Page 22 of Jax

But my grouchiness was thrown aside when I stood from the bike a little too quickly and pain sliced up my side. I hissed under my breath as I fought to hide it from Jax’s keen ears and eyes. His eyes moved to me, but I already started to hobble away from him and toward my door.

I was aware of the lack of the motorcycle engine as I pulled my keys out of my back pocket. Attached to them were my car keys and I fumbled around until I slipped off the key.

“My car keys.” I said, turning and offering it out to him. He was still by his bike, but at my gesture, he walked over to me.

As he took the key out of my hand, I saw he had lost a lot of his earlier vigor, the one he used to get me fired from my job and drag my ass kicking and screaming out the bar and onto the back of his bike.

I wondered if the reason we had gone so fast, that we’d broken every speed law known to man, was to release that energy. Going for a ride had always been a way for him to let off steam. He’d never let me go riding with him because he was reckless and stupid and didn’t want me caught up in it.

A familiar look crossed his face, and it hurt my heart and quelled whatever anger the adrenalin had brought forth. It was contemplative and frustrated, brows sewn together, eyes narrowed, and his pink lips made a straight line across his face. To others, he’d seem sullen, but I knew better. It wasn’t just a frown.

“I’m sorry.” The words came out of my mouth without thought and the second Jax registered them, his eyes jumped up from the walls of the motel he was surveying and straight to my face. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here,” I explained, fiddling with the remaining keys on the ring. There were only two left, my room key and the key to my suitcase, but it made me feel better to distract myself rather than look at him. “I knew the way we parted wasn’t great, and I get you hate me for not going with you, but when you left… I couldn’t leave it behind. I couldn’t let your parents run the farm into the ground. I wanted to save it, but—”

“Stop,” Jax interrupted me, his hand raised by the side of his shaking head. “I don’t need to know, Ronnie.”

More like doesn’t want to.

Even if he did need to know, or even ifIneeded him to know, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t push Jax to hear my story. Or at least the parts I wanted to tell him. The parts I wanted to explain.

I knew ever since I was determined to find Jax that I was secretly hoping for more from him, tricking myself into thinking maybe he’d want to get to know me again after all these years. But in Jax’s book, I committed the most terrible betrayal against him and there was nothing I could do to make up for that.

I nodded at him, his solemn dark figure at my doorstep, taking one last glance at him before turning away.

“Goodnight, Jax,” I said, unlocking my door and stepping inside.

I would have like to say he said goodnight back.

But he didn’t.

He left in the silence of the night, and I closed the door on him as he did, unable to watch him walk away. Again.

Chapter Five

Jax

Snap.

I sighed, looking over the open lands, my feet dangling over the edge of the cliff face, heels rubbing against the white limestone chalk. My hands tugged at the tufts of grass blowing over the sides, fearless in the rippling breeze.

Crunch.

I took off my Stetson, holding it on my lap as the sun’s heat cooled and the autumn evening set in.

Crack.

I sighed.

“Even Australia can hear you, Veronica.”

I didn’t even need to turn to look over my shoulder to know the wild child had stumbled out of the shrubs, twigs and sticks no doubt sticking out of her hair, mud all over her jeans and shirt.

“You know I don’t like it when you call me that,” Ronnie grumbled, her footsteps coming closer to me. They slowed as she neared the edge, and I looked up the small distance to her face as she gave the steep edge a tentative look.

“Your mother wouldn’t like to hear you say that,” I tutted. “It was your Grammy’s name after all.”

“Grammy’s old. So’s her name.” Ronnie sank down in the grass behind me, her knees pressed into my arm as if I were a shield to protect her from the edge.

I shook my head at her. This girl….

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