I took a deep breath.
"We dated for over two years," I said quietly. "It was a long time ago."
Jax’s strong hand slid over mine and squeezed. I turned toward him, and quickly tilted my head down so he wouldn’t see my face red from crying.
"The first six months were incredible," I said, a half-smile breaking through my tears with the memory. "I’d just started college, he was a junior. He introduced me to all the right friends, got me into the right parties. We had a blast, but then we had a fight."
I felt Jax’s body tense up, and he held me closer protectively.
"It wasn’t—it wasn’t like you might be thinking. He didn’t hit me, or anything," I said, the recollection still too fresh in my mind. "He just stormed out when I got mad at him. And he didn’t come back. I found out the next day that he’d gone out and slept with another girl."
He grimaced, and nodded for me to continue.
"I was furious. But he—he was totally calm, and he said I was being irrational. He started twisting around everything I said." My voice was flat, and I tried to keep myself as calm as I could. Deep breaths. "He said he thought we were broken up, said it was my fault he cheated. He said I’d broken up with him when I yelled at him. Somehow, he convinced me to beg for him to come back."
"He sounds like an asshole." Jax’s teeth were gritted, but he held me tighter in his arms.
"I know that, now," I said, drying my tears with the back of my hand. "I just didn’t when I was nineteen."
Jax shook his head.
My eyes brimmed over with tears again. "So I got back together with him," I choked out. "I know, pathetic right? But at the time, I was just so happy that he took me back. It was only a couple months later when I started noticing little things. He was spending all his time on his phone, and he put a password on his laptop."
"Did you ask him why?"
"Yeah. He said he had a project for work, and that the laptop password was in case his computer got stolen. It was all just plausible enough to be true."
"But you stayed suspicious. You’re not stupid."
"Yeah. At least, I thought I wasn’t stupid," I said, my voice bitter at the memory. "Connor changed all that."
"Why?" Jax growled, the anger palpable in his voice.
I squeezed the pillow in front of me. It was hard to talk about, and my words were slow to come out. "He denied everything. Worse than denied. He told me I was being crazy. Being controlling, paranoid, you name it. He told me I was sick in the head, that I needed to see a psychiatrist. A—And I believed him, Jax."
He started to say something, but I cut him off. "I mean, he was right wasn’t he? I was the one who got back with him even after what he did, right? I—it’s so stupid," I said feeling my eyes sting. "I was so stupid."
"You’re not crazy or stupid," Jax said, his jaw muscles working. "He was gaslighting you, messing with your head, making you doubt yourself."
I felt my body tense with anxiety. "That’s exactly what it was like," I said, my hands balling into fists. "It got to the point where it was hard to sort out what was real and what wasn’t. I was gullible. I was stupid."
Jax suddenly looked stricken and shook his head, letting out a long exhale. "Fuck. I didn’t realize."
"Didn’t realize what?"
"How bad it was for you when I pulled that stunt with the groupies," he said, cringing at the memory. "I had no idea it would actually hurt you. It was just supposed to be a joke."
Embarrassment flooded through me. "I shouldn’t have taken it the way I did," I said, my cheeks getting hot. "I just thought I wasn’t good enough. Connor wrecked my confidence. ‘No one wants a crazy girl,’ he’d tell me. He used to say he was just in it for the crazy girl sex."
Jax reached out and wiped away my tears. "So why’d you finally ditch him?"
A shiver ran through me, and I was silent for a long moment.
"I—I didn’t," I said at last. "He ditched me."
"What?"
"And when he did, I didn’t even know what was real any more. He’d lied to me for so long that I thought I deserved it."
Jax’s eyes got sad, and he ran his fingers through my hair, waiting for me to continue.
I closed my eyes. "I was on a class trip to France. We barely talked the whole time. Fought a bunch before I went, but he told me to bring back the kitschiest tourist souvenir I could."
"What’d you get him?"
"Eiffel tower keychain, tacky fake silver. Five euros."
"Good choice."
