CHAPTER TWENTY
AUBREY
EVERY DAY AFTER THAT, I’d get a text from him in the morning.
Winner: Going for a run today?
The first morning I got it, my phone became a sort of grenade, one I wasn’t sure I wanted to hold. I stared at it for way longer than I wanted to admit, thumb hovering over the screen to type a response.
It stayed glued to my side as I ate a light breakfast and put on my bright purple camo leggings with a purple sports bra.
As I tied my shoes, it alerted me to another text.
Winner: Quit ignoring me, Whitfield. I’m going with you on your run.
I smirked and before I could talk myself out of it, I texted back.
Aubrey: You have twenty minutes to meet me in front of my apartment.
I threw my phone onto the couch, knowing I’d just pulled the pin and thrown the grenade that might cause me to self-destruct.
The rush of adrenaline from communicating with him surged through my veins. It shouldn’t be something I got addicted to.
Every day that I wanted to go for a run, I’d text him that same message. Every time, he didn’t answer but was there twenty minutes later.
For the next two weeks, we studied and jogged together. In between, I sent Jay off to LA and cried like a baby on Jax’s shoulder when he asked how I took him leaving.
On days Jax went back to the city, I went to visit my girls at the reservation.
We formed a routine.
One I liked to think was a friend routine but Katie, Vick, and Rome seemed to think otherwise.
I argued that I would have run and studied with all of them.
They thought I was full of shit.
I told myself that being close to Jax came naturally. We grew up together, and I missed Jay.
Jax was a decent substitute.
When we ran, he didn’t say much. His breathing was methodical, steady, and rhythmic as if because he was a musical genius, he could make the damn necessary action of life a song.
It infuriated me, soothed me, and hypnotized me all at the same time.
With the summer heat and quick pace, I always reached a point where my muscles just took over. My mind turned itself off, and I just ran while I listened to our feet hit the ground.
That was the part I was addicted to, with or without Jax.
It was freedom. No control, no worries, no thoughts.
That day, I can also say there was no direction or preservation of life in me because one second I was running up the hill and the next I was being tackled onto the grass.
Screaming, my reflexes kicked in and stuck my hands out to catch my fall.
“Goddamn it!” Jax yelled as he landed on top of me.
“What the hell, Jax!”