“Hey.” Tanner trails a light fingertip over my rigid hands. “You want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“About whatever’s got you ragin’.”
“I’m not—” Fuck. What’s the point? I’m good at keeping quiet, butI’mshit at hiding my feelings too. “I’m just worried about how this is gonna play out for Molly.”
“She’ll be okay tonight. They’ll keep him locked up till they interview him in the morning.”
“And then what? Even if they charge him, he can post bail and get out, right? So he can go after her again?”
“Not for a while. She won’t be here. I’m going to book her a plane ticket when we get home so she can go back to her folks in Ohio.”
“She didn’t tell me that.”
“She didn’t know until I just texted her.”
Somewhere behind the anger boiling out of me, I fall for him a little bit harder. He’s so fuckinggood. It’s so unfair that he doesn’t seem to know it. “She can’t stay in Ohio forever, unless she wants to give up her whole life to get away from him. And what if she doesn’t? What if she doesn’t even want to givehimup and she goes back to him?”
“That won’t happen—”
“You don’t know that! He’s a manipulative cunt. How else would she have been with him this long when she knew he was banging other people? He’s got her thinking she’s not worth any better. That everything she cares about is a waste of fucking time.”
I’m shouting by the time I pull into the parking lot.
Tanner flinches. For the briefest moment, he misses a beat. Then he unbuckles his seatbelt and opens the door. “Come on. Let’s get ice cream.”
Chapter Fifteen
Tanner
Jax doesn’t believe I can get him ice cream in the middle of the night, but I know the dude who lives above the ice cream store. He’s a nocturnal stoner who’s happy to slip me a double scoop of maple cookie dough at the back door.
I take it back to where I’ve left Jax on a bench outside V and V. He’s pulled his hood up, hiding his face, but the tense set of his shoulders calls to me like a beacon. I pass him his dessert and drop my hands on him, manipulating his rigid muscles. “This was too close to home for you, huh?”
Jax sighs. “Not really. No one ever tried to hurt me like that.”
“I don’t mean the physical stuff.” I mean the coercive control and manipulation Molly’s lived through to get to this point.Jaxhas lived through that kind of abuse too. His anger seems to be draining away, but mine is just getting started. “You know we’ll take care of her, don’t you? Not just me, but my boss too. He’s good people.”
He must be for letting a clown like me run his bar, and the thought makes me smile, but Jax isn’t smiling. Nowhere close. And he doesn’t answer my vaguely rhetorical question. Either he doesn’t believe we’ll take care of Molly, or he absolutely does and this conversation is about something else.
I can’t work it out. Jax is so often an open book I forget how impossible he is when he’s not. And I’m tired too, mentally. This entire day has lasted a lifetime and my soul feels bruised. I need him to be okay.Ineed to be okay, so this night can just be over already.
It’s hard to recall that I’ve spent most of it watching him zip around with his camera, forearms rippling as he moved the heavy gimbal up and down, shirt riding up to gift me a glimpse of the barest hint of his gorgeous skin. I was so enthralled by him that douchebag Brent slipped by me and put the entire bar in danger, Jax included. I need to sleep before my brain decides to dwell on that, preferably with him safe in my arms—if he wants to be.
Jax isn’t eating his ice cream. His shoulders have softened under my attention, but he’s still tense as hell.
I round the bench and crouch in front of him, my hands on his knees. He gazes at me from the shadows of his hood, his blue eyes dark pools that threaten emptiness. It’s not a good look on Jax. I’m used to him being animated, even when he’s quiet. I’m used to him laughing and grumbling and muttering under his breath. I’m used to his eyes shining when he’s got something to say that he’s not quite ready to share.
His ice cream is melting. I dig the bamboo spoon into it and scoop some up. Jax leans forward as I hold it out. “Nah,” he says “You eat it.”
Works for me. Our late lunch is a distant memory, and I’m a fool for ice cream. Like most good things in my life, there’s no flavor I don’t enjoy.
Jax watches me eat. His gaze gentles, then intensifies in a different way. He leans lower. I take a chance and slide the spoon into his mouth, parting his sinful lips and watching his tongue flicker out to catch the melting drips. “Wow, that’s good,” he says around a mouthful. “Almost as good as watching you eat it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
