Page 2 of Cross To Bear

He didn’t need to explain, just fucking tell me the night before. If it’d been on my calendar, I’d have cooked the salad ingredients while attacking the bathroom, leaving the kitchen for later in the weekend. I wouldn’t have worked late into the night cleaning up everything he’d just trashed. I’d be up, dressed, ready and pushing him into the shower to wash the stink of beer off while I got the salad and drinks ready, as well as something for Jesse’s mum. I’d have had everything sorted. Instead, I looked back over my shoulder at the chaos, the shrill scream of the smoke alarm seeming to externalise what I was keeping in. I’d have to work out something on the fly.

I hated working out shit on the fly.

“Have a shower,” I told him, then looked down at his hands. “A cold one. Heat will just make the burn worse.”

“I’ll freeze my fucking balls off,” he grumbled.

“Cold water therapy is being used by a lot of people now to enhance muscle growth and get faster recovery.”

I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I’d seen a few gym bro videos on social media, so it sounded plausible.

“Yeah?” Jesse’s tone changed completely. “OK, I’ll give it a go.” But right as he went to move, he turned to me. “What about the salad? I told Mum we’d bring it.”

“We’ll pick something up at the shops on the way,” I said.

All of his problems solved, the mulish expression faded, and he moved closer—something that would have thrilled me to the bones when we’d first got together. I couldn’t get over the fact he’d chosen me, that he was mine, that his arms would slide around my neck and tug me closer. Not now. I was stiff in his embrace, tolerating his hug, because I couldn’t keep down the swirl of frustration, irritation, and despair inside me to relax into his embrace, I just couldn’t.

“Kiss?”

I didn’t want to and that was weird. To look at someone I’d loved so very much and feel some strange need to pull away, not get closer. Jesse was a hot mess, my work wife, Mal, said. A hot, hot, hot mess. It made perfect sense that this is how it would go if he tried to make the potato salad. The guys he worked with said he had sexy fingers because he was always fucking things up, but… I leaned in and pressed my lips to his, though that took real effort. Not enough, apparently, because he frowned.

“Your lips are all hard.” He pressed his thumb into the bottom one. “Your kisses used to be softer.”

“They’ll be softer once I’ve got this mess cleaned up,” I said. “Shower, now.”

I was using the kind of tone a mother would with a recalcitrant teen. He knew it, and I knew it. And just like a teenager, that beautiful face soured into a sullen expression.

“Fine, but you don’t have to talk to me like I’m a fucking kid.”

I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to wait to hear if the water was running after he slammed the door to the bathroom shut, to make sure he was actually doing just that, not sitting on the toilet, scrolling endlessly on his phone. I shouldn’t have to wade through the mess in the kitchen, doing my best to get rid of the worst of the issues while cataloguing everything I’d need to do when I got home. Jesse would stay on at his parents’ house, which meant at least he’d be out of my hair, then that’d lead to him going over to the garage with his brother, Bjorn, and the other guys.

Bjorn.

If Jesse was Jax Teller, Bjorn was one of the guys from the show Vikings. Tall, so freaking tall and with shoulders so broad they seemed to blot out the sun. He had dirty blond hair he kept swept back, his hands and arms covered in tattoos. He looked like he’d be just as good at wielding a sword and shield as he was a tattoo gun. Would he have burned eggs and spilled boiled potatoes all over the floor? I stopped still, wondering where the hell that thought had come from. It didn’t matter what Bjorn would do. I was fairly sure he was in a relationship with Cressida, the super-hot Goth chick that worked in his gallery and I…

Needed to get myself sorted.

I forced my attention back to the job at hand as Jesse walked out of the bathroom. My eyes slid over his muscular chest, taking in the tattoos his brother had done there, remembering the times I’d traced them with my fingers and tongue. This is fine, I told myself. Everything is fine.

Chapter 2

“So why are your parents having a barbeque?” I asked Jesse as we walked through the fruit and veg aisle of the supermarket.

“What…?”

Some girls were checking him out as they suggestively fondled some cantaloupes, and he smiled back at them for a second before looking down at me.

“The barbeque. Is it just a family get together or what?” I pressed.

“Oh, it’s Mum’s birthday.”

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit…

I’d stopped myself from adding Jesse’s parents’ birthdays to my calendar because that felt like I was taking on yet more mental load that wasn’t mine. I told myself at the time I was being a strong, independent woman, but I felt like neither of those things right now.

“Tell me you’ve got her a present?” I said, though as soon as I looked at his face, I knew. He didn’t remember anyone’s birthday, including my own, so why would he remember his own mother’s? “Jesse, we can’t turn up empty handed!”

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