Page 102 of Stay with Me

Roxy said Aimee had looked as if a ghost had just walked right past her, and while it would’ve been funny to see that go down, I wondered whether, if I wasn’t here, Jax would’ve taken her home. That shouldn’t matter, but it did, because I was a girl and I was feeling extra special dumb.

I know.

My breath caught as Jax turned onto the road leading to his house. I knew he was talking about the fire. Since he worked with my mom and she had told him about the grand pageant days, it didn’t take a leap of logic to figure she’d talk about the fire, but to what extent? How much did he know when his eyes landed on me for the first time when I walked back into Mona’s?

At the townhome, I carried my bag upstairs while Jax headed into the kitchen, doing what he’d done previously, kicking off his shoes and dropping his keys on the counter.

I undressed, this time wearing a tank under my thin long-sleeve shirt and my sleep shorts, and after washing my face, I pulled my hair up in a loose ponytail. When I left the bedroom, I grabbed my cell phone out of my purse and turned on the nightstand lamp. A soft glow was cast into the long room.

There was a missed text Teresa had sent me, a picture of her and Jase on the beach. She was in his arms, throwing up devil horns with her fingers, and he was smiling broadly, his gorgeous and downright unique gray eyes hidden behind the same kind of sunglasses Jax wore.

Footsteps drew my attention as I placed the cell phone back in my bag and there Jax was, walking into the bedroom. He’d lost his shirt somewhere between being downstairs and here, and I wasn’t complaining, because the rugged and flawed expanse of flesh was pretty darn nice to look upon, especially when his jeans hung low on his lean hips.

He was holding a beer in one hand and a juice box in the other.

My grin went up a notch. “For me?”

“Figured you could use a drink of the fruit punch kind.”

“Thanks.” I took the juice box and then sat Indian-style on the bed. The straw was already shoved in again. Perfect. Lifting my lashes, I saw him take a swig of beer and then he lowered the beer and shoved his other hand through his hair. I felt a shimmer of unease in my belly as I watched his chest rise and fall with a deep breath. “Is everything okay?”

Sounded like a dumb question.

His gaze slid sideways to mine as he tipped the bottle back to his lips again. He didn’t say anything as his throat worked, and damn, he’d drained that bottle and I’d only taken a small sip out of my juice box.

The unease grew until it was like a weed flourishing in a garden. Had he changed his mind about me staying with him? He didn’t look too happy. Maybe he was wishing he had taken Aimee with twoe’s home. Given her perfect skin and smile, and a mom who currently wasn’t MIA and messed up with drug dealers, I could totally get why he was probably rethinking a whole lot of things. After all, he’d almost gotten run over today and that hadn’t been his fault.

I shouldn’t even be in the house, let alone sitting in his bed, because I don’t belong here.

All at once, I wanted to be back at Shepherd, sitting with Teresa and watching the Hot Guy Brigade from a safe distance. There I was safe, because no one knew anything about me, and I had my Three F’s, and that was it, what I knew and what I forced myself to be okay with.

Clenching the juice box to the point it almost exploded like a volcano, I started to slide off the bed, my belly doing this terrible twisty motion. “I can sleep downstairs tonight and then tomorrow—”

“What?”

My toes were almost on the hardwood floor. “I said, I could sleep downstairs and tomorrow I can—”

“I heard you.” He put the empty beer on the top of his dresser as he faced me.

I glanced around. “I’m confused. If you heard what I was saying then why did you say what?”

“Okay. Maybe I should’ve expanded on that statement,” he corrected, and with wide eyes, I watched him bend over, and then I sucked in a short breath as he gripped my hips. An acute quiver radiated down my thighs, because wow-wee, this man knew how to grab hips. “Why in the fuck would you be sleeping downstairs?”

Slowly, I lifted my fruit punch and took a huge gulp. “I just thought that after ... um, everything ...” I trailed off as he lifted me back so that my feet weren’t on the floor.

“You thought what? That I didn’t want you up here with me?” He prowled onto the bed. There was no other word for what he was doing. One leg was on one side of mine, and the other on the other side. His hands were still on my hips. “That I didn’t notice how great you looked today? And not once did you turn your cheek to the left to hide?”

Oh my God.

Fruit punch forgotten.

“You thought I didn’t want to sleep beside you again? You guessed that wrong if that’s the case.” His fingers curled into my hips, sending a rush of warmth through my veins. “I really fucking enjoyed going to sleep next to you and waking up next to you. Which is new to me. I’m not usually a big fan of that, but you ... yeah, you’re different.”

I never wanted to be more different in my life.

His hands dragged up my sides. “Or you thought I didn’t notice that you were doing good all day, in spite of the shit we dealt with in the morning? We went to a shit hole and we almost got run over, but you still smiled afterward. You handled it, went to work. Then Aimee showed up.”

Jax dipped his head and brushed his lips across mine. “Aimee and I never dated.”

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