Page 61 of Stay with Me

“Mmm. Russians.”

Jax grinned. “And you can’t forget about the whiskey.”

“Whiskey?” I gasped, eyes going wide as I clasped my hands under my chin. I was beginning to realize I was a bit overdramatic when I drank or I was sobering up. “No. Not whiskey. Mom used to drink whiskey and things ... yeah, she would be really happy or really sad.” I rose to my knees, pushing my hair back over my shoulders. “Is it hot in here?”

“It’s comfortable.” He wrapped his hand around my wrist, steadying me. “Mona does like her whiskey.”

Yeah, duh. Jax knew Mom. Our gazes collided, and I thought ... I could tell him this. “I thought ... I’d be like her if I drank, you know? Doing dumb stuff and ... I saw things done to her when she was drinking.”

An alertness seemed to bleed into Jax, and maybe later, when there wasn’t so much tequila sloshing around inside me, I’d realize that he was nowhere in the near vicinity of being as trashed as I was. “What kind of things?”

Rocking back so my butt was pressed against my calves, I knew I shouldn’t tell him the things I’d seen. No one wanted to hear that. It was messy. It was ugly. Not ugly like the scars on my body, but deeper and nasty.

But I had tequila tongue. “The first time—and it was the first because it happened more than once—she was having a party. She was always having parties, but this night it was late and I was thirsty. I had a cold or the flu. Something. I needed to get something to drink. I had to come downstairs. Mom had told me before not to come downstairs when she was having parties, but I had to.”

“I get you,” he said quietly. “How old were you?”

Shrugging, I struggled to flip through my memories. “Twelve, I think? I don’t know. It wasn’t too long after ... well, anyway, I came downstairs and there were people passed out on the floor, and I heard Mom. She was making these weird noises—not good noises and her bedroom door was open. I looked in, and she was on the floor. Some guy was with her. He was ...” I shook my head slowly, seeing the fuzzy, cloudy images in my head. “Mom saw me. So did the guy. She freaked, and I ran upstairs. She’d been so drunk that night.”

His chest rose sharply. “Did any of those guys ever ... mess with you?”

I stared at him a moment and then laughed. It wasn’t funny. It was far from being funny, but back then ... I looked worse than I did now. “No.”

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

“No. I guess not.”

“I’ve seen people get themselves in stupid situations while drinking and I’ve seen some in really precarious ones,” he said, his brown eyes serious. “You don’t have to worry about any of that here. You’re safe to enjoy yourself.”

“Thank you,” I said, thinking that needed to be said.

“But God damn, Calla ...” His fingers squeezed my wrist gently as a hard look entered his eyes. “You shouldn’t have seen shit like that.”

“I know, but I did and there aren’t any take-backs in life.” I trailed off as his gaze held mine. I wished he thought I was pretty and that his kiss had been real. “But it’s not like that. Tequila is better than whiskey.”

His expression softened. “We’ll take whiskey off the list, honey.”

I smiled. “Good. This ... this hasn’t been like those times with Mom. Why was I so afraid?” I didn’t give him a chance to answer, because I jumped to my feet, my wrist slipping free from his loose grasp. The sudden movement caused me to stagger, and I threw out my arms to steady myself. “Whoa doggie ...”

Jax rose easily and he didn’t sway. “Calla, baby, maybe you should sit down.”

Sitting down sounded smart. “What was I about to do?”

He was grinning again. “I’m not sure. You were talking about being afraid.”

I wrinkled my nose, and then it hit me. “Oh! Stay right there.” I took off before he could stop me.

“Calla—”

Heading into the bedroom, I went to the closet and grabbed my items. Holding them close to my chest, I stumbled back into the living room. Jax was standing by the couch, both brows raised.

I walked to where he stood and placed the trophy I’d won at the Miss Sunshine Pageant, or some stupid shit name like that, on the coffee table. “That’s mine.”

Jax sat on the edge of the couch, his gaze falling onto the trophy. The metal and plastic glittered under the living room ceiling light.

“I used to be in pageants.” Part of me, the tiny slice that was stuck in the haze in my head, couldn’t believe I was telling him this. I hadn’t toldanyone. “Since I was, like, a newborn. No joke. I couldn’t even sit up and Mom had me in pageants. I could’ve been on the TV show—you know,Toddlers & Tiaras? That wassome, for likeyears.”

His gaze finally drifted back to me, to the photo I held close to my chest. Again, there was a strange look to the way he stared at me.

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