Page 146 of Stay with Me

“Trash?” I cut in, hands balling into fists. Jax was wrong. It so wasn’t enough. “Who in the fuck are you calling trash?”

Her gaze raked over me from the top of my bedraggled head, all the way down my bare legs. She sneered. “Could be the whore standing in front of me in nothing but a shirt?”

Jax shot forward, looping an arm around my waist and hauling me out of the way and giving me a shove away from her, and then he was in Aimee’s face. “You will fucking apologize. Right now.”

“Apologize for what?” she screamed.

His jaw had locked down, muscles tense along his back. “Fucking apologize, Aimee. I’m dead serious.”

Aimee must have tasted his anger, because she shrank a little, like a weed choked by a bushel of fucking roses. “Jax,” she whispered.

Hearing her whisper his name like that, like she couldn’t believe he was defending me over her, sent me off into the stratosphere. I was not going to be placed aside. I stormed forward, coming at Aimee from the other side. “You know what? You don’t need to apologize. I don’t need your fucking apologies. The fact is you want to be the girl wearinghisshirt who was sleeping inhisbed. You reek of jealousy.”

She turned a heated glare on me, but my bitch shades were up. “I was the girl,honey,and for a hell of a lot longer than you.”

Ouch.

Okay. Burn. She got me there. And my anger swirled, mixing with the raw hurt that had sliced deep in my chest. “You know what, Aimee? Call me trash. Whatever. I’m not the girl at the bar every night who’s throwing herself at a guy who’s with someone else. And I’m not the girl whose idea of making a living is being a ‘ring girl.’ I’m in college. To be a nurse. You know, doing things with my life. So yeah, if that makes me trash and a whore? Fucking proud of it then.”

She laughed harshly. “What? Do you think you’re actually special to him?” Before I could answer, she went on. “That you’re like his one and only?”

“Aimee,” Jax said, voice low.

“Because you’re not,” she snapped. “His bed is like the Philly train station, especially now.”

A pierce hit my chest. I had ... I had not known that, and as I glanced at Jax, there was nothing on his face that denied it. I exhaled harshly. “Then I guess you are just one of many, too.”

Her eyes flashed, and I didn’t know if I wounded her or if any of that made a difference to her. “At least I don’t have your face, bitch.”

Yep. It hadn’t made a difference.

My feet moved, and I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do, if I was going to introduce her to the epic bitch slap or if I was going to slam my knee into Jax’s groin, but he turned to me. Snagging an arm around my waist, he lifted me clear off my feet as he moved and twisted his body so I was facing the wall and he was facing Aimee. I craned my neck to see her.

He had a finger in her face. “Get out.”

The white under her tan increased. “But—”

“Get the fuck out, Aimee.”

She took a deep breath and her blue eyes turned glassy. Then her face crumbled, and it might’ve made me the biggest idiot in the world, but there was a teeny, tiny part of me that actually felt bad for her, because I recognized that pain that had broken her face.

I had felt it mere minutes ago.

Then Aimee blinked, sucked her tears right up, and swallowed. “I get it. Whatever this is. I get it.”

I wondered what the hell she got.

She smiled then, like he hadn’t just told her to get out of his house. “We’ll talk later, babe.”

And then she flounced out of the house.

What in the fuckity fuck?

Jax all but kicked his door shut and then he turned, settling me on my feet. I started to pull free, but his arm around my waist tightened, and he dragged my back against his chest.

“Let me go,” I said, gripping his arm.

“Okay,” he murmured in my ear. “I’ll admit it. You getting all up in her face like that was hot.”

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