Page 50 of Jax

“Tell me she’s coming back, Jackson!” I cried into the side of his neck, his scent out of my reach as my nose clogged with snot, and my breathing too ragged to take in the smell that I knew could comfort me. “Tell me she’s coming back!”

His arms came around my back and my bones creaked under his tight squeeze.

“Jackson?” I whispered, frozen as his arms tightened to an almost painful grip around me. “Tell me she’s coming back…. please?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Jackson…?”

“Ronnie,” he whispered. “Ronnie. Ronnie. Ronnie.”

Over and over again he repeated the name in my ear like an apology. Like it was the only word he could say to me. Like it was the only word he knew.

Although I hadn’t known it then, looking back, I knew it had been the one thing I wanted to hear. It didn’t make sense. But that didn’t matter. If it only made sense to the both of us, then that was all that mattered. If it was only me and Jackson, nothing else mattered.

Nothing at all.

* * *

The storm knocked on the pane, stirring me to life as I stared into the night, and my reflection stared right back at me.

My hair was a mess, my sweater stretched at the front, revealing the harsh, red rash—

Oh crap. That wasn’t a rash.

It was fucking hickeys.

“Shit,” I whispered as I remembered everything. Everything that wasn’t a fucking delirium of pleasure and the best sex of my life, unbridled until the sudden weight of what happened came crashing down on me. “Shit, shit, shi—”

I pushed up from the bed and onto my feet, body aching as I turned and—

A cool, wet trail leaked down the inside of my thigh, and even if I had only slept with one other man, I knew exactly what that was.

It was Jax.

Lot and lots of Jax.

Fabulous. We hadn’t even used a condom.

“Like that matters,” I huffed.

Unless he had an STD, and I sure as fuck hoped he didn’t—that was one thing I really didn’t need to be dealing with right now not after… what had just happened.

The incessant tapping of the annoying tree outside had me looking at the dark peering in through the thin, translucent curtains. If I had to guess, I’d say I had only been asleep for maybe an hour or so.

Not long at all.

Which meant—

Just as I thought it, the door to the bathroom swung open and light flooded the room. Steam rolled across the floor, and I wanted to focus on that, but instead my eyes trailed to the man standing in the doorway, looking like a deer in headlights.

His eyes were wide with surprise, paused midway through pulling his shirt on over his head, hair pushed back by the black bandana I kept on my bedside table. The tiniest intake of breath slipped from my lips as I spotted the trail of water roll over his tense ab muscles and down into the waist of his jeans, the material darkened around the edges of his skin.

I noticed the gauze pads taped over his shoulder and realized that must have been why he was bleeding. I wanted to ask where he got it, but the second I opened my mouth, Jax cut me off.

“I thought you’d be sleeping a bit longer…,” Jax’s shirt fell over his naked chest, obscuring the view as his words sunk in.

“What?” I laughed, hearing the empty, bitterness of it. “So, you could sneak out before seeing me?”

---