I need to see him. “Wait.” I break away from our kiss to turn on my lamp.
“Much better.” Jax drags me back to him and lays over me again.
I smile up at him with tears in my eyes. I would give anything to be with him. To be enough for him. To be the one that will make him truly see what a wonderful person he is, inside and out.
Jax bends and follows the trail of each tear with the whisper of a kiss. He barely presses his warm lips to my skin, and I feel each and every kiss all the way to my toes.
I want to confess my love for him. I want to tell him that I don’t want to love anyone else, that I can’t love anyone else. I want to hear him tell me everything is going to be okay as long as we have each other. I want the big gesture. A piece of me shatters knowing that will never happen. Eventually Kohen will give me the big gesture and someday maybe I’ll love him back.
Another piece of me breaks away.
Forcing all thoughts of tomorrow away, I focus on the man I love hovering over me with love in his eyes. This is how I want to remember us. Together, in love. Nothing else matters. All of the petty fights that led us to this moment don’t exist. Nothing but Jax exists in this moment.
I trace every line of his face with my fingertips, never taking my eyes off his. Jax does the same and bends every few seconds to peppers my face with soft kisses. Intertwining our hands, Jax leans down for the last time and presses his warm lips to mine. He traces my lips with his tongue. Ever so slowly, he really kisses me. The second his tongue touches mine the tears are back again.
I’ll never experience this again. Nobody kisses me like he does. Nobody can make my body feel alive and cherished at the same time like him. There is only one Jax. There is only one true love for everyone and he is mine. Jax squeezes my hand and I squeeze his back. He doesn’t speed up the kiss and neither do I. He kisses me slowly, tenderly.
A little piece of me shatters even more.
No matter how much time passes, I know I will never stop loving Jaxon Chandler. He’s my first love. My one great love. The kind of love they write stories about. And I never had a chance.
I wish that I could keep kissing him for forever. Wishes don’t come true. Time moves too fast. The kiss is over before I want it to be. It was a perfect kiss. A perfect kiss to end our shattered love.
Nine years ago, I kissed the love of my life on my fourteenth birthday. Tonight, we’re ending a long, broken love story with the same perfect kiss. This is the end of us.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Yawning, I snuggle closer into the warm chest behind me. I moan contently when Jax’s strong arms tighten around me and he kisses the back of my neck. I turn into him so that my face is pressed against his chest, head resting on his arm. As I press my lips to his chest, I wish that time would stop. I want to be forever held in this man’s arm. Just like this, in love. Too bad that time doesn’t stand still and that our reality can’t let us be together.
Closing my eyes, I breathe him in, loving the way my face breaks into a huge smile just by being near him. He reminds me of home, of hope. I’ll miss his touch. I’ll miss everything about him.
Wiping a tear from my cheek he whispers, “None of that.”
I nod, but the tears keep flowing.
“What’s wrong?” he asks into my hair.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I don’t know how to say goodbye.” I start to weep silently.
He has a sad smile as he caresses my face. “This isn’t goodbye, Adalynn. I’ll aways be here. I’ll never leave you. Whenever you need, me I’m here.” He places his hand over my heart.
I cover his hand and mumble, “I know . . . it doesn’t make this any easier.” He sucks in a ragged breath. “I know this is what we both need . . . so you have to understand that I’m going to need distance. Jax . . . I can’t be around you for awhile. I need space . . . Or I won’t—”
“I know,” he says, regret clear in his voice.
The urge to kiss him is so strong that I force myself away from the warmth of his body and out of my bed. My body hates the distance that I’m putting between us. It’s for the best. Knowing that doesn’t make this any easier.
“Breakfast?” I ask, needing to do something, anything instead of being in the arms of the man I love, knowing that I can never have him.
After Jax nods, I flee to my bathroom to brush my teeth, but mainly needing a minute alone. Not a second after I flush the toilet, Jax walks in.