"Yeah. I gave it to him and he said he had a gift for me—" my voice broke, but I cleared my throat. I didn’t want Jax to know this part still bothered me. "It was this ring, a ruby with diamonds around it. He said it wasn’t an engagement ring, but close."
"So this was pretty serious."
"I thought so. Until my best friend told me a week later that they’d slept together while I was away."
He cringed. "Fuck."
"I was so angry." I still remembered the night in vivid detail—the yellow dress I’d been wearing, the way my right heel blistered as I walked through the night on my new shoes. "I went to his house to scream at him and when I did, he laughed in my face."
He looked surprised. "Wait, what?"
"He told me that my best friend was obsessed with him. That they hadn’t done anything, but that she had tried to come onto him when I was gone." The tears were falling onto the pillow, now, and I couldn’t stop them. "When I finally got him to admit what he’d done, he told me that it was because I hadn’t paid enough attention to him. And that I wasn’t doing enough to look good. He twisted everything back to being my fault and I actually tried to apologize."
"Tried to?"
"Yeah. He took the ring back, kicked me out without even letting me get my shoes. I had to walk two miles with bare feet just to get back home."
"What a piece of shit."
"I should have gotten angry at him, I know that now," I said, my voice stronger. "Hell, I bet the ring was fake."
"I’m surprised you didn’t get revenge," Jax said, his scarred eyebrow lifting.
"Maybe I would have if he’d done it today," I said. "But I was so messed up back then."
Jax closed his eyes and sighed, then brought me close and kissed the top of my head.
"And then I—I went crazy." I said, cringing at the memory.
"You weren’t crazy, Riley. That’s just what Connor wanted you to think."
"No, Jax.," I said. "You don’t understand, I mean, crazy. I barely ate, barely slept. My grades fell off a cliff and I worried everyone who cared about me . . ."
His eyes, now, were focused far off in the distance. "When people like Connor change who you are, there’s only one thing you can do."
"What?"
"You cut them out of your life," he said. "Then you don’t talk to them again, you don’t think about them again. Look, you spent two years with him, right?"
"Yeah."
"And in that time, you were doing other things, too. You had classes. You had parents. You had hobbies."
I nodded. Where was he going with this? "Sure, I—"
"So those things all happened. But he didn’t." Jax’s gaze was intense. "Understand? Any time you remember those years, you remember the parts without him. Like cutting someone out from a photo."
I was quiet for a minute. "I guess I just don’t think of those years at all."
We sat in silence for a while, Jax gently stroking my hair. Since he got me talking about it, I might as well tell him the whole story. I cleared my throat and started again, "After a semester of grades that almost kept me from getting a job after graduation, I finally saw a psychiatrist. He gave me my lifesavers, and that—that helped a lot."
"Lifesavers?" Jax squinted quizzically at me.
I took the orange bottle out of my pocket. "Yeah," I said, giving the pills a shake. "The first time I took a Xanax, I could finally breathe again, you know? So since then, I think they m
ight have actually saved my life."
Jax looked at the pill bottle. "I . . ." he started to say, then seemed to tense. "Never mind. Go on."
"I got my act together, after that," I explained. "I got straight A’s. I buckled down. Everyone thinks I’m this put-together person and it’s like I’m the only one who knows that I’m still this pathetic girl some asshole could break, just because he wanted to."
Jax shook his head angrily. "Don’t say that Riley. You weren’t anything like that when I first met you."
"Yeah well, Connor was such a button up, clean cut guy . . . I thought he was different, but he taught me that guys were really all the same. So after that, well . . . I switched to bad boys. They don't pretend to be romantic or lie about how committed they are to you or about sharing your dreams when all they're doing is screwing you behind your back. With a bad boy, what you see is what you get, and I guess it helped me get a lot of my confidence back. At least, I thought it had. Until today."
"Look at me, Riley," Jax said, his voice low.
I turned my face away from him harder. "I’ve been ugly crying." I felt my eyes, dry and hot, and knew they must be red. "You don’t want to see this."
