Page 179 of Timeless

“What is this?” I gasped.

Jax’s head snapped up and he obviously hadn’t heard me come in. His eyes ran down me, twice, and then his eyes locked with mine.

“What the fuck happened?” He dropped whatever was in his hands and walked toward me, looking furious.

“I was going to ask you the same question?” I had no idea what was going on.

“Have you seen yourself?” Jax looked at me, honestly concerned, his rage disappearing. “What happened? Why do you look like a rape case?”

I blinked. Oh, right. The dress. “Um, I had to get on the bike so I just sliced it.” I looked down at the poor job I had done.

His hand cupped my face, bringing my eyes to look up at him. “You’ve been crying.” He stated it like he knew. God, was I that easy to read?

It then dawned on me my makeup would have been the sign giving it away. “Shit, right the mascara. I forgot.” I went to wipe under my eyes. “I’ll go take it off.”

I was going to leave but Jax had other ideas. “Sweetheart, if you don’t want me to go hunting down whoever you had lunch with and kill him, you’ll start explaining why you look like this.” He wasn’t threatening. His words were firm, strong, and serious.

I brushed his hand off my cheek, unable to look him in the eye with what I was about to say. I found it easier to lie when he couldn’t look me straight in the eye.

“It was nothing.” I was trying to get away from him. “I guess I just overacted.” Okay, I wasn’t going to lie. I sighed. “I just fucked up, Jax. Something I always do. Don’t worry about it.”

I didn’t want to tell him I nearly sold my body just to get something I wanted. I couldn’t tell him the truth because he would be furious with me, and I couldn’t take it.

“Come on, Amber, tell me what happened?” Jax wasn’t letting me go and started to walk backward, pulling me along with him.

He sat down on the middle seating area of my closet and pulled me to his lap. One arm wrapped around me, his hand on my side, his other on my leg, then his fingers on my leg, started moving in a circle, something he would always do to calm me down.

“Start from the beginning. Who was this client you were meeting?” Jax encouraged me to tell him what happened that resulted in me looking like this.

“It wasn’t a client.” My eyes were glued on my lap. “It was father of one of Jack’s friends.” I was honest with him and I knew me lying to him to begin with wasn’t going to go down with him. Just like how I got out of the house, without him forcing me to change.

“Okay. Why did you meet him?” Jax wasn’t automatically yelling at me for lying. In fact, he was actually being calm, as if to make sure I’d tell him the truth.

Tears started to well in my eyes. “If I just say it didn’t go well, can we leave it at that?”

“No. Come on, sweetheart, just tell me why you met him?” Jax took his hand off my knee, and wiped away my tears.

I didn’t deserve him to be kind to me. I took over wiping my tears and as if he knew I needed him to calm me down, he went back to drawing a circle on my thigh.

I took a staggered breath in. “He is on the board of Eagles Academy. I went there hoping he would help me get Jack in.” I got the words out though they were staggered because of my crying.

Jax was quiet and I knew that was because I had lied to him and he was trying his best not to just start yelling at me.

“He said he would do it.” My hand went out to Jax’s, which was on my leg. My fingers ran over his hand. “But I had to do something.” Now this was the part I was ashamed. “He wanted me to fuck him.”

I was expecting the lid on Jax’s temper to blow off at that. But it didn’t. I saw his jaw clench, and he moved his hand from under mine. Immediately, I thought he didn’t want me touching him. Great. The tears started to drop quicker. I was expecting him to push me off his lap and start telling me how much of a whore I was.

Instead, his hand flipped mine over, his fingers running over the black stains from the ink at the police station.

“Thought they had got rid of ink altogether,” he muttered, catching sight of the stains. I didn’t know how he had even seen them.

“Keep going, sweetheart.” He gave me an encouraging smile to continue, even though I knew every blood vessel and muscle in his body would want to be yelling, not being calm.

I bit my bottom lip and nodded. Okay. Keep going.

“I broke his hand, which he couldn’t seem to keep off me. Then I gave him my right hook and I just kept punching him. Staff pulled me off him but I grabbed a knife off a nearby table, while being dragged away from him, and threw it.”

“You and that aim.” Jax’s voice went up with pride.

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