anger subsided quickly with his words as my embarrassment set in. What had gotten into me?
He pushed further. “If we stay here any longer, you know I’ll make you swear more. Just a jog?” It was the closest to a plea I would get from him.
For the first time since coming into that bedroom, I wanted out of it.
I conceded, and he left the room so I could change. I put on compression leggings and a sports bra that I covered with a T-shirt. I didn’t have many clothes that I exercised in because, truth be told, I didn’t exercise much.
When I met him downstairs, he just nodded. We walked past a gaping Jay and Mrs. Stonewood toward the back of the house. No news stations had access to the acres of land behind the Stonewood estate and we could run there freely.
Our first run together, and most every run we’d shared that summer, started quietly.
The crunch under our feet, our rhythmic breathing, and the nature around us allowed me to meditate. I thought about life without my parents on that first run. I thought about my well mapped out plan for college. I thought about my mother.
My beautiful, sweet mother. She loved her family and my father so much and said we’d been fortunate to have him. She saw him as a good man. It blinded her to all of his flaws and to what our future held. Maybe my father loved her too, in his own brutal, vicious way.
My breathing quickened, but I didn’t care. I picked up the pace and pushed myself harder.
My father—that man—had been, and still was, a monster. Controlling, vindictive, and mean, he only cared about three things: his business, his appearance, and himself. How many times had he locked us in that room because we’d said the wrong thing or his business’s stocks didn’t do well enough or my mother donated too much to her charity? How many nights did we spend in there, locked away?
Locked away.
I stopped like I’d crashed into the steel door that kept us prisoners. I gulped for air but couldn’t seem to take any in. I bent over, trying hard to breathe, but I felt smothered, like I was in that room suffocating all over again.
God, I was all alone now. All alone and for some reason, I couldn’t think of any other word, everything disappeared except me.
“Alone.” I choked it out, trying to find other words, other things, trying to grasp at anything else.
“Alone. Alone. Alone. I’m all alone.” I sounded pathetic even to myself.
I heard Jax telling me to breathe, but he was so far away. I crumbled down onto the dirt of the path, and then Jax was kneeling in front of me, holding my face and making me look in his eyes. “Fucking breathe, Whitfield. Watch me.” He pulled in a breath and pushed it back out. He did it again, and I followed his lead.
I shook my head. No air was coming in.
He must have realized it wasn’t working because his blue eyes flared. His jaw clenched. I knew he was trying to read me, but I was starting to fade. All I saw was the tunnel vision narrowing in on just him.
Then, he crashed his lips onto mine.