Page 34 of Attraction & Repulsion

Though her stomach was still in knots, Carson closed the distance between them and lowered herself onto the couch. “I always wondered why you never asked questions like everyone else does. Now it makes sense. You already knew.”

Jax didn’t respond, breaking eye contact with her. The wooden coffee table in front of them seemed to have him in a trance. Its deep hickory stain filled the hundreds of crevasses in the blemished wood. Only two remotes and a duck-hunting magazine littered the surface.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, after a moment.

She picked at a fuzz on her knee. When she’d left her house, she hadn’t bothered changing out of her pajamas. Her ratty, plaid pants were well worn, the color faded, and she wore an oversized shirt that had been Luke’s. The sleeves hung well past her fingertips. She had shoved her feet into the first pair of shoes she could find: flip-flops.

“I don’t understand why it has taken me so long to recognize you,” Carson finally said, sliding a hand over her unbrushed hair.

“What made you remember?”

“A dream.”

“A dream?” Jax repeated.

“I dream a lot about what happened.”

“So, a nightmare?”

“You could say that.” Jax could never imagine the actual nightmare of those dreams.

Lifting a hand to rub his jaw, Jax breathed in once and let it out. “We were called to the scene for vehicle extraction because you were trapped in the car. When we arrived, another engine was already tending to you.”

Loud drumming filled Carson’s ears as he told the story, making it hard to hear him. It took her a moment to realize it was her thudding heart.

“When I first saw the car, I couldn’t believe anyone was still alive,” Jax continued. “When a semi-truck that large hits a car that small . . . Then I saw you. The car mangled around you. It took us twenty-seven minutes to get you out.”

Then Jax grimaced. “You suddenly became alert and began running when we tried to put you on the stretcher. We didn’t even get the chance to put the neck brace on you.”

Internally she recoiled, thinking about why she had become alert. Again, Luke’s body covered with the blue blanket haunted her mind.

“It took three grown men to pick you up,” Jax whispered, deep in memory. “Finally, you clung to me. It was the first time in my career I hadn’t known what to do. I felt so helpless watching what was happening before me.” Blinking, he focused back on her. She had not moved, had not taken a breath. “You were so broken. Your body shouldn’t have been able to move like that. We figured it was from adrenaline.”

“The doctor said my brain didn’t understand that I’d been hurt,” Carson confirmed.

“Then when they put you in the ambulance”—he swallowed—“you started screaming about . . . about . . .”

“My baby.” Carson finished for him, shocked at the ease of her words.

Again, Jax’s gaze wandered to the coffee table, absentmindedly nodding. “At first, I thought you meant there was a child in the car. Then I overheard you tell the EMT you were pregnant.”

That was the moment Carson’s world had crumpled all around her. As soon as she was wheeled into the ambulance a shearing pain had ripped through her abdomen. It felt as though a chainsaw was cutting her in half. The EMT had promised her baby would be fine, but Carson had known she had not only lost Luke, but her son as well.

Her brain tried to digest this information as they sat in somber, contemplative silence. It was so strange to hear about the wreck from another perspective.

Chewing on her thumbnail, Carson’s eyes wandered around the interior of Jax’s home. A short, wood bookcase was shoved in the corner. Its shelves held DVDs, a row of wooden ducks, and a portable Bluetooth speaker. In the kitchen on her right, a loaf of bread sat near the sink, next to a nearly empty roll of paper towels. A collection of knives were mounted to the wall under a cupboard. Butcher. Chef’s. Boning. Filet. Was that a cleaver? Carson wondered if Jax was a cook. What would those blades feel like against her skin . . .

“I’ve thought about you a lot over the years,” Jax said, breaking the silence. “I wondered what had happened to you and how you were doing.”

Carson pictured her mutilated body, the scars, and the years’ worth of self-inflicted pain. She thought about when she’d fled the restaurant the night before, fled from their conversation.

Then she thought about Jax, knowing about her accident and how traumatic it had been for her. It made her uneasy just how much he knew.

And his excuse of not telling her because he didn’t want to remind her continued to not sit well either. Deep down, Carson felt he should have said something. He should have confessed. Instead, he’d left her completely oblivious to his part in all of it.

What other secrets was he keeping? Did he know about her self-harmas well? Had he somehow pieced together her idiosyncrasies and conclude that she was cutting herself? Her stomach twisted harder and harder as her skin seemed to crawl with scorpions. It was unsettling.

Not even Raegan knew Carson’s secret. She and Hunter knew Luke was killed on impact, and that Carson had miscarried on the way to the hospital. What they didn’t know was that Luke had been thrown from the car and Carson had tried to run to him after being freed from the wreckage. That she had been pulled from Luke’s dead body. That she takes sharp items and butchers her skin.

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