by Paula Cox
“I don’t owe him or his family anything,” Lena seethed. “Not anything else. Not after…” Lena’s voice caught her throat, and as Sully pushed away from the table and took her into his arms, she felt the tears stinging her eyes as her lip quivered. Her uncle said nothing, just held her and let her sob, his hands moving down her back as Lena thought her legs might give out from under or she would fall asleep on her feet.
Sully took her face in his hands and mopped her tears away. “Think there’s something you’re not being straight with me about,” he started. “Want to give me a hint?”
“No,” she said as she slowly shook her head from side to side. “Just everything that went down. And I’m exhausted.”
“Sure that’s all there is to it?” he asked. “Because if there is something else, you know you can tell me.”
Not her uncle and not Jax. Not that the biker would even care if he knew the truth. Lena straightened up the back of her neck and forced a smile. Giving Sully’s cheek a swift pat, she squeezed his hand. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “Maybe I just need a breath of fresh air.”
“Maybe you need to rest,” Sully countered.
Grabbing her jacket and her purse, her eyes briefly moved to the foot of the staircase. Soft as her bed was, she couldn’t be alone with her thoughts. Needing some distraction, she teased her uncle to get washed up and quickly took on foot.
Moving without any intended direction, Lena felt her head start to calm as a gentle breeze washed over her eyes. Out and open was always the way to get handle on things. How many times had she stolen off into the night when she couldn’t help but feel the scorn swirling all around her? Easy target in hand-me-downs. Fair game for all manner of insults when she lacked his protection. Probably why she couldn’t sleep in the space of her old bed. Something about the house always made her feel trapped. Stuck. Just like she was right now.
But Lena let that reality fall away as she inched her way down a steep incline and saw the trees waving overhead, and she smiled at the sound of the creek bubbling just a few feet away. Feeling as if she were stepping into the better pieces of the past, Lena inched closer to the water’s edge, and she managed to smile at the sight of her reflection looking back at her, puffy eyes and all. Wanting to draw nearer to the magical version of herself, she kicked off her shoes and sat at the bank. She sighed at the feel of the water dancing around her toes, and when she let her eyelids fall and sank into the grass, it was as if he were still there as he was before he became someone too hard for her to recognize.
Feeling safe and secluded below the canopy of the trees, Lena allowed her hand to slip under her skirt. Reaching between her thighs, she felt her mound moist and throbbing as Jax’s face flashed across her brain. Never having known his lips, left only to imagine what he might taste like when he was in her corner, when he had her back, she let her mind wander now. The fact that it could never come true in no way replaced the possibility of the fantasy, and she moaned at the feel of her hand, feeling certain that one quick push could bring her sleep and a kind of peace, when her fingers left her body at the sound of a snapping twig.
“Who’s there?” Lena demanded as her eyes darted around and she lowered her skirt over her knees. Abandoning the creek as she pushed her feet back into her shoes, Lena leapt to her feet, her breath hard in her chest as she started back the way she came. Managing only a few steps, she cried out at the sight of a shadow stepping into view and the feel of firm hands on her wrists.
Chapter Nine
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Lena blinked as she saw Jax looming above her, his green eyes soft as his mouth stayed fixed in a straight line. His stare seemed soft, and she started to fall into him when she remembered who he had become.
“Just a hunch?” she asked as she pushed away from him.
A light gasp left his lips, and he tried to bring her back into his arms. Something in his hold… no. She knew what it was. Too close to the darkness, and Lena kicked away from him and turned her back.
“What the hell, Lena?” he demanded. “You were never like this.”
Not when she still had a hope of having him, not when he met her at her stoop and carried her books as he peered like a hawk when it came to her day-to-day. Should she have told him when it all went south? Part of her wanted to try her luck now, but her mind spun with the fact that he was right here at the supposed perfect moment. Was is sweet, or had he learned more from Eric than she had ever imagined?
“Are you suddenly keeping tabs on me?”
“Keeping tabs? What are you talking about?”
Lena charged back to his side and started to grab his neck when she suddenly held back and pressed her hands to her sides.
“Maybe you just couldn’t resist to get in another jab,” she spat. “Feeling me out for the others.”
Jax’s eyes blazed as he started to speak, but Lena held her ground as her lip quivered slightly.
“Try to take it back,” she challenged. “
“I didn’t mean it,” he muttered. “I know you.”
Extending his arm, his fingers flexing against the supple line of her wrist, Lena savored the feel of his skin on hers for all of a second before pulling away again. “Don’t be so sure,” she started. “I’m sure as hell not.”
