“It’s not Jax,” I say aloud. “It’s Tommy and Daryl coming to work on the deck.”
In the mouth of the hallway between the kitchen and living room, I hold my breath, half a piece of toast in one hand, and wait for the second slam.
It doesn’t come.
I drop the toast onto the plate on the kitchen counter and rush to the bathroom to check my reflection. My hair is in loose, beachy waves and my shorts and T-shirt are casual and cute. I’m barefoot and walking into the living room, cellphone in hand when the knock comes.
Despite my now thundering heartbeat, I force an air of epic chill and call out, “Come in!”
The door swings aside and Jackson steps in. The oxygen seizes in my lungs. Seeing Jax always feels like the first time I saw him. The first thing I notice is his height—he’s much, much taller than me—the second, his sapphire irises in stark contrast to his dark hair and tanned skin. He used to correct me whenever I referred to them as sapphire with a “They’re blue, Mini. Plain old blue.”
But they aren’t “plain old” blue. They’re brighter than blue, and they sparkle like the surface of a sun-drenched ocean wave whenever his lips curve into a smile. And his smile is flooring. It’s endearing and kind, and there was a time when a specific sexy bend of his lips was reserved for me and me alone.
Like I confessed at Taco Bell, he’s broader than he was in high school and college. What I didn’t tell him is that he also seems more steady now. More comfortable in his own skin. Today he’s in worn jeans, the ends frayed around a pair of work boots. His T-shirt is gray and the Burke Builders logo is silk-screened over his chest. I suck in a breath and recall with vivid clarity the feel of that chest, and those abs—the thick ridge of his erection when I lifted my hips into his while we rolled around on my bed.
That seems like a lifetime ago.
I guess technically, if we’re going way back to the last time I was skin-to-skin with him, it was a lifetime ago.
“Hi,” I say when I realize I’m staring.
He looks up from the screen of his phone. I’m waiting for the casual “Hey, Mini” to come, but instead, he peruses me from head to toe.
“The pink polish is my favorite,” he rumbles, then changes the subject so fast my head spins. “I’m going to work on the deck outside today, so I won’t be banging around up there.”
“Okay.”
He pushes his hand into his hair and I blink, noticing what I hadn’t noticed until he starts to walk past me.
“You cut your hair.” My voice is a thready gasp. His hair’s still long on the top, but he sheared a good bit off the back.
“I was looking like a shaggy dog.” He rubs the back of his bare neck. “Taking some getting used to.”
But he didn’t look like a shaggy dog, more like a hunky fox. I like the way he wears it back sometimes. Or the way he wears it down, tickling his collar. And I definitely like balling my fist in it whenever he leans down to kiss me. Which I start imagining in vivid detail. Not that I expected him to swoop in here and lay one on me, but a girl can dream. The kiss on Saturday left an impression. Even if he was faking it. When he lazily opened his eyes after our lip-lock, I nearly fell into those blue pools. Then he snapped out of it the second the woman put her phone away.
I know that’s unfair—I asked him to kiss me for the purpose of being photographed, but I thought, I don’t know…that the chemistry we have would take over. That maybe we’d end up having a real date on that picnic blanket. No such luck. He hopped up and played Frisbee for the next fifteen minutes as if none of it mattered.
“You okay?” His eyebrows pinch slightly.
“Sure. Totally fine.” My smile is fake and I worry he can tell. But a microsecond later the curiosity vanishes from his expression.
“All right, then.” He dips his chin as walks past me. The farther away he goes, the flutterier the panicky sensation is in my chest.
“Jax?”
“Yeah.” He stops at the entrance to the kitchen.
“Are you…okay?”
“Am I okay?” he repeats, like he’s confused or offended. Immediately, I want to eat my words. It’s so obvious that he hasn’t been reeling over the kiss at the park like I have. He hasn’t been wondering if the kiss was more than playacting like I have.
“You seem tired,” I say instead. “Can I make you a cup of coffee?”
“Oh. No. I’m good.”
“Oh. Good.”
We stand awkwardly in limbo for a few seconds before he hoists a thumb over his shoulder.
“I’ll be outside. Tommy is coming over in a few hours, FYI.”
I nod, pressing my lips tightly together before I say something really stupid like “How about a kiss hello?”
Once he’s gone, my stomach lurches in the way I imagine it would if gravity suddenly wasn’t a thing and I’m in a free fall off the planet. Or maybe that would be more of a hover as I’m sucked into space.
Anyway. I’m uncomfortable, that’s what I’m trying to say.
The kiss in the park, the few before that one in my bedroom—I thought that those were adding up to be more. I don’t know what that would look like since we can’t snap back into our roles from before. I mean, how do you go back to dating someone you loved when you were a kid? You kind of can’t. There’s been too much time and distance in between. Plus, the intensity isn’t the same.
It’s there, though. I admit that much to myself as I walk into the kitchen to make myself that cup of coffee I offered Jackson.
The intensity between us may have lessened—having your heart broken will do that—but we still care about each other in a way neither of us can deny. I care about him. I know he cares about me.