He lifted my chin until we were at eye level, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut. "Riley, look at me. Now."
His voice was so soothing that I couldn’t help opening my eyes and seeing his black, gentle ones staring back at me. "I’m glad you told me about Connor," he said. "And I know you wish it hadn’t happened. But you don’t need to feel ashamed. Not around me."
I looked down. "I acted like an idiot. I should have dumped him a year and a half before I did."
"That doesn’t make his lies your fault."
"When he came to the set today, I just . . . I hated it," I said, ripples of anger flooding into my body. "I thought I’d put it all behind me, but when I saw him today, it was like I would never get over this part of myself. What if I’m just that weak, pathetic person deep down?"
Jax shook his head. "No, that’s not you."
"I walked home barefoot after my scumbag ex kicked me out. How is that not pathetic?"
"Riley, you’re the most badass woman I’ve ever met," he said, his eyes wide and intense. "You’re strong, you’re brave, and you don’t take shit from anybody. The fact that some asshole lied to you a long time ago and made you feel weak is on him, not you."
Jax pulled me to him, pressing his lips hard against my forehead and hugging me so tight that I could barely breathe.
I squeezed him right back wishing that we would never have to let go of each other. "Thanks, Jax," I whispered into this chest.
He loosened his embrace and a fragment of a laugh escaped his mouth. "You know, when I came up here, I was worried you were about to break things off with me."
My eyes opened wider. "What? Why?"
He ran a hand through his hair, "I was afraid I might have overreacted when I threw that punch."
"You didn’t."
"Yeah, but now I have a big regret." His eyes were shining, now. I felt like I’d never seen him looking quite so gorgeous.
"Oh? What’s that?"
"That I didn’t throw a harder one," he growled, his hand making a fist. "I wish I’d broken his fucking face after what he put you through."
I took his fist in both my hands and brought it close to my mouth, then kissed it softly. He turned his head to look at me, surprised.
"You did just right," I said softly, remembering how Connor had looked when he was laying on the floor. "I don’t think he’ll be bothering me again—not for a long time, anyway."
The Xanax bottle rested near my hand, and I realized I still hadn’t taken one today. I twisted the bottle between my fingers, thinking about the pills inside and set it down again.
Chapter Twenty-One
WET ‘N’ WILD
I woke up, startled by a strange sound. Sunlight beamed through the window, and I saw that I was in Jax’s room. The strange sound came again, except louder. This time, I could tell it was a moan. Seeking out the comfort of Jax’s arms, I rolled over and realized that it was him moaning, deeply and painfully, his face strained. His eyes were squeezed shut and his head was flopping back and forth over a damp halo of sweat on his pillow.
"Jax," I said softly to him, unsure what what to do. "Jax, it's okay, everything's okay."
I gently rubbed my hand on his tense arm, hoping I could calm him down.
He went silent. I brushed aside his damp hair and faintly kissed his temple. I whispered into his ear and continued rubbing his arm gently until his body relaxed down into the bed and his breathing returned to normal. If this is what happened when he slept, I could see why he didn't get much of it.
I studied Jax’s face. He seemed peaceful now, as if whatever nightmare he’d experienced never happened. I flopped onto my pillow, relieved.
Judging from the light streaming through the window, I could tell that it had to have been close to noon. It was unusual for me to sleep in so late but yesterday's incident had been exhausting, both mentally and emotionally. I looked at Jax snoring quietly, and then slipped out of bed to wash up.
The bus was parked, and I couldn't hear any of the constant music, video games, laughing, or partying that I was growing accustomed to while on tour. The band appeared to be out, and even Bernie was gone too.
I peeked out the blinds and discovered that we were in a vast parking lot. Past rows of cars and behind a tall privacy fence, bursts of water shot up twenty feet into the air and I could make out the tops of what looked to be waterslides and lifeguard towers. I realized that we were stopped at a water park, which was probably where the rest of the band was having fun.
