Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“No, it fucking doesn’t.” His cologne, lemony and sharp today, suffused the space around us. It choked me because I didn’t want to let it in. “You want to know all about me, Riley? You want to know my sad sob story? I don’t talk about that shit because it’s weak. Because it doesn’t have any bearing on who I am today or how far I’ve come.”
“Oh, so I’m weak?”
“What kind of woman magic brought you to that conclusion?” he asked.
“I spoke about my shit to you. That makes me weak by your reckoning,” I snapped.
“This isn’t just about you.” His grip on my wrist tightened. It wasn’t painful, just firm, and I despised myself for letting him keep it. Even now, his touch brought me to life. “It’s about both of us now. You want the truth, I’ll give it to you.”
Quiet. A beat passed.
“So?” I asked. “What’s the truth, huh?” I didn’t want to think about the details Veronica had given me.
Jax ground his teeth against each other. He walked me out of the bedroom, down the hall, into the living room that looked out on the night sky, then sat me down on the sofa. He stood in front of me.
“You want to know about me, that’s fine, but I’m doing it on one condition,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“That you don’t go fucking anywhere afterward. You gotta promise me that, Riley, because I’m not letting go of you now. I’m too…” He pressed a palm to his forehead. It was the first time I’d seen him anxious. “I’m just not letting you go. That’s final.”
“You don’t get to stop me if I want to leave.” I folded my arms across my chest, constricted now by the tightness of the dress. God, I’d wanted to look amazing for him. I’d put on makeup—I hardly ever did that—and I’d worn heels. I’d even put on a pair of lacy underwear.
In short, I was an idiot, dressing up for a man I barely knew because of some squirmy emotions in the pit of my stomach.
It’s more than that, and you know it.
Jax shifted the books on the coffee table aside then sat down on it, balanced his strong forearms on his knees. The front of his shirt flapped open a little, revealing more of those tattoos that fascinated me. Monsters and angels, a cupid here, a heart there. Thorns.
“You’re not leaving,” he said, as if that decided it.
I didn’t reply.
“My mother died when I was fifteen years old,” he said. “I didn’t know my father. Veronica was five. She didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but there was a custody battle over us. My grandmother wanted us. My uncle did too. My uncle wanted us because he thought there’d be a payout at the time. I went with my uncle. She went with my grandmother.”
“How does that even happen? Why didn’t you two stay together?”
“They believed I was a danger to my sister,” he replied. “There was an incident a couple months before my mother died. My sister and I were in the back garden, and she fell, broke her arm. She told everyone I’d hurt her. The judge decided it was in our best interests to be separated.”
“That’s bull,” I replied. “Veronica wouldn’t lie about who’d hurt her.”
“She was five, Riley. She told a little white lie because she was afraid of getting in trouble. She took it back later, but by then it was too late. Everyone thought I’d gotten to her and made her take it back. They didn’t trust me. She didn’t understand why were separated. No one told her. She just thought her big brother left and didn’t come back.”
Listening to this impartially was impossible for me. I loved Veronica like a sister, and she’d been downright distraught when I’d suggested I had to come back here and talk to Jax about this.
“What happened after you were separated?”
“I lived with my aunt and uncle. Hated them. With all my guts. Fuckers. Uncle was abusive to my aunt, but she never left him. I ran away.” He forced each of the sentences out as if he had to peel back layers to reach them. “They brought me back. It happened several times until I was eighteen years old. By that time I’d filled out. My uncle tried to force me to come home, and I punched him in the fucking face. It was the final straw. I was sent to prison. You see, I’d spent most of my childhood on the street, stealing shit for a living, making unsavory connections, and the cops were already aware of me. I was tried as an adult for aggravated assault. I served three years. Probation for two.”
I swallowed hard. “That had to be difficult.”
Jax dropped his head as if the weight of the world had just settled on his neck. “You have no idea. I came out and had nowhere to go except back to my dick uncle’s place. Grant took me in despite what’d happened, because he believed I’d learned my lesson. He offered me a job at his strip club.”