He’s been accommodating and attentive. Until this week, when he’s been more aloof and distant. I’m not sure it has anything to do with me at all. Maybe another client refused to pay. But there’s definitely a shift in his mood. And he’s definitely not in a good mood today.
As I watch my coffee sputter into the mug from the single-cup brewer, I think back to the last few days.
I sent him a text and the link to the article on Sunday, but only after deleting it and retyping it nine times. I felt weird sending him video proof of our on-fire chemistry and didn’t know exactly how to say “So here’s us turning each other on for the public!” Instead, I went with a generic, albeit lame, thanks again for your help.
He never responded. I have no idea if he watched it, hated it, or agreed that the kiss was hot on anyone’s HOT-o-meter. I didn’t text him again in case he was avoiding me.
After the hot and heavy kiss on the picnic blanket, he’d dashed off to play Frisbee and left me to eat my gourmet snack alone. When he came strolling back, I offered to go with him to get that “real” food he’d brought up before and—get this—he said no. He told me he needed to head home, since he was behind on his paperwork.
No girl wants to be second to paperwork.
The drive back was as normal as you please. We talked, not about the kiss, but about the weather, and his schedule on the deck construction. When he dropped me off at the driveway, he told me to enjoy the weekend.
Now that I think about it, he wasn’t in a good mood at all after the kiss.
No flirting. No following me inside. He simply reversed down the driveway and motored away.
Did I majorly screw things up by asking him to pretend with me?
I can’t imagine why that would matter. We’ve never had to fake the attraction part. It has to be pheromones. I’ve never been able to control my physical desire for him. Except…my desire for Jax has always been deeper than just the physical.
When we split up after that horrible day in California, it felt like ending something that should’ve lasted forever. I was excited about my newfound career, and he was tired and impatient a
nd reluctant about everything. About my leasing an apartment and my nonstop chatter about the show and the critics’ positive reviews…I was a ball of energy and excitement and he was still Jackson. Steady, focused, laid-back Jackson.
And then we started arguing and then he left. I bled out slowly when it became clear we broke up for good. I didn’t entertain the idea of dating another soul for over a year.
Now that I’m standing here, ten years of retrospection under my belt, I wonder…Was he sad about my excitement? Not jealous. He always wanted more for me—because I wanted it. He’d never deny me what I yearned for deep in my soul. But, now that I look back on it, had he felt left behind? Or worse. Traded in?
Hm. I never thought of it that way before now.
And God. That day I walked through my parents’ front door and saw him standing in the living room, a million things happened at once. I’d spent the morning dodging paparazzi lurking around LAX. Landing at John Glenn airport was a complete and total shift. No one leaped out of a potted plant to ask me about Millie or Xavier or my Oscar-napping incident. I was deliciously under the radar, and not sure if I trusted it.
I made the mistake of taking my phone off airplane mode the moment we landed. Texts and two missed calls from Xavier came through. I tromped through the airport, huge sunglasses on, ball cap pulled low, and dealt with him the only way I knew how.
I called him back.
“What the hell do you want?”
“I want you to go to rehab like we agreed. How can I land you a role on my next film if you refuse to call me back? If you refuse to seek treatment?”
Seek treatment. Like I’m a damn alcoholic?
“Like who agreed?” Not what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was “You were the one who stole Millie’s Oscar, dumbass!” or maybe “Why don’t you go to treatment and tell me how it is, klepto!” But I don’t. The fallout is too big if we’re overheard. I can control the spin, but only if I keep my mouth shut.
“Like we all agreed, baby,” he says in his false caring tone. “You were there and so was your agent.”
“Prove it.”
I ended the call there, angry that he’d let me take the blame and worse—angry that he publicly dumped me and then put the target on my back. He may be younger than me but he’s older in this business than I am. He knew what he was asking of me was unfair. He just didn’t want his precious public to find out he was drunk and pranked America’s original sweetheart, Millie Duncan, to impress his girlfriend.
Granted, I shouldn’t have allowed my loyalty to be bought by the promise of a big role in his next feature, but I was temporarily blinded by the spotlight. A few days after the shit hit the fan, I called my agent and told her I didn’t want to go through with this.
She told me to take a break—asked if there was somewhere I could go to take a breather and leave L.A. My first thought was to flee to the safety and solace of my hometown—to my parents’ house. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to sit on the bed in my old bedroom and smell my mom’s famous chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.
I procured a rental car at the airport, drove home with a sob lodged in my throat and with the intention of surprising my parents, only to find they weren’t home. They weren’t even in the country.
But Jackson was here.
He was the very last person I expected to see in my parents’ living room and by far the most welcome sight. And when the jet lag, anger, and sadness whirled into a funnel cloud of vulnerability, he was there to catch me. My port in a really ugly storm. And when those tears fell like rain, he held me while I cried.
Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about Xavier and how he never protected me. Jackson has been there for me since I’ve come home. He’s been taking me out and unwittingly putting himself in a photographer’s crosshairs. Until he wittingly did it at the park.
