Jax grins back at me. “Did I wake you up?”
“What? No. What time is it?”
“Nine. Tanner just left to meet Harrison.”
“Was I supposed to go?” A frown creases my face even though I know the answer. I don’t work Mondays. I don’t have to be anywhere but here.
Right?Right?
Jax reads me and waves me back into the apartment. “You weren’t supposed to go. Relax. We’re both off today, so I figured I’d come and smother you with my company for a while. Wanna come for a walk with me?”
I love walking, and I love Jax. But I’m tired and moody and the idea of doing anything that isn’t zonking out all day triggers a jaw-cracking yawn. And I need to eat and clean the kitchen. I don’t even remember fucking it up that bad.
“All right,” Jax says. “Don’t answer me yet. Make me a cuppa instead.”
That, I can do. I turn and pad to the kitchen. Jax is right behind me, but I forget about his tea and start washing up instead. He doesn’t seem to mind, perching on a stool to watch me. Then he spots the bagel. “Mate, eat your breakfast.”
“How’d you know it’s mine?”
“Cos you’re flapping. Classic hangry-Joss behavior.”
Sometimes I forget that he knows me. That despite the years spent in a friendship wilderness while life moved on around us, some things never change.
I eat the bagel. It doesn’t alter my appetite for going out, but Jax is persuasive, and we haven’t spent much time one-on-one since I got here. I’ve been busy with the kitchen, and he’s surgically attached to Tanner when he’s not working, a mindset I’m starting to understand.They’re married. You’ll never understand how that feels.
Why not? The question comes in Kai’s voice. I push it away. I’m not Jax. My fucked up family didn’t make me crave security the way his does. It made me run a goddamn mile, and I’m still fucking running.
Jax cocks a brow. I realize too late that I’ve zoned out, and he’s staring at me the way Tanner does sometimes, but it’s different with Jax. He can see through the cracks. In the past, that distant place where we were young and free, spirited and bold, I might’ve styled it out. Let him stare because I had nothing to hide. But it feels different now. We’re different. And maybe, back then, I just had nothingat all.
I duck out of his scrutiny and into the bathroom. The cabinet is open. I frown, eyeing the meds that stand side by side on the shelf. Kai’s Xanax bottle looks the same as it always does, but he never leaves cupboards open. That shit is all me. Kai...despite what he thinks, he’s too together. Too self-aware. Unless he’s strung out on benzos. If that’s even what Xanax is. It’s an American drug, so I don’t fucking know.
Google it.
My phone is in the kitchen. To get it, I have to sidle past Jax with a toothbrush jammed in my mouth. He’s talking, but I don’t hear him. I snatch my phone from the counter and tap into the search engine before I forget and google the wingspan of an ostrich. Hyper-focused, I lean against the stove, clicking links and absorbing as much information as my brain will allow. Rinse and repeat.
The words begin to swim, but I get what I came for. Xanax is a benzo. It’s fine.He’sfine—
Jax pries my phone from my hand and kills the screen without looking at it. Wordlessly, he hands me a T-shirt and my shorts.Get dressed.
Right.
I get dressed and twist my damp hair into a knot. Then I let Jax hustle me outside and into a truck like the one Kai drives sometimes. “You have a fucking fleet of these, or what?”
Jax shoots me a sideways glance as he backs out of a space and navigates us to the street. “My boss has a couple.”
“Did Kai work for him too?”
“Nah, they’re just mates. You get to know mountain rescue pretty well when you run a wilderness-adventure firm. Did you know it was Kai who carried Tanner down the trails when he got hurt a while back?”
“Tanner got hurt?”
Jax’s gaze clouds. “Yeah. Landslip. Hit his head and spiked his arm on a broken tree. Nearly bled to death in the fucking mud. Maybe he would have if Kai hadn’t led his team out to help us.”
I’m not ready for how that makes me feel. Jax’s pain cuts deep, and I’m more fond of his grumpy, perceptive husband than I care to admit. But it’s thinking about Kai that gets me the most. I realize Vermont isn’t the most dangerous place he could ever have worked, but how many lives has he saved? How many would it take to cancel out the few that he couldn’t? The faces that still haunt his worst dreams?
Fucked if I know. I sigh. “I’m sorry that happened to you all.”
“We survived.” Jax finally grins again. “Worse things happen at sea, right?”