My face turns beet red. “Ever heard of a thing called privacy?”
Jax ignores me and grabs his toothbrush that I haven’t gotten around to throwing away. Once his toothbrush is in his mouth, he snags mine, squirts toothpaste on it, and hands it to me.
“Thanks.”
“Relax. You’ve thrown up on me. I’ve seen you pee before. At least this time you were sober.” Toothpaste drips down his chin. Without thinking I reach up and wipe it away with my thumb.
“You’ve never seen me pee and you didn’t now. I was already pulling my panties up,” I say once I’m finished brushing my teeth.
“Freshman year.”
My eyes are trained to his toothbrush. It doesn’t belong next to mine. It never did. Forcing the tears away, I snatch it and toss it into the trash. Jax nods as if he knows that it doesn’t belong here either.
It’s maddening that until yesterday, I haven’t cried in six years and now throwing out a pointless toothbrush makes the tears threaten to spill over. Because in some way you’re throwing out Jax. That little voice in my head reminds me bitterly as if I had a choice in the matter.
When I’m not on the verge of crying any longer, I murmur, “I’m confused.”
“I know.”
Following him out of my bathroom to my kitchen, I think back to freshman year of high school. That feels like a lifetime ago, which it is. So much has happened since then. I’m still coming up with a blank, though. I wasn’t the type of girl to party in high school. Even if I wanted to, nobody gave me alcohol because they were afraid of Logan or Jax beating them up. Those two were beyond annoyingly protective in high school. I can only remember two times in high school when I got drunk. Once freshman year and the other was the day before junior year.
“You’re such a liar. I only got drunk—”
“Twice,” Jax says while opening the fridge.
“How do you—”
“I was there for the first one. Heard about the second.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask after I set a pan on the stove and turn on the flame.
Jax backs our from the fridge, grabbing everything we will need to make breakfast, with a smile on his face. When he sees that I honestly have no idea what he’s talking about, his grin turns smug. “Oh, so you don’t remember I take it?”
“Cut the crap, Chandler.”
“Say please and I might tell you, Maxwell.”
I roll my eyes as I mumble, “Please.”
He lays pieces of bacon onto the hot pan. “Who was the tiny person with the brown hair on your team? Super loud, super—”
“Lexi,” I say, all traces of humor gone.
“That’s the one! Remember that ‘little’ sleepover you went to at her house and it turned into a party?”
Remembering it all too well, I bite out, “Yes.”
“Well, you may not have noticed, but Connor and I actually turned up at the party that night.”
“I know. I remember.”
“Huh? Oh well, I didn’t think you noticed since you were pretty hammered by the time we showed up. I let you finish—”
“You let me?” I ask, enraged.
“As I was saying . . .” He points the spatula at me with a grin that drops the second his eyes land on my not-so-amused face. “What’s wrong?” he asks, full of concern.
“Nothing,” I mumble underneath my breath.
God, I’m being ridiculous. This was high school. I have no idea why I’m letting something that happened over nine years ago
still affect me.
“Ads.”
“I’m being stupid. Tell me the rest of the story since most of the night is a blur.”
Too bad I already had a play-by-play from my “dearest” friend Lexi the next day.
“Okay . . . Well since you were already smashed, I let you finish the drink you were working on, then Connor and I took turns switching your red solo cups with cups of water,” he says with a grin. “You never noticed.”
Bitterly I ask, “When does the peeing part come in?” I’m ready for this conversation to be over.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me what’s gotten your panties in a twist.” Jax holds his pinky finger up to me.
Knowing that he won’t stop until he gets his way, I pinky promise him. He returns to cooking breakfast.
“Excellent.” He smiles in victory. “Where was I?”
“You were just explaining that you and Connor liked to ruin my fun even back then.”
