Page 54 of Jax

I hear ya’, Prez.

“Can I buy you a drink?” A smooth, chaste voice spoke over my shoulder.

I recognized that voice.

“Ash,” I growled, watching the brunette slide into the stool next to me. She leaned over, her skin pale under the crappy luminescent bar lights, brown hair like a rat’s nest ruffled around her shoulders in every direction. It was the dark sunglasses I was the most unsurprised to see, a new plain black pair over her face that I knew were covering the glossed eyes underneath.

She waved her two fingers at the bartender farther down, and it took a moment before he spotted her, but when he did, he was quick to fill her palms with two Buds.

She slid one toward me, the glass making a clink as it tripped over a chip in the old bar.

I stared down at the Bud, the wrapper around the neck of the beer soggy from too long in an ice chiller. Even if my exterior seemed calm, I couldn’t help the bubbling beneath the surface. It wasn’t aggressive, it wasn’t hostile. It was just… unwelcoming.

“When you left—” I turned my head toward her.

“You won’t find the information you’re looking for in here, Jax,” Ash interrupted, not looking in my direction. Her English accent caught some curious looks, but as they noticed the back of my leather cut and registered my skull and wings crested over my shoulders, they quickly turned their attention elsewhere.

Despite my aura in this place, I let my gaze travel the room, not wanting anybody to overhear us and gain loose lips. Even the shrill creak of the old stool I turned on didn’t make any heads turn.

“Your Black Jack isn’t in town and even the loose-lipped gossips that swarm here won’t be able to tell you anything,” Ash continued, punctuating her sentence with another swig of beer. And then another. And another.

I looked down at the beer she offered me, the coolness of the glass fading in the disgusting warmth of the bar. Where Ronnie couldn’t stand cold coffee, I couldn’t stand warm beer. It had yet to reach that point; however, I still didn’t reach for it.

I looked back to Ash, so comfortable and calm as she leaned against the bar. Anybody who didn’t know her would think she was just in her own world, enjoying her time. One thing I knew about Ash, however, was that both her thoughts and actions went a lot deeper than anybody else knew.

Well, all except one, perhaps.

The thoughts swirled in my mind, even as I mulled over her words. But even so, I knew there was little to stop this steel-hot feeling, like heartburn stuck in my chest. “I could bring you back now,” I threatened. Even though I wasn’t planning to say it, the words found themselves stabbing through the gap between us.

I rose from my chair, filling in the small gap between our stools, my elbow resting on the side of the bar, blocking Ash in.

Above her head, I could see down the top of her sunglasses, and behind the dim light, I saw the faint pallor of her irises facing forward. Unperturbed.

“You won’t do that.”

I wouldn’t?

Assumptions annoyed me, and I became aware of her eyes trailing down to my hand set on the bar. White knuckles as I pressed my fingers into the wood, the muscles growing tense and stiff, wondering what was holding me back from picking her up and dragging her back to club. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Ash turned from my hand, and her head spun to face me, eyes covered once again by the tinted glass. As close as we were, our breaths mixed in the same air; she smiled.

“You’ve been trained all your life to know what animals are thinking,” Ash stated, her voice leading. “Last time I checked, humans were animals.”

I realized what that burn in my chest was. Though it was mostly a mix of anger and annoyance at Ash, the rest was an iron defensiveness. A threatening feeling that angered me most of all.

Because the one thing I had always been told, by my parents, by Ronnie’s dad, by all the trainers that taught me,when looking into the heart of a beast, be aware that a door opens both ways.

It had mystified me when I was young, but as I grew older, I knew exactly what they meant.

It wasn’t just me looking at her.

She was looking right back at me.

A small growl escaped my lips, my feet shifting on the rotting wood floor as my ass slipped back onto my seat, not a creak made. My hand clasped around the beer on the bar, popping the top of it off under my palm. I brought it to my lips. “I may know you’re up to something, Ash,” I replied, taking a sip of the shit beer. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”

Ash’s voice softened, tucking a stray dark hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to like it, Jax,” she said softly. “Nobody does.”

I didn’t have to look to know whose face just passed through Ash’s mind. Anna’s face passed through mine too.

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