That’s when things changed between us.
Either he’s having a generic bad day that has nothing to do with me, or he clammed up and it has everything to do with me.
I intend to find out which one it is.
Chapter 15
I’m sitting on the floor near the bedroom closet—half in, half out—two cardboard boxes torn open, frayed packing tape hanging. The contents of the boxes are strewn across the carpeted floor.
I started with the box holding my high school yearbooks. Flipping through those and running my fingers over signatures of people I used to know and people I can’t remember knowing was a rare and fun pastime. Then I opened the other box and found my cap and tassel from graduation and a few of my senior pictures, plus a framed one from my senior prom. I leaned the frame against the wall, admiring how handsome and strong Jackson was even then. I was small and buried in layers of bright pink fabric. That was the only time I ever saw him wear a tuxedo.
I stand from my cross-legged position and slide aside a few hangers containing my mother’s clothes—seasonal storage—and find a few dress bags crammed in the back. Through the plastic window on one, I spot a flash of pink. I unearth the garment bag and lay it over my bed, unzipping it to reveal the contents. A smile finds my lips. So many good memories. The night I wore this dress feels like forever ago and yesterday just the same. It’s funny how time can do that.
“Think it still fits?”
I start at the low voice, surprised to find Jax in the hallway. His hair is damp with sweat, his T-shirt sticking to his back. He rolled his short sleeves over his round shoulders, revealing thick upper arms. An electric drill dangles from one hand and he uses it to point toward the end of the hall. “Forgot to unlock the door going outside up here.”
His gaze flicks to the dress and then to me before he steps into my bedroom and inventories the stuff littering my carpeted floor.
“Damn.” He sets the drill on the floor and trades it for our prom picture. His smile curves his beard as he studies the photo. “I look like a baby.”
“So do I.”
“No. You look hot.”
When his eyes hit mine, I bite my lower lip, everything that happened in the past few days a confusing whirlwind.
“Try it on.” He tips his chin at the dress on my bed.
“No way!” I shout and then let out an uncomfortable laugh. He laughs with me as I shove the dress into the bag and zip it closed. “I don’t know why Mom kept this.”
But I do. She called when she was cleaning out my room and I couldn’t picture it not hanging there, so I asked her to keep it.
“That was a good night.” He returns the frame to the floor and lowers himself onto the seat at my vanity, dwarfing the delicate white chair. And yet he doesn’t look the least bit out of place in my bedroom. I suppose because he never was out of place in here. Even now.
I sit on the bed. “It was a good night.”
“Remember Monica and Nate fighting like cats and dogs?” He shakes his head. “Man, they were horrible.”
“Totally the wrong people to share a limo with!” I laugh as I remember our best friends back then.
“Thank God we dropped them off first.” His smile fades and his eyes grow dark.
My heartbeat relocates between my legs thanks to my photographic memory of that night. Photographic and pornographic.
“Thank God I paid that driver for an extra hour.” His voice drops an octave. “I see that color pink and it’s all over. Man.” He pulls a hand down his face and then shakes his head. “I haven’t thought about that night in a long time.”
“Same. I started looking through some of my old things and when I came across the prom photo I kind of couldn’t help myself.” I hang the dress in the back of the closet. Waaaay in the back. When I kneel to pick up the prom photo, a palm cups my elbow and helps me stand. Jackson’s playful smile is gone.
He skims that hand down my forearm and takes my hands.
�
��Dance with me, Mini.”
There’s no music, and I’m not wearing shoes, and Jackson smells like sunshine instead of cologne, but I agree. He wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me so that I’m standing on his steel-toed boots. I loop my arms around his neck and run my fingers over his shorn neck as he sways side to side.
“I can’t believe you cut your hair,” I murmur as he warms my waist with his rough-yet-tender hands.
“I can’t believe you care.”
“I care.”
“Do you?” I sense he’s not talking about his hair.
“Why didn’t you text me back?” I ask as he moves with me.
“I didn’t have a response.” He shrugs.
“You didn’t have a response to a video of us kissing?”
He sighs. Looks away.
“Jackson.” I reach into his trimmed hair, and while I can’t grab onto it, pacify myself with stroking the clipped strands. “What?”
“I was pissed.”
“Why?” I ask, stunned.
“Because you thanked me.” He said that like I robbed him.
“I appreciated your helping me out. I didn’t think saying thank you would bother you.”
He tips his head back, sucks in a breath, and then burns me with a glare.
“I didn’t kiss you to do a favor, Allison. I kissed you because you told me to. You leaned in with heat in your gorgeous dark eyes and I fell into you like…I don’t know. Like I forgot the shit that happened between now and a decade ago.”
It’s unlike him to be so transparent. I don’t dare interrupt him.
He licks his lips and finishes with, “And it was an act.”
“For you?” I manage hoarsely.
“For you,” he corrects. “You clocked the lady with the phone and wanted to give her a show.”
“Yes, but…” I shake my head, unsure how much I should share. There isn’t anywhere for me to hide, though, and Jackson knows it.
America's Sweetheart Page 10