“Ah, that’s right. So eventually you tried to leave the party. So of course I followed you. You got to the mailbox before you fell on your face. You ‘tripped,’ your words not mine.” He turns his head towards me to give me a wink. “After helping you sit up, you grabbed your stomach and said you had to pee. By the looks of it, I knew you wouldn’t make it back to the house so I started to help you walk over to the bushes on the side of her yard . . .”
No! I thought that was a terrible nightmare, especially when Lexi told me what her and Jax did all night long.
“So you helped me pee in her bush?” I ask, mortified that I forgot. Apparently my mind knew how traumatizing that was so I repressed it.
“Not exactly . . .” Jax says with a chuckle, making me nervous.
“Jax!” I warn.
“After a few steps I knew we would never reach the bushes with you falling over yourself so I picked you up. I thought we would get there faster. I thought you could hold it. I was wrong . . .”
Jax laughs loudly it’s hard to process what he’s saying. Staring at him, I try to piece the puzzle back together. I don’t remember much after the mailbox. I remember a bush and my dress being held up by strong hands . . . Jax’s hands.
“Oh God! You held my dress up while I peed!”
“After . . .yes, though I didn’t think it mattered at that point.”
“What are you—”
Oh fuck. Please no!
“We didn’t make it to the bushes. You peed on me about three steps away from it. You managed to hold the rest in so I could help you pull your panties down and lift your dress up while you finished.”
“OH . . . MY . . . GOD . . .” I say through my hands. I refuse to lower my hands and look at him.
“Yup. So you can imagine why seeing you pee on a toilet doesn’t bother me . . . So I’ve had you pee on me and puke on me . . . Let’s not go for round . . .” his voice trails off.
There won’t be a round two, or three. After today we won’t hang out like we used to. After he leaves, the spell will be broken and reality will hit. We won’t have any more secret kisses, any inside jokes, he will be Logan’s friend. Once he leaves, I lose the love of my life.
Trying to lighten the suddenly dark mood, he nudges me with his shoulder. I force the morbid thoughts away and concentrate on that night nine years ago. Sitting on my stool, hands covering my face, I try to picture the scene Jax describes, but I come up with a blank.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I say quietly.
“What doesn’t?” Jax asks as he sets a plate down in front of me.
Still talking through my hands I ask, “Why were you with me? You were with Lexi all night.”
Before I know whats happening, he’s pulling my unwilling hands off my face. “What are you talking about?”
Forgetting my humiliation, I admit to him that I know he slept with her. “Lexi . . .That brunette who is super loud, the chick you fucked that night.”
This time his laughter isn’t forced. Awesome. All of anger I felt all those years ago, when Lexi woke me up bragging that she slept with Jax, bubbles to the surface. I knew then what I know now, Jax wasn’t mine and will never be mine.
“It’s not funny!” I snap.
“So that’s why you refused to talk to me for two weeks . . .” Jax chuckles as he tries to fight the smile on his lips. “Even when I came over at night you just handed me the first aid kit and went to bed. All because of that?”
All traces of humor are gone. I wish I was able to block out those two weeks, but I can’t. Those were the worst two weeks of my life, being pissed at Jax and then being pissed at myself for being mad at him. He could sleep with whoever he wanted, I had to remind my fourteen-year-old self. I want to lie to him, but he’ll see through me. I nod.
“I was with you all night,” he says with hands on my thighs.
All I see is honesty in his eyes. Which doesn’t make sense.
“Lexi said you had sex with her.”
“Lexi said a lot of things.”
Yeah, that’s the understatement of the year. I used to think she was so “cool” because she was a junior and wanted to hang out with me all the time. That was before I realized she was only hanging out with me to get closer to Jax. Our friendship ended pretty much the next morning when she confirmed that she slept with him.
“I didn’t sleep with her.”
I roll my eyes at him. He grips my chin so I can’t turn away.
“Not that night. Not any night. I’ve never slept with her.”
“But she said—”
“She said a lot of things, Ads. You know better than anyone that she would lie to anyone willing to listen.”
I nod, knowing the truth. “But she was hanging all over you that night.”
