Page 72 of Jax

“I get it. All the boys’ phones will be turned back on in a few hours. You can check then.” Anna shrugged, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder. “But until then….” She whirled toward me and I felt my back snap straight. Her blue eyes scanned over my outfit before she extended her small hand.

“Shall we?”

I looked back at her and the outfit she was wearing with a frown. I knew for sure that there were no suitable clothes for a night out upstairs in the few drawers my little duffle bag had filled. Or at least, that’s what I assumed we’d be doing.

“Come on, girl, grab my hand. I gotta change too.”

I glared at her breasts. And the corset. And the jeans. And the boots.

I breathed, my gaze moving back up to her eyes. “There’s more?” I whispered.

She grinned.

* * *

When I had asked Anna about the “more” earlier, I couldn’t have imagined she meantless.With the cropped corset and Daisy Dukes cupping the globes of my ass, I couldn’t help how self-conscious I felt. I had never worn anything like this… anything so risqué.

Not to mention my scars. They were on show for the whole world, pink and angry little streaks marring over my hip and down my thigh. I had refused at first, but with a blatant shrug, Anna showed me the dark colored scar across her stomach. It didn’t have the same years on it as mine nor was it anywhere as large as mine, but it was a subtle enough gesture of sisterhood. Of solidarity.

Everyone has scars.

She had patted my ass and told me to embrace it. And after pre-drinks, and now three more in, I was more than ready to embrace anything.

“So,” Mallory, the natural redhead asked as she leaned across the table, sipping a cute pink cocktail. “Cowboy?”

“Cowboy,” I scoffed, just the thought making me want to tear up with the hilarity. “More like rogue.”

My Jackson might may have once had that cowboy charm, but he’d grown into more of a devilish bad boy now, and I hated to think how much it suited him.

“Well, it’s nice to see him interested in someone for once.” Mallory smiled, stirring her fruity drink with the little pink straw.

“That doesn’t sound like what I’ve heard,” I replied, sighing into the margarita Anna ordered for me. The drink had the clarity I wished my problems did. Its endless transparency was much like the endless feeling of falling when it came to Jax. I had yet to find any footing, and for all the emotion that was being sapped from me being around him, I saw no end in sight.

“Well, it’s true that he played around a bit,” Anna grumbled. “Well, a lot.”

Mallory sent her a sharp look, probably at her bluntness, but I didn’t mind.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know it.

“But he’s never been serious. Not even once. He was as fickle as they came, and I’ve had to kick out way too many women that had fallen too deep into his empty charm.” Anna ran a hand through her shortened hair, ruffling the white fluff that fell in a way that screamed hot bedroom hair. I wondered what she was trying to entice, considering the hot, Russian man she had made her husb—I meant … old man?

Is that what they call it?

“Was he always like that?” Bell, the young brunette asked, running a hand through her hair. It was long and silky, matching the soft pale skin she had despite the warm summer that had just passed.

“His looks have always caught the attention of girls. From baby on up. But when I knew him, he hadn’t been too interested. The odd fling here or there, but his real love had been the horses,” I reminisced, the loud music of the club seeming to fade away as I remembered seeing him in the fields, the winds blowing, grass rustling against his legs as he rested his palms against the great beasts. “When he was working with them, he always had such a look of… pure satisfaction. He just looked so in place. Like it was where he belonged. I thought that would never change....”

The girls fell silent following my closing words.

“Maybe it hasn’t.” Anna’s voice cut through. I looked up to see her staring across the club, her eyes not locking on anything but just scanning through the faces. Her mind looked somewhere far beyond, and for a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to say anything more, her red lips pursed at the rim of her glass. But then she said something I didn’t expect. “Just because someone is different from how you remember them doesn’t mean that everything about them has changed. I don’t know what you’ve been thinking—” She turned to look me dead in the eyes with a weight of seriousness I had yet to see from her. It held me in place as I soaked up her every word. “—but the Jax you’re seeing isn’t an entirely different person from the Jackson you knew. They’re not two different people. He’s the same Jackson you knew, he’s just… different.”

I had nothing to say to that.

I couldn’t deny that even though I noticed the little pieces of Jackson inside of Jax, I had been doing exactly what she said this entire time. I’d separated them. I made it black and white, the way I separated my past from his present.

“Anyway, I didn’t bust my ass to get you out here just to get you to blab on about our boy,” Anna scoffed, lifting the margarita to her lips, and in one swift swig, the liquid washed down her throat, and the bottom of the glass hit the table. “We came here to get smashed. ROUNDS!”

Anna thrust herself up from the table, almost knocking the glasses over and waved to the bartender who gave a curt nod in her direction. “We’re gonna get the strongest they’ve got. If I’m gonna get in trouble for this shit, I better make it worthwhile.”

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