Page 70 of Jax

She nodded her head, eyes staring into the center of my chest, as if it were my nipples that were talking to her.

“Don’t overthink it,” I whispered, stepping forward and into her space. I smelled the wash of rain from last night mixed into her light scent of summer grass and hay. It was like a beacon of home as I took a deep breath against her hair and pressed a gentle kiss to her cool forehead.

Her hand jumped to her forehead, pressing against it like I had branded a mark on her skin, confusion and shock woven into her features. She looked at me, flabbergasted, waiting for answers.

Answers she wasn’t going to get. Not from me.

Whatever conclusion she was going to come to went beyond my imagination’s capabilities. My actions, my words, my motives. All of them would remain a mystery to her.

For now.

Chapter Sixteen

Ronnie

Iknew I was different.

Knew I didn’t think like normal people.

But I didn’t think I wasthisbad.

When you weren’t a thinking kind of girl, trying to unravel a taciturn man like Jax was impossible. Trying to take all my stress out on bundled starch, I wondered why the fuck Jax wasn’t back to explain his bipolar attitude to me two and a half weeks ago. He said he’d only be gone for a few days!

He kissed me and then justleft.The feeling of his lips on my forehead was like a burning scar that I couldn’t forget. It sat at the forefront of my brain both figuratively and literally. For a man who couldn’t bear to be in my vicinity two months ago, to go and do that with such care, just when I wasn’t sure what kind of progress we had been making….

I didn’t forget about the sex either. It was pathetic of me to get worked up over a kiss to the forehead when I had already gone the full mile with him. But for Jax, sex was just a greeting and we already established that we weren’t going to talk about it. That or the barn. Even if Jax said we would, we didn’t, and we probably wouldn’t ever.

So that was also on the list of my current unsolved mysteries.

But the kiss he gave me before he left… it felt gentle, caring, and left me full of expectations that I couldn’t bring myself to confront. Did it mean something? Did it not?

Something about him had changed toward me. I’d caught just a glimpse of it that morning. And now I was facing a wall of uncertainty, not having even the slightest clue what to do with that information.

Nearly three weeks later, I was nowhere closer to an answer.

“This sucks,” I grumbled, throwing the last hay bale onto the back of the truck. It gave a screech in protest but otherwise held the weight on its back axis with ease. I hadn’t had a chance to thank Jax’s friend, Hunter, for fixing her, but I would get around to it eventually. He’d be my babysitter soon enough.

I sighed, reaching for the truck door handle, about to climb in when the reflection in the glass window caught my attention. A storm of dust and dirt thrown into the air was hurtling down the path toward the house with a growing vibration that rang like a siren throughout the property.

Pretty was hanging out on the back porch, keeping an eye on me with a textbook on his lap. It wasPhilosophy 101and from the constant barrage of annoyed growls I’d heard a field over, I had a feeling he was having similar difficulties to me. Perhaps thinking wasn’t meant for either of us.

At the sound of the engine reaching the house, I saw Pretty’s head snap up to attention and meet my gaze across the low bent crops. We were thinking the same thing.

Oh shit.

I saw Pretty throw his book and disappear into the house as I rushed through the middle of the crops, not bothering to go around the edge for the fear of being seen. I held my side, the aching throb beginning to start as it always did when I overexerted myself. It hadn’t been painful while I was baling the hay. In fact, the stretching felt good to me after sitting around for the past two weeks.

Which was against my current nurse’s -a.k.a.Mint’s-orders.

I heard the cut out of the engine as I was exiting the crop field. My heart was beating in my chest so hard I thought it was going to fall out by the sheer fear that had me sprinting even faster toward the back porch steps. If I could just make it to the bench....

I didn’t.

Instead, my foot caught on a stupid, insignificant little rock, and at the speed I was going, there was no other way for me but down.

Facedown.

I hissed as my chin smashed against the old wooden steps. I couldn’t decide whether to focus on the crippling throbbing down my side, or the bruising I could feel coming underneath my face.

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