Page 69 of Jax

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Returning to the house, I felt my body ache in the familiar way it used to before I joined the club. Getting into fights had once been my day to day life before I joined. I had thought I’d left it behind me, but scrapping with my brothers also came with the territory. We were more like a family than I had thought. Although I did try to avoid fighting Wolf for reasons I was now recalling—vividly.

I toed off my boots at the door, eyeing the bruising and inflammation around my ankle and cursing the huge bastard just as I heard the soft padding of footprints. The distinct pause between her strides was as unique as her face. I stared at her small bare feet both, her long middle toes bowing, her feet scrunched up against the cold wooden floor.

I took note of her clothes, wrinkled, mussed and bunched around her small but present curves, all of them screaming for an immediate iron. Even my cut around her shoulders hugged her broader shoulders but swept long past her waist, down to her slim thighs.

I looked at her face.

Printed red marks crisscrossed her cheeks in the shape of the couch’s floral crochet. The dim light warmed her deep green sleep-glazed eyes and downplayed the lighter brown tones of her mussed hair. Watching me with a steady but dazed gaze, she didn’t seem to notice my long, observing scan. She just stood still, waiting.

“How are you feeling?” I straightened out my back, stretching my arms above my head, my muscles protesting with fierce pangs everywhere.

“Tired,” she murmured, her voice groggy and rasp. “But okay.” Her hand moved with absent purpose and it wrapped around her side, pressing the leather tight under her opposite arm. Her body also tilted. Only slightly and toward her left, it was enough to make me aware of her discomfort.

What a liar.

I shook my head.

“Come on.” I reached to grab her free hand, and without jerking her side, I gave her an encouraging tug behind me. She didn’t fight me, and the soft patter of her bare feet followed behind my sock-covered ones.

The feel of her hand in mine, reminded me of how small that hand had once been, and how long it had been since I’d held it. It was softer than before. Once it had been full of callouses and dried out from too much time spent outside, belonging to a girl who gave little care for cosmetic and skin care products.

Her priority of animals over herself hadn’t changed. But judging by her smooth, warm hand, perhaps her idea of skincare had at least risen.

Coming into the kitchen, I made my way to the cupboard and using my free hand, I dug through the higher shelves until I found my secret stash.

I pulled the crocodile cookie jar down, popped open the lid, and fished out two white tablets. One for her, one for me.

Sharing is caring.

One glass of water and one tablet down my throat, I turned back to her. Pulling her closer, I slid my hand down her thin wrist, feeling the soft bumps of scars that were otherwise invisible to the eye, and paused. It was only a moment, but her eyes looked down to her hand with a distant gaze.

I shook my mind free and opened her palm, placing the white tablet inside of it. “Take this,” I whispered in the quietness of the house, the early morning sunlight telling me that the day had yet to start, as I waited for her to understand. “This is just for pain. Not a sedative like last night.”

Fighting through the lingering drowsiness of the sedative painkiller I gave her last night, she put the tablet in her mouth.

“Now drink.” I handed her the glass and she did as she was told, almost downing the whole thing before handing it back to me. The rustle of the leather cut was loud between us and the house’s eerie echo of the noise made a thick atmosphere in the air.

As the moment between us lengthened, I could see Ronnie’s clarity starting to resurface. The docile, obedient attitude that came with the grogginess that I was beginning to enjoy was not meant to last as her eyes fluttered with brightening awareness. Her gaze ran up and down my own body, much like mine had done moments before, and I waited with patience as she took the changes in.

“You changed?” she noted, running a small hand up to her hair to brush down some of the springing strays.

“No need to get self-conscious on me now, Ron’,” I whispered, reaching up to sooth the side of her hair where she was touching. She stiffened underneath my touch, her eyes jumping to mine, thoughts whirling fast behind them.

“You’re different,” she breathed, her hand moving to grab mine. She pulled it down from her hair, our hands resting just above her shoulder as those green, perceptive eyes got a better look at me.

I waited to see what she was thinking, watching as the trickling light of the sun was beginning to set in through the window, casting across the top of her sharp cheeks and irises. The dark green was now lit with a yellow hue, more the color of spring grass than a winter’s fir forest.

She opened her mouth, lips parting with the softest noise.

And then they closed again. Her mouth didn’t move for minutes after that, and at the five-minute mark, I let her cowardice go.

“I’m off, away for a few days on club business. The brothers will be coming up to keep an eye on you just in case that guy from a few days ago comes back.”

No need to tell her about yesterday.

“Don’t worry. It’ll just be the ones you’ve met already. Nobody you don’t know. Also, no training with Max when I’m gone. Just let her in and out of her stable during the day. If it rains, leave the stable door open and she’ll go in on her own to get out of the storm. We’re not repeating yesterday.”

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