It was a gorgeous day out, and I was eager to join them, but I still wasn’t sure what they thought of what happened yesterday at the music video shoot. Jax told me after our talk that the band didn’t think much of it. He had said that when he went back to the soundstage he just told the band that some random creep was bothering me so he got rid of the guy. Even though Jax was convinced that they bought the story, I was still worried about what the band might think if they realized that Jax and I were becoming more than just friends. The last thing I wanted right now was to create drama or make things awkward on the bus.
Still, I couldn’t avoid them forever, and I knew I'd be kicking myself for weeks if I missed out on all the fun in the sun. So I exhaled deeply and made my decision.
I went into the bathroom and slipped into my bathing suit. I found myself grinning from ear to ear remembering how this bikini top initiated my post-concert kissing ritual with Jax. I left the bathroom and checked to see if Jax wanted to go, but he was still sleeping peacefully. I was tempted to wake him but felt he deserved a good rest after clocking out my ex and then listening to me unload my baggage all night. Poor guy.
After giving him one last peck on the cheek, I left the bus and headed for the park. At the gate I discovered that it was a pirate-themed water park named Blackbeard’s Lagoon, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the band had already paid for my admission. That was thoughtful of them. I figured they'd probably expensed it to the band's account, but these tickets were a far cry from thousand-dollar flutes of champagne, so I was more than okay with their decision, even if it did make some extra work for me.
Inside, as I strolled the place seeking out the band, I noticed fountains sculpted like pirates standing on open treasure chests everywhere. Most of the staff sported eyepatches and bandanas. People were laughing and screaming as they slid down twisty slides and walked plank-like diving boards into a huge pool with plastic vines and foliage designed to resemble a lagoon. Next to the pool, rowdy teenagers manned controllable water cannons from inside a pirate ship and they fired attacks at unsuspecting parkgoers. After passing the same peglegged pirate fountain for the third time, I still saw no sign of the band.
I considered stopping under a lone palm tree for a break, when I heard "Riley! Over here!"
Turnin
g sharply, I saw Kev waving me over to the rest of the band sitting around a wooden picnic table partially hidden by a big umbrella.
"Found you guys!" I said, approaching them and trying to act like nothing was on my mind. "Thanks for buying my ticket."
Sky, dressed in a polka-dot string bikini, shot me a bright smile. "No problem. We saw this place and just had to treat ourselves after our long day of filming. I figured you'd be down once you woke up and left the Fortress of Solitude."
Chewie jumped off the table. "Riley, awesome, now we can do it."
"Do what? Don't tell me you need me to make more buttons."
Chewie laughed and pointed a futuristic raygun at me. He made machine gun noises with his mouth, pretending to shoot me. "Fuck buttons, we’ve got more urgent needs, like a water gun fight! And now that you're here, we've got even teams."
I brightened. It was exactly the type of fun I needed to take my mind off of yesterday. "Sounds like a blast, and a good way to cool off today, count me in."
"Excellent!" Chewie squirted his raygun at the concrete right in front of my feet, trying to intimidate me.
"Watch it, Chewie," I said, smiling devilishly. "I grew up playing Duck Hunt, so I’m an excellent shot."
"Well, go grab a gun and let’s put those skills to the test." Chewie cocked his raygun. "They rent the guns out right over there. We'll be waiting here, locked and loaded."
"Alright, I'll be back," I said, doing my best Terminator impression, and then I headed over to the water gun stand to wait in line. It occurred to me that this was the first time I was really hanging out with the rest of the band. Most of the tour I’d been either working by myself or hanging out with Jax.
A firm hand gripped my elbow. Surprised, I yanked my arm away and spun around. "What th—"
"Riley, there you are," Jax said, with concern etched into his face. "I've been looking everywhere for you."
I brought my hand to my pounding chest and exhaled in relief. "I'm right here." I was glad to see him out of bed and enjoying the park. But he was still wearing the shorts and shirt he’d slept in. Looking into his dark eyes, I sought out any sign of his earlier nightmare. "Are you okay?"
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