“That isn’t going to be easy. I thought your job was videographer, not ranger.”
“It is, but I know the trails pretty well now, so I said I’d help him, unless…”
“What?”
“I thought maybe you could help.”
For a moment I feel so betrayed by him I want to flip the table and walk out. Then I remember it’s a reasonable fucking question considering the cold hard facts. Icouldhelp if I wanted to. If I could drag my head out of my ass long enough.
“I can’t go up there.”
Jax drums his fingers on the table. “I know. I didn’t go in the ocean for a year after the accident.”
“Accident? That’s what you call it? And whatever. I didn’t nearly die on Black Claw, I just—”
“What?”
Jax’s sudden frustration catches me off guard. I’m so used to being flippant about the mess in my head that I forgethe’snot used to it. He sees something in me no one else does, and it gives me less room to hide.
I blow out a long breath. The server brings two pizzas to the table and lays them in front of us, but I’m not hungry anymore. I’m trapped, and I need to get the fuck out of here, but I can’t, because walking away from Jax is another mountain I can’t climb.
Jax sighs too. He finds my leg under the table and rubs my thigh. “Sorry, mate. I’m tired and talking shite. I get it, okay? Jerry told me about what happened last year. It just burns me to see you turn your back on your whole life because of it.”
“You don’t think the life I have now is good enough?”
“That’s not what I said.”
It isn’t. And for a moment, the bubble of destructive reticence in my throat threatens to burst, but it holds firm at the last second, and all I have is a slow shake of my head.
Jax lets it go. He scoots his chair closer to mine and swipes a piece of sausage from my pizza. It’s a peace offering I don’t need—I can’t imagine ever being angry with him—but I steal an olive from his plate all the same.
We go back to talking about pointy-eared cats. Food disappears. Then the empty plates. I wrap my leg around Jax’s. He grins at me, and I forget that he’s been gone for days and that I lived an entire lifetime before I met him. Jax is the happy I need right now.
The server brings the check. I let Jax take it without argument and study every facet of him as he pulls his battered wallet from his pocket and drops a card onto the bill tray. As if cataloguing the curl of hair at his collar will tell me everything about him. Questions surge. I swallow them down—it’s only fair. I dodge most of his, and he lets me, giving me the space to talk if I want to, and the freedom to wallow in selfish silence. I owe him the same, but I’m not as selfless as him. “Can I ask you something?”
Jax shoots me a wary frown. “Um…okay. I’m guessing it’s nothing to do with camera angles and lighting?”
“Gabi told me your ex’s family kept you prisoner in California. Is that true?”
Jax has fair brows. They’re lighter than his hair and soften his masculine features. He’s way prettier than me, even as said brows disappear into his hairline. “Why the fuck would your brother tell you that?”
“He knows we were living together. You came up in conversation, and the only mutual we have is Eve, so I’m assuming it came from her.”
“No, the assuming came from your brother. It wasn’t like that. Not literally, anyway, and if Eve told him anything, he’d know that.”
The server interrupts us. Again. Jax gives her a thirty percent tip and signs his name. Then he shoves his chair back and walks out. I follow, naturally, and reasonable me is weighted down with all kinds of regret. But the rest of me wants to push him and push him and push him until I understand him, and it’s such a fucking unfair thing to want that I stop walking the moment I hit fresh air, and Jax gets away from me.
By the time I’m moving again, he’s half a block ahead of me and on his way back to his own apartment. I trail him, keeping him in sight. He stops outside his building and doesn’t turn round as I come up behind him.
He sighs. “You’re a git, you know that, right?”
“Are you calling me an asshole?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“I deserve that.”
“Do you?”
