I open my door and tug him inside. “Show me your leg.”
“Is that your best chat-up line?”
“Top ten. Show me the leg.”
Jax unties his boots and yanks them off. Then he rolls up his pant leg to reveal a dressed wound on his calf. It’s small, clean, and beneath the bandage, neatly stitched. In fact, it’s tiny. I lean closer, frowning. “That’s it?”
“I know, right?” Jax lets his pant leg drop and resets his balance. “I’d have stuck a Band-Aid on it, but Jerry flipped when he saw it and drove like a maniac to the hospital. I mean, that was more likely to kill me than this is.”
He yawns and gives me a searching look I don’t understand. Or maybe I don’t want to understand. Lord knows what Jerry has told him about me. Most days I’m convinced it’s absolutely nothing; then others, when Jax peers at me like he’s trying to see beneath my skin, I’m convinced he knows every weakness and flaw I have. And maybe I want him to, so he never turns that piercing gaze on me for real.
Whatever. He needs to eat, and I have to be pretty fucked up to turn down Eve’s mac and cheese.
I direct Jax to the couch and fix two plates of loaded macaroni. Bacon, green onions, Vermont cheddar. While it’s heating, I fetch Jax sweatpants to chill in.
He laughs. “If you give me any more of your clothes you’ll be walking around naked.”
“That a problem for you?”
He snorts. “What do you think?”
I think about a lot of things that involve being naked with him. But I remember the hint of panic in his gaze when he lit the fire beneath us last night, and so I douse the heat rising in me. I leave him to change and fetch the plates from the kitchen.
Jax falls on his like he does most meals we share, but Eve’s macaroni is good enough that I don’t stare. I snarf mine in record time, then wait for him in the path of a serious carb coma. Half my mind is still downstairs, trailing Molly around as she wreaks havoc on the bar that Rainn will have to handle in my absence, and I’m still worried about Gabi, but mainly I think of Jax. Of how good he looks in a pair of sweatpants, and how sleepy he clearly is now that his belly is full.
“I should go home,” he says again.
But he doesn’t move, and neither do I, except to put our plates on the table and lift my arm so he can lean against me. If anyone needs to be somewhere else, it’s me, but his hair smells of the forest and of Jax, and I can’t tear myself away. I close my eyes and imagine a world where my hair smells of wood and leaves too. It’s a nice world, but it’s not real.
I open my eyes and pull myself back. Jax is drowsing. I kiss his temple. “I’ve got to go back to work. You wanna hang here and I’ll walk back with you later?”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll head off in a bit.”
He won’t. I don’t know Jax as well as I want to, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain he’s gonna knock out the second I leave the apartment, and I want him close more than I want to do the freak dance with old ghosts.
I ease out from under him and leave him alone. Downstairs, the bar is still kicking, as if I never left, but I get a few curious stares from my staff. I don’t often take a break; eating alone is no fun. Busy nights are, though, when I’m in the right mood. Time moves faster. I embrace the noise and let it carry me for the three hours it takes me to wind down the bar and send my crew home.
Molly gives me a wink as she leaves.
I try for a scowl, but a grin comes instead, and she walks away laughing.
Shaking my head, I lock the doors and head upstairs. On the landing, I watch her disappear to the parking lot. A few seconds later, the modified engine of her boyfriend’s car pierces the air with an obnoxious roar, and I hate that douchebag a little bit more.
“Why do you look murderous?”
I spin around. Jax is behind me, leaning against the open door of my apartment. He looks sleepy and rumpled, and he’s still wearing my sweatpants. “Murderous is probably a little strong, but Molly’s boyfriend makes me fucking mad.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a douche who makes her cry all the time.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Nope. But did you hear his car just now? Anyone who drives like that is an asshat.”
Jax shrugs his agreement.
I abandon the window and close the distance between us. “How are you doing? Did you sleep?”