His lips curled into a tight frown, and she watched with baited breath as his hand curled and uncurled into a tight fist. “Don’t say that, Lena,” he whispered. “I said I’m sorry, okay? But please…” As their eyes locked, the anguish plainly masked his face. “I was pissed, okay?” he confessed. “All that time without seeing you. And then we get into it before I even knew why you left.”
Relieved that the secret was still hers, Lena sighed softly and turned away from him. “Thanks for that,” she said. “Glad that you don’t really think that I’m a whore.”
She tried to step away when Jax grabbed her arm. “You know I don’t, Lena. You’re the sweetest thing. Of course you’re not. You never could be.”
“Don’t say that!”
Lena started to meet his mouth, forgetting what he had said and what she had done. But for a second, for what might be the last time that she could stand to stay at his side without a twinge of regret, she kissed him lightly. His lips were soft, and her pulse intensified as took her into his arms. His hold was strong and, as the creek swirled behind them, she wanted nothing more than to get back to the place where his soft touch and his sweet smile was her entire world. Pushing away from him, she saw his eyes full of the hope, and she took his hand. Studying the lines of his palm with a small sigh, Lena’s body started to sigh as he touched her back, and she nearly sank into his touch as she left his hold and kicked close to the edge of the creek.
“You should forget about me, Jax.
“Lena, listen, I---”
“I’m not sweet,” she muttered. “Lots of things you don’t know about me.” Watching her reflection as it peered up at her through the ripples, Lena wanted the image in the water to belong to someone else, someone who might be worthy of him and the feel of his body surrounding hers. If his halting breath so close to her back was to be believed, he might’ve press her to the edge of the water and taken her. She wouldn’t fight; in the end, that did no good. But it wasn’t how she wanted him most, and Jax laid his hand on her shoulder.
“So there’s someone else,” he said.
Lena froze as she turned to meet his eyes, and she trembled under the force of his stare. “Someone else?” she echoed. “So you do think that I’m easy?”
“What? I… no, Lena.”
“I was at school, Jax. Remember that?”
“So who looked out for you?” he spat. “I wasn’t there. You had to have had someone.” His voice stopped as Lena’s heart shook in her chest.
“No one looked out for me,” she muttered. “Had to look out for myself.” But no one on campus scared her as much as a single moment from her past.
“Is that a fact, Lena?”
His words still hurt, but Lena managed to find his eyes. Maybe she could tell the truth about something. “No one’s touched me since I went away.”
Jax’s face stayed like slate until a smile poured across his cheeks, and she froze as he took her into his arms and tried to kiss her again.
“Jax, please don’t.”
“I’ve been waiting for you, too,” he insisted. “Forget everything I said. Just let me show you.”
He kissed her quickly, and Lena’s hands started to move to her thighs. In some ways, it was like every dream she’d ever had coming true. How many times has she pictured their bodies mingling beside the creek as they stroked one another and kept kissing? Starting to sink to her knees, Lena met his eyes when he spoke again.
“Let me be your first.”
Reeling away from him, Lena slapped a tight fist to her palm as she kept her eyes on his prostrate form and twisted her head over her shoulders. “You so sure of that?” she asked.
“Lena,” he started. “You just said that---”
“What if it happened before I left?” she said. “Did you ever stop to think of that?” She had already said too much, and Lena tried to move away when Jax took her into his arms, his breath hard and fast as he peered into her eyes.
“No,” he said. “You would have told me."
“Don’t be so sure.”
“I always have your back, Lena.” His words tugged at her soul, and Lena sighed as she started to move back to his mouth. He would feel so good, taste even better, and she was on the verge of falling into his kiss and trying to tell herself that there was still some chance of everything that invaded her dreams night after night. She was nearly sure when all that what she would have to tell him in time was too much to stand, and she pushed him back with tears in her eyes. “I can’t do this. It hurts too much.”
Jax’s stunned expression singed her soul, and his eyes went wide as he forced a shaky smile and tried to make sense of her change of heart.
“Why would you say that?” he asked, confusion coloring his tone as she pressed her palms to the air and started to back away.
“Just listen to me,” she pleaded. “I’m forgetting. You need to… you---”
Her voice came to a halt as she started to slip against the bank. Her arms flailed wildly, and as the water came close to her eyes, she feared that this was her destined end, to drown in the spot where she had first loved him most and best. Resigned to her fate, Lena continued to slip when Jax’s arms surrounded her and he dragged her back to solid ground.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked.
“Jax, let me---”
“So I was a jerk,” Jax went on. “But you don’t have to be so afraid!”
“It’s not you,” she said. “But I still can’t.”
“Lena, please!”
He tried to bring her back to his chest, and when his lips were nearly at her ear, Lena moaned for all of a second before she pushed him back and clenched her fists.
“You have to let me go,” she said. “Think good thoughts if you can, but---”
“My Lena.”
