Page 49 of Sexted By Santa
He laughed. “It’s not a bad thing.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked morosely. “My relationships are always disasters. I don’t want to ruin things with Jaxson. He deserves better than that.”
Barry raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you deserve better too.”
“I can’t blame every man I’ve ever been with for things going badly. The only constant in my relationships is me.”
“Is it?” Barry said. “I’m not so sure. Maybe the constant isn’t you, so much as the type of man you usually choose to be with.”
I twisted my lips. “Same result in the end, though.”
“Until you shake up the variables, yes,” Barry said. “Jaxson seems like a new variable. He has very little in common with Fynn that I can see.”
I spent the next day and half thinking about Barry’s words.
Jaxsonwasdifferent from the other men I’d dated. Gorgeous, still, but in a different way. Less classically handsome and more rugged. Bigger, broader, more built. But the differences ran deeper than that. He was a hard worker, a family man, someone who made dinner at home more often than he went out on the town. Someone who dealt with real problems yet had an easy smile and laidback demeanor that put people around him at ease. He was friendship and comfort and acceptance all wrapped up in a very sexy package.
I generally ended up with pretty artistic types or intellectuals I met at art shows, museums, or educational lecture series. Men who fascinated me on the surface, but whose substance didn’t always match the shiny exterior.
Fynn had been an art show find. He’d been outshining the artwork on the walls with his glossy copper hair and bright green eyes. He’d told me he was an art blogger, and I’d found him and his work fascinating, though his blog turned out to be more of an excuse to attend art shows and swanky galas than an actual money-earning profession. He was passionate but flighty, impulsive and spontaneous—to the extent thatplanwas a bad word to him. I was career driven, organized, and more comfortable with a predictable routine.
It was a disaster waiting to happen, no matter how many times I told myself that opposites attracted all the time. We were too different, and over time, our incompatibility overtook any joy we found in each other.
Fynn sulked when I wouldn’t go along with his wish to go out on the town. He began dressing up and going without me, buying expensive tickets to galas and art shows, making large donations, and shopping for the latest fashions—by taking out new credit cards in my name. It wasn’t until he’d maxed out several that I’d realized how out of control everything had gotten.
I’d been willing to work through it. I asked him to go to marriage counseling with me, to seek help with his shopping addiction, and to work out our relationship conflicts. He’d responded by serving me divorce papers on Christmas.
“I know how you hate this holiday. Might as well give you what you really want,” he’d said. “Maybe you’ll think of it fondly now.”
He’d been wrong. I’d never wanted our divorce. But with time, I’d seen that it was the right move for both of us. Our relationship hadn’t been healthy. And afterward, I’d realized that all of my relationships had been imbalanced in one way or another.
Loren had been an artist obsessed with painting to the exclusion of everything else. If I didn’t bring him meals, he’d forget to eat. Sometimes he’d go days without showering when the muse was strong. Eventually, his obsession shut me out, and our relationship died. Then there was Aiden, the linguist nerd who had seemed like such a good fit. He was smart and funny and close to my age. Of all the men I’d tried to love, he’d been the one that felt like the best match.
Until he cheated on me with a student.
At least Jaxson would have very little time to cheat, I thought wryly. But what an uncharitable thought. Jaxson didn’t seem like the type to do that. He was direct and honest. It was refreshing. He might flirt playfully, but if I asked him directly, I knew without a doubt that Jaxson would tell me what I wanted to know.
There’d been other men, of course. Less serious relationships or those that had fizzled early. But all of them had failed. Every single one.
And that was exactly why I shouldn’t start something with Jaxson.
The stakes were too high. He wasn’t driven by a desire for a more exciting life as Fynn had been, or obsessive like Loren, or disloyal like Aiden. He was a better man than all of them. But he also had a daughter who was his whole world. Meanwhile, I could barely manage one high-strung dog.
I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of my past with Jaxson. He deserved so much better than that.
* * *
Friday night, I walked over to Jaxson’s house to pick him up for Aunt Henry’s dinner party. I’d stayed off the Thrust app, needing time to think. Time to decide not only what I wanted, but what I could offer.
Assuming Jaxson even wanted anything from me.
But as I stood on his porch, nervously finger-combing my hair before knocking on the door, all my half-baked decisions swirled away like a handful of leaves carried on the wind. My heart rabbited in my chest. I might not want to want Jaxson, but I did, and I couldn’t decide what I should do about that.
Unfortunately, Aunt Henry’s dinner party wouldn’t wait for me to make up my mind. I raised my hand and rapped the door.
Then knocked again. And again.
Jaxson finally opened the door, a phone in his free hand, eyes on the screen. “Come in.”
