And I feel like a jerk because of it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Sloane, she’s the ying to his yang, the black to his white, the on to his off. She balances him in every way. I would have chose her for him myself. Butsomewhere deep down inside of me, that girl who feels like she lost everything one night a long time ago, feels like she’s lost another part of herself.
Call it co-dependency. Call it whatever you want. My brother is my safe person, he’s always been there for me. His family has to come first now, I guess it’s just the shift of levels of importance, in my mind, which is shaking me up. He would disagree, I know, but like I said… petty.
My therapist tells me I think too little of myself, but that’s normal since I’ve questioned my actions that night every day between now and then. The girl who walked to a truck in the middle of a field by herself after dark learned a valuable lesson. Always play it safe.
That can sometimes make the world a much smaller place, including one’s opinion of themselves.
I’m snapped out of my wandering thoughts by someone touching me, making me jump. I look up into a pair of ice-blue eyes and I can tell Jax is waiting for me to answer a question I didn’t hear. He pulls his hand away from my shoulder.
Jax has always been respectful of my boundaries, and Mason says I can trust him with my life. If Mason says I can, then it’s true. I can’t put my finger on it, but when I’m around Jax, there is a subtle buzz beneath his surface, something dangerous but in a safe way. It’s almost like a loosely contained lethality.
He’s almost like a riddle, always cutting up and laughing, but there is something hiding behind those cool eyes. Almost like looking too hard at him is like trying to look for something in the dark, not entirely sure what you’re going to find.
But at the same time, when he looks at me, I feel safe. I’ve seen his eyes when he is not happy, or when someone has just put themselves on his bad side, it’s kind of scary. But he always looks at me with something warm and accepting.
When Sloane was kidnapped by herbrother and sold to traffickers last year, Mason was going out of his mind, but Jax was calm. The carefree Jax who drove Sloane crazy by eating all the cookies and sweets from the pantry was gone.
In his place was a wall of muscle, strapping on Kevlar, clipping knives and guns on his body, whose eyes danced when they made plans to torture a guy for information.
I could tell he was looking forward to the pain and death of the men who took her. Is it bad that I didn’t think less of him because of it?
I’ve never seen Jax dressed up before, he’s always in jeans or black fatigues with combat boots. The cream button-down is stretched across his broad shoulders, with a peach tie to match my dress, and is tucked into a pressed pair of khaki dress pants that hug his narrow hips. His tan dress shoes look odd on his large feet, only because I only ever see him in combat boots, but classy all the same.
I’ve always thought he’s handsome, but today he’s just gorgeous.
“Hmm?” I hum. I can feel eyes on me, so I’m not sure my voice won’t shake if I speak.
He smiles and holds his wide palm out in front of me, giving me the option of taking it or not. His fingers are long and strong, with some scars curled around the knuckles. There is one long scar that runs across his palm and a couple of his fingers like a knife wound, and I wonder what happened. “It’s time for our dance, lepa.”
My eyes jump around to all the people sitting at the tables watching Mason and Sloane dance. Sloane asked me if I would be okay with the traditional dance between the maid of honor and best man, which signals that the floor is open to other dancers. I said yes, for them, but now I’m having second thoughts.
Jax crouches down in front of me on his haunches, setting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together, his icyeyes inspect my face before he smiles. The warmth of his smile is soothing to my nerves. “If you don’t want to, then we won’t.”
It’s simple and matter of fact. He’s not questioning me or judging me, he’s giving me the choice. Control. I look over the sharp angles of his face, his cheekbones prominent over the beard he wears short and manicured so that his jaw is even more severe.
His features are almost Nordic with a straight, narrow nose under thin eyebrows which have a permanent small crease between them. It may sound odd, but all his sharp edges match the energy he emits.
When I first met him last year, he wore his dark blond hair long to his shoulders, but I remember him laughing with Mason about losing a bet or something a couple of months ago, so it’s short now. I like it better short.
I flick my eyes to Mason, looking for his approval has become a habit over the years, but he’s lost in Sloane, so I bring my gaze back to Jax. My heart is beating against my chest so hard that I think it might crack a rib.
I tap my thumb in a rhythm against the tips of my fingers, counting in my head. Jax’s eyes lower to the movement. He places his large palm over my hand and slightly squeezes before he nods and gracefully unfolds his long, powerful body to stand. I quietly say, “Wait.”
He moves back into the submissive squat in front of me. “I’ve got all the time in the world, lepa.”
His use of the same word he used earlier when he called me beautiful helps me to focus. “I want to.” It rushes from my lips on a breath.
He holds his palm out to me again. “You lead the way and if you want to stop, we stop. You’re in charge.”
Every time he says ‘we’, a small thrill skipsthrough my chest.
Taking a deep breath, I pause as I lay my fingers on his wide palm. The skin is rough with callouses, but warm. He lightly wraps his fingers around mine and, for the first time, I don’t feel like I have ants crawling all over me because of someone else’s touch.
Walking next to him to the dance floor, the top of my head is just to his chin.
He lets me choose where we stop on the large wooden dance floor and when I turn to face him, he holds his palm up so I can hook my fingers over his hand, and says, “I’m going to put my hand between your shoulders.”
