Page 38 of Jax

I want to slap him and fuck him at the same time. Is this what love as an adult is like? Or is this just life with a headstrong fighter? “In a fairy tale world, it would’ve worked out like that.”

“No, in therealworld, Sadie. You’ve always been a lone wolf. I thought I was helping you get over your past but in the end, you went with what you were good at anyway. Running.”

“To saveyou,” I cry.

“You didn’t save me. All you did was teach me that I wasn’t worth fighting for. You taught me that I was nothing. You taught me to hope less.” He brings his fists in front of him. From the faint light of the streetlamp coming in through the window behind the couch, Jax’s tattoo is finally stark and obvious. In medieval lettering, he has the words hope and less tattooed below his battered knuckles.Hope-less.

My heart cracks, and I gasp. I clutch the front of my shirt over my heart where it feels as if I’m coming apart inside. “You got that because of me?” I stare at the black ink, letting the tattoo sink into my very being. The longer I look at it, the worse I feel. But he has it all wrong. “This is me,” I say, covering his left hand with the wordlesstattooed on it. “I’ll always be less. But this is you,” I tell him, moving my hand to the word hope and opening his fingers. “Look at what you’ve done with your life, Jax.Iwas the weak link. Where were you going to go with a girlfriend who was caught up in the Crew? Nowhere. But look at what you’ve accomplished since I’ve been out of your life. You’re amazing.”

Jax’s jaw feathers. “And yet, it’s so incomplete. That’s why I can’t keep away from you, Sadie. Because finally—fucking finally—with you here, it feels like I’ve gotten everything I wanted. My head is screaming that you’re going to ruin everything again but I can’t fucking help it. There’s a fight going on inside my body, and I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to keep it up.”

Awareness trickles around me, making the skin on my arms buzz. I’d love to fall into him again but for how long? Until Psycho comes back for me? Until I disappoint him again? I’m being selfish by staying here. I never wanted to come back as this Sadie. My heart beats painfully. “I want you too. So fucking much. But I can’t—I can’t stay here,” I tell him, knowing I’d leave in a nanosecond if it meant saving him again.

He pushes away from me. “See? You’re already doing it.”

Vile, disgusting Psycho. I wonder if he sent me here for this, as if he knew all along seeing Jax again would cripple me. I zero in on Jax’s gaze. “If it was up to me, I never would’ve come back.”

His eyes darken, as if he’s already shutting me out. “Me too,” he whispers.

He walks back up the stairs, and I’m left alone on the couch with nothing but a million pounds worth of regrets. I replay the moment in my mind where I lie to K over and over again. There wasn’t time to tell Jax anything. There wasn’t time to get us out of it. He had his hands around my throat, squeezing and squeezing until I told him Jax had taken the sex from me.

I knew K wouldn’t care that rape was reprehensible. He had no sense of what was right and what was wrong. He’d only cared that Jax had takenfrom him. As soon as he saw that, I planted the seed in his head that Jax going to jail would be worse than dying. I manipulated all that to save Jax. He can get mad at me all he wants. He can tell me I was wrong but I know in my heart that I did what I had to.

* * *

Jax

There’sa stent in my heart named Sadie. It’s been there since she stood outside my door for the first time in years. It began with a flutter—an awakening—then a roaring opening of emotions that tears through me every chance it gets.

I rub my chest as I stomp back up the stairs, the feeling plaguing me. Quietly, I knock on Finn and Leenie’s door. Before I’m even given permission to enter, I turn the knob and walk in. Leenie and Finn are sitting on the edge of the bed. Both of their gazes move upward to take me in. Leenie’s stare widens in alarm, and I don’t blame her. I hide shit inside. It’s what I do. I’ve cultivated this persona of quiet dickhead, and I prefer it that way.

Sadie’s return has changed all that.

Finn takes one look at me and gets to his feet. He waves Leenie away before throwing his arm around my shoulders and leading me toward the window. He heaves the sash up and steps out onto the back roof. If I was in the mood for laughing, I would. How many fucking times did we do this when we were kids and wanted a moment to ourselves? Finn and I would talk about heavy shit. Feelings, girls, the future.

He takes a seat and scoots over, leaving me room to do the same. For a good ten minutes, we stare forward without talking. Roof lines and stars. It’s all we see. I wish I could say that we hear the night insects out and about but not in the Heights. A couple of blocks over, neighbors are having a party. Their bass is loud enough to block most everything out. In the opposite direction, a car alarm blares. It sounds fucking crazy but in this chaos, there’s a bit of peace. Like I’m the center of the storm, the moment of silence while the world goes to shit around me.

“Dude, what are you going to do?” Finn finally asks.

I dig my heel into the porch roof, and a shingle breaks loose. I sigh, flicking my sneaker out and kicking the material over the side. Can nothing stay the way it was? Why does everything break? “Fuck if I know.”

“I can’t believe I’m fucking saying this but it’s Sadie,” he urges, feeling pouring from his mouth. He’s almost reverent.

“Meaning?” I ask, too much piss in my tone.

Finn doesn’t care though. He’s used to me being the surly one. He runs his hands through his loose hair. “Fuck if I know,” he echoes. A moment later, he continues, though. “I saw what she did to you, you know. The fucked-up shit you went through because of it. You grew darker day by day. You fucking lost it, but I don’t know, man. To me, it was never because you truly hated her. Feel free to kick my ass if I’m way off base but you fucking lost yourself becauseshewasn’t here. And now she is.”

And now she is…The shock still reverberates inside me. The fucking bitter surprise that turned to anger and loss. I’ve felt all those emotions through the last few days. “It’s like she rose from the fucking dead,” I admit, scraping my foot against the roof where a shingle is now missing.

Finn reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder. He heaves out a breath. “She did, and it’s just like her too. You have to admit.”

He smirks, and it takes everything in me not to laugh. Instead, I allow myself to smile. Memories of Sadie blitz me. She was a butterfly in the dark. She truly was a light in every sense even though she never saw it that way. In the next moment, my head is reminding me to get a hold of my fucking self. She just told me she couldn’t stay. She’s going to leave again, and I know it. But besides that, should I even care? Shouldn’t I want her to go? “She betrayed me, Finn,” I say out loud, telling him the one thing I wish I could get over. “She said she did it because of K, but she fucking betrayed me.Me,” I grind out.

“What hurts worse, Jax? That she betrayed you? Or that she didn’t leave with you when you wanted?”

I peer over at him, my heart beating frantically in my chest. He wasn’t supposed to know about that.

“Yeah, dude. I know.” He looks away, brushing an imaginary piece of flint off his forearm. “I figure it would take a hell of a girl to get you to want to leave me.”

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