CHAPTER SEVEN
JAX
THAT SUMMER WAS FILLED with sorrow, pain, and handling legalities after I left her that night. Going to live with my father—hours away from my mother, little brother, and Aubrey—had always been my plan. I didn’t want to stick around and go to college like every other person in that small town. I wanted and needed more.
That night, we laid together after I snuck into her room. I pulled my guitar out and sang lyrics I’d written for her after us being on the lake.
“Sweet Sin, Sweet Sin.
You pulled me in.
Taste of cinnamon,
Sweet as ever and mine forever
Sweet Sin, Sweet Sin,
I can’t avoid this now
Meant to be waking up and sleeping next to me.”
She cried like they meant everything to her, and then we made love like we were meant to be. In that moment, my desire to be everything to her nearly did me in. She was the one girl who’d made me feel everything—good and bad, all at once.
When I got up to leave, I’d thought about bringing her with me, but when I looked at her lying in bed as I grabbed my duffel, I knew I couldn’t wake her and ask her to come. Her smooth skin glowed in the moonlight, her lips parted just enough to keep their natural shape and show the plump upper lip that bowed. Her hair was undone and the dark waves clashed with the white sheets my mom thought looked so nice. Little did she know how much of a bitch it was for me to clean when I’d taken her virginity there.
Damn, I wanted to wake her up and look at her emerald eyes one last time. But if I did, I would give in to their sadness and do what I knew I shouldn’t.
I wouldn’t enable her or myself any longer. We needed to heal from the tragedy we’d both experienced. She needed to learn I wasn’t there to save her, and I needed to learn what fucked-up emotion I was dealing with when I looked at her.
We needed to grow the fuck up without one another because, at this rate, I wouldn’t let a soul near her. I was ready to knock more than a few heads together to shield her from the shit that was being said about that night.
Already had.
More than that, I needed to protect her. I could do that from farther away. I’d do that by doing the one damn thing she was sure to never forgive me for. I’d do it by leaving her and by visiting the damn man that lit her life on fire.
The next day, I was patted down after walking through metal detectors. When a boy, who’s supposed to be a man at eighteen, shakes from the clash of culture shock after walking into a prison, he realizes one thing about himself. He’s a pussy.
That prison shaped the rest of my life, maybe for the better or maybe for the worse.
Aubrey’s father sat across from me, such a different man than I thought he was.
Looking back, the signs were there. The way she never made a mistake, the way she entered a room almost too quietly. How her face lit up like she’d never seen a happy home every damn time she came over or how her clothes were never out of place. But shit, she hid the turmoil of abuse well. Or maybe I was ignorant, not realizing that most families hide those secrets so much better than others.
So many years ago, I remember how she would panic. She didn’t say much, but when she panicked it was fucking scary. Jay handled her panic attacks better, knew how to soothe her, handled her better in general. Which pissed me off.
I’d never been jealous of my little brother until I saw how Aubrey looked at him. He was her protector, and she was the treasure he would kill me over. Even if neither would admit it.
The only other time as a kid that I’d questioned Aubrey’s home life was the day I found that her hair had been cut after she’d panicked at my house. When I saw her at school the next week, I almost collapsed in shock. Her hair was cut into a bob, and something in me just knew she hadn’t wanted it cut that way. Something in me, even stronger, made me forget. No one wants that shit on their conscience and I was young and stupid.
I wasn’t being stupid this time around.
Aubrey’s father must have seen that in my eyes, read me better than I was ever able to read people. After we stared at one another—his green eyes so much like Aubrey’s, but colder—he leaned back in his chair and smiled.
How closely the girl I loved resembled the man I hated scared the shit out of me. When he smiled, I saw Aubrey, but I also saw a sort of menace Aubrey could never have.
“You here to apologize?” he asked so softly. Yet, his words reverberated so loudly through me.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Apologize for what, Frank?”