“But I’m not yours!”
He looked stunned as she slapped his hand away, and she was almost ready to fall back into his arms and calm the tension poking forth through his shoulders when she pressed her hand to her mouth and shook her head. “I need to… I have to go,” she said. “Don’t follow me.”
“Lena, I just---”
“We can’t get it back!”
Breaking into a run, she pumped her legs as she fought to move away from what never could be.
Chapter Ten
“There he is! So what’s the good word?”
There were no good words. Nothing but the sight of Lena darting away from him like he carried some dark plague that would infect her to the core if she dared to get too close. In the split second following her unexpected departure, he made the move back to his bike and started after her, watching her hair whipping in the wind as she intensified her speed. As soon as she was back on the main strip and racing her way home, a gnawing in his gut caused him to bring the bike to a halt. Confused as he was, longing to know more, like why and how he could fix whatever had her so spooked? He couldn’t bring himself to keep up the pursuit. If it – he – scared her so much, better to give her some space until he could try another run at her. But would he ever even get that chance?
Artie was already on his second beer as Jax stomped into the Black Legion clubhouse. Day was already turning to night; Jax had spent more hours than he could count moving in circles as he tried to understand. Not another living soul was to be found, and Jax snorted at the sight of the older man perched on his stool.
“Know what they say about drinking alone,” Jax cautioned.
“Then how about you join me?” Artie offered. “We’ll make it a regular old party.”
Jax barely touched his brew as he twirled his finger around the rim of the glass, a heavy sigh escaping his chest as kept his head bowed towards the bar.
“Take a load off, kid. Whatever it is can’t be that bad, right?”
“Think I screwed up,” Jax confessed.
“But I thought you were like the man with the plan or something. Like you’d meet her in your hideout or whatever and just make with the sweet talk.”
That was, indeed, the idea, and just the sight of her slender frame below the trees, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders gave him the supreme sense that the power to turn back time was something somehow suddenly at his disposal. The smell of her skin still wafted into his nose, almost felt as if it were running through his veins when words far worse than goodbye penetrated his brain.
I can’t do this. It hurts too much.
Why should his apology, his admission that they could get back to a sweet place and go further be something she could not bear? He never should have gone back to her uncle’s, never should have put her down, speaking first and asking questions later. No turning back the clock now. And if there were no going forward with her hand in his, maybe it was best for time to stop altogether.
“Buck up, boy,” Artie said as he slapped his hand to Jax’s back and motioned for him to take a drink. “Give her a day or two to cool off. You said she’s sticking around, right?”
“Has no choice now,” Jax mumbled. “Kind of feel like that’s my fault, too.”
“At least it’s not the same as last time,” Artie asked as he started off his stool to fetch another round. “Now if that shit had come out, bet that would have set old Sully straight for good and all.”
Jax was barely listening, still searching for what else he might have done and what he could have gotten right when something in Artie’s throwaway comment perked his ears to total attention, and he turned his head over his shoulder and watched Artie moving towards the pool table with a fresh mug clenched in his fist.
“Want to rack ‘em up?” he offered. “Good game might help take your mind off of---”
“What the hell did you just say?” Jax asked as he sprang to his feet and stared at the other man hard.
“What? What did I say?”
“Not the same as the last time? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You know, when…” Artie’s voice trailed off and cut out altogether as his eyes went wide and he shuffled his feet against the cold concrete floor as he fiddled with a pool cue and took another pull from his beer.
“When what?” Jax insisted, his eyes narrowing into a questioning glare.
Artie gave him nothing but a goofy grin and a half-hearted shrug as he tried to turn back to the felt. “Don’t mind me, man,” Artie said. “Probably just getting my names and my faces all mixed up” A sharp cry left his lips as Jax slapped the mug from his hand. A thousand splinters of shiny glass hit the hard floor, and Artie tried to talk again. But as Jax charged toward him, hissing as his chest heaved, Artie raised the pool cue in a defensive pose as Jax watched him try to backpedal. “It’s
nothing, kid. Forget I said it.”
“Like hell, Artie,” Jax spat. “If there’s something I don’t know about her and need to fucking know, sure as shit you’re gonna tell me right now.”
“Jax, you don’t want to---”
Wrangling the pool cue from Artie’s hands, Jax brought it down against his thigh and snapped it in two like a hollow reed. Flinging one half to the side, Jax wielded the other piece with the sharper edge like a sword. His free hand curled its way around the back of Artie’s head, he grabbed hold of the man’s chrome dome and forced him to meet his eyes, and he touched the tip of the shattered cue to his neck. “Tell me right now,” Jax threatened. “Or I swear to God, I’ll show you what it feels like to break in two.”