“Yeah, for about five seconds.”
“No.”
“Yes. For a whole five seconds, I decided to see if I could get a reaction from you. Then I stopped because I realized it was pointless.”
He’s lost me. “What?”
“I was a kid. Even back then, I was in love with you. I was trying to make you jealous. I didn’t know . . . I mean, I thought you liked me, but I wasn’t sure at the time. Those two weeks of silence confirmed my suspicion, though.”
I rub my temples. “I’m confused.”
Running his hand through his unruly hair again, Jax sighs loudly. “I thought if I could make you jealous then I would know if you cared about me the way I cared about you . . . I never slept with Lexi or anyone in high school.”
I hate that I don’t want to hear the answer, but I ask anyways. “And college?”
He reaches for my hand, but I jerk away. If he touches me I’ll crumble.
“If you’re asking if I was a virgin when we slept together, the answer is yes.” He caresses my face with his hands. “I didn’t lie to you.”
I suck in a ragged breath. All this time I thought he was lying to me. I never regretted losing my virginity to him even though I thought he was experienced. I’m glad that I was wrong. It doesn’t escape my notice that he uses past tense. I want to ask what he’s lied to me about since then, but I don’t think I’ll want to hear the answer to that, either.
“Do you know who slept with her?” I ask, getting us back on track. I don’t want us to focus on losing our virginity to each other.
“No idea,” he says with a snicker.
“What’s funny?” I ask.
“You refused to talk to me for two weeks. Two long weeks. All because Lexi got laid that night and I took care of you.” He has a smirk on his face that I ignore while digging into my yogurt.
We eat in a comfortable silence. By comfortable, I mean Jax holds my hand while my mind races over and over again. I have no idea when he’s planning on leaving, and as much as I want to keep him here forever—I would even settle for handcuffing him to my bed—I just want him to leave already. Its beyond confusing. The more he stays here with me, touching me, being so sweet, the more I want to convince him to give us a chance. Wh
ich of course is beyond idiotic. We’ve been down that road way too many times. At this point, I’ve lost count. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m free.
I’m free of my past.
I’m free of Jax.
If only my heart could get on the same page, I would be golden. Barely managing to finish my yogurt, I push my full plate away from me and stands up. Surprisingly, Jax doesn’t comment. He probably can sense my nerves, making it impossible to eat.
“So . . .” I cringe at how awkward I’m making this.
“So . . .” Jax repeats, all traces of happiness gone.
Unable to face him, I step on the pedal of the trashcan to lift the lid. I clear my plate while I talk. “I should start getting ready . . . I’m supposed to hang out with Logan and Connor before their flight tonight.”
Jax moves behind me to clear his plate, but I sidestep out of his way so we don’t accidentally touch. Lovey-dovey time is over. Reality has come too soon, but now that it’s here, I can’t ignore it. Jax knows how I feel and I know how he feels. Nothing is going to change. Something that I need to remind myself repeatedly so that I don’t throw myself at Jax and beg him to never leave me.
I shouldn’t have to beg someone to be with me. He either wants me, or he doesn’t. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t. Time to move on. A stupid tear slides down my cheek; hastily I wipe it away. After a few deep breaths, I get myself under control.
“Right.”
“Are you gonna be there?” I ask, hoping that he can’t tell how desperately I want him to say yes at the same time I want him to say no.
Jax shakes his head. “We celebrated the other night. No need to be girls about it, they’re only going to be gone for two weeks.”
“Right.” I shuffle my feet, feeling awkward standing in the kitchen in my raggedy pjs with Jax in his shirt from last night and black briefs. It should be illegal to look that good after waking up. I didn’t even get a chance a check my hair in the mirror earlier. I can feel the bird-nests.
“Well . . . I’m just gonna go get changed . . .” Yup, not awkward at all. Points to me.
Beautifully Shattered (The Beautifully Series Book 1) Page 42
