I can honestly say I didn’t know which emotion I wanted from him.
Goose bumps skittered up my arms, and I willed myself to take a breath in and a breath out.
Somehow, my living room and kitchen seemed so much smaller once Rome was out of it. Jax took up all the damn space. His stance dominated every square foot of the room as he stood there in his workout clothes and let the sweat run down his temple.
He didn’t move or even seem to breath. I only knew he was alive because he held that water glass so tight, I saw his knuckles turning white.
I had to be the bigger person. I couldn’t succumb to rubbing my relationship in his face because Rome and I hadn’t truly moved on from our broken hearts. We’d just bandaged them.
I turned to close the freezer, trying to dispel the moment. “So, are you hungry?”
He grunted out a sort of laugh and mumbled, “Are you kidding me?”
I turned back to him, crossing my arms over the sports bra that was drenched in my now cold sweat, “I have a pizza I could heat …”
“Are you fucking him?” he asked so matter-of-factly I almost questioned whether I’d heard him right.
“What?”
“You heard me, Whitfield. Are you fucking him?”
“I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation between friends, Jax.”
“Well, when he touches you like that in front of your friend, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to ask.”
Did it really matter? He left me, and he was definitely fucking someone else. It was all over the news. I contemplated screaming it at him.
Who did he think he was asking something like that as if he had a right? Did he really think I was going to tell him?
He slammed the water down on the counter and some of it spilled over. Then, he stalked toward me in the kitchen and I backed up. When I bumped into the edge of the counter, he caged me in with his arms.
This look in his eyes I knew. It was the one I dreamt about and cried out his name for. His eyes would turn the bluest blue before he’d take me as if all of me was his.
“Answer the question, Whitfield.”
“I don’t think it’s fair of you to ask.”
“Answer the fucking question.”
“No, I’m not.” Then, I mumbled, “At the moment.”
I realized my mistake when he shoved back from the counter, spun around to pace and roared, “She says at the moment. Fuck!” Then his hands were pulling his hair up. “How many times?”
I slumped against the counter. “Jax, really?”
He whipped back around to pace up to me again. “Yes, really.”
“Does it matter?” I whispered.
He touched his forehead to mine and searched my eyes as if he could gaze the answer out of me. “Yes, baby, it matters.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know how long it's going to take me to erase every time you were with him from your memory.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what friends do. Friends actually encourage friends to go get some wherever they can so they aren’t drooling over some unattainable man that has the ability to ruin them.”
The words slipped so quickly out of my mouth, I barely realized I had just admitted to drooling over him. To wanting him even though he was unattainable. I’d blurted out my biggest fear too, which was him ruining me again.