Page 98 of Reputation
She nodded.“Yeah.He was drafted to their farm team before he played for the Blaze.He got traded last year, but I think the team he went to sent him down again.I haven’t heard about him in a while.”She shrugged as if it didn’t bother her.
“You two dated?”Jax asked, trying and failing to recall the guy’s face, but he’d only ever played against him a handful of times.
“We dated for a while, fell in love.”She said it with a scoff like the idea was ridiculous.“Senior year, I…gave him my virginity.”
His hand under her chin tightened a fraction.It was instinctive, the need to hold her close, thinking about another guy touching her.He swallowed down the feeling, making a conscious effort to relax his grip.
A bitter laugh escaped her, pulling him back to where she was offering a piece of herself to him.“I was so stupid.I thought he loved me, but the next day, when I got to school, everyone knew.”She shook her head, eyes dropping again.Jax let her chin go, but brushed his thumb against her cheek as he pushed a strand of curly hair back.“I thought that him telling everyone was devastating, but when I confronted him, helaughed.With his entire team watching, with the whole school sitting in the cafeteria, he told me that he’d only been with me because I was hot,” she paused, tears glistening in her eyes, and he knew what she had yet to say was the most painful of all.“He…he told me the only thing special about me was my beauty, and I would never be more than a trophy wife.”
Rage rushed through Jax.He wanted to beat the guy for saying that to her.He had to be an idiot to see her so narrowly.She was the most incredible woman Jax had ever met.Smart, graceful, witty—he could list a dozen amazing things about her before he even reached the word beautiful.
She drew in a shuddering breath, lifting her glistening eyes to him.“I broke up with him,” she said, one side of her lips lifting in an attempt at a smile.“But something inside me…broke that day.Some things that happen to you…linger.It doesn’t take a therapist to tell me I don’t trust men easily.”
His heart thudded in his chest.She didn’t trust men easily, yet she’d trusted him with her body and their secret.Emotion so acute swelled in his chest that it constricted his throat.He leaned forward, placing a gentle kiss on her lips.
Pulling away, he repeated what he’d told her yesterday morning as they lay in bed.“Thank you for trusting me.”
This time, the smile that touched her lips was genuine.“Thank you for making me see that some men are different.”
Jax stepped back, needing a moment of space to calm the rush of emotions pulsing through him.He didn’t know how to begin understanding them, so he pushed them down for now.
“Anyway,” Eavie continued, looking up at him.The tears were gone, as if they had been wiped away when she’d emerged from the memory.He saw a flash of something in her gaze that had his narrowing.“Your turn.”
Already regretting playing another one of her games, he said, “Alright, what’s your question?”
She paused and looked down as if she was unsure how to ask it.He worried that her question was going to feel like payback.But this moment was about sharing something of themselves, right?He couldn’t begrudge her countering his question with a serious one of her own.
Finally, she asked, “What really happened with your engagement?”
He was momentarily caught off guard by the question.His failed relationship with his ex-fiancée wasn’t something he liked to discuss.He’d never really told anyone about it.That night in Vegas, where he’d told her even that little bit, had surprised the hell out of him.
Drawing in a deep breath, he pulled his gaze away from her as he looked down at the remains of grilled cheese on his plate.Wiping his mouth with a paper towel, he could sense her looking at him, watching his expression.
He wasn’t a fan of her question and didn’t want to answer, but there was something about Eavie that made him tell her things.
Sighing, he guessed she deserved to know why he’d structured his dating life the way he had since moving to Toronto.
Not wanting to see her reaction to the story, Jax fixed his gaze on the dark window, partly seeing the architecture outside and partly two years in the past.
“I told you that we broke up when I signed my deal with the Royals,” he said.He saw her nod out of the corner of his eye.“When the negotiations for a contract with Toronto began, I’d had several conversations with Abigail about it.I thought she was on the same page—that I would sign, and we would move here together.”It was his turn to laugh bitterly, this time at himself.“I guess I wasn’t really paying attention, or maybe I didn’t see the signs, but she had never been on board with it.”He shook his head, thinking about those weeks before everything imploded.“Maybe she told me, and I just hadn’t listened.But when a deal was agreed to, I went home to share the news.That’s when she decided to clearly inform me she had no intention of leaving Chicago.”
“She left you?”Eavie gasped.
Had she?Or had he pushed her away?Even now, he wasn’t sure which one it was, but regardless, Abigail had betrayed him, and he had seen who she really was.
“Abigail grew up as a Chicago socialite.Her family is very wealthy.I guess she liked the idea of marrying me when it didn’t disrupt the life she had curated for herself.”He placed both palms on the cold surface of the counter, pushing back slightly.“I thought we were making plans to move and build our future—a family.She suddenly didn’t find the prospect of marrying me so interesting,” he said, the comment coming out with a bitterness he still felt from that night.“When she told me she didn’t want to leave Chicago, I had thought maybe she meant that we could work out some arrangement where we kept a house there, and she would come with me but be able to go back and visit her friends and family.That was my second mistake.
“I didn’t realize that she didn’t want me anymore, period.When I got back from signing the contract at my agent’s office, I came home to her engagement ring sitting on the counter, and all her things were gone,” he paused, the sting of the memory making him flinch.“She’d moved all her stuff out in a matter of hours.”Taking a deep breath, he prepared himself for the part of the story that really made him feel like shit.“A month later, I saw the news of her engagement to a big finance guy announced in the paper.”He laughed bitterly again.“It was like she and I had never existed, like we had never been in love or ready to marry each other.I can’t help but wonder if she’d had someone waiting in the wings the entire time.Almost overnight, she’d wiped away everything we’d had planned because she didn’t want to leave her precious life.”
Silence greeted him for several heartbeats.Finally, he got up the courage to look at Eavie.What he saw on her face nearly took his breath away.His failed engagement had always made him feel like a failure—like he wasn’t good enough.That’s why he never let any relationship go on for more than a few nights or only kept casual dates in his repertoire since.
Jax knew how Eavie saw him—as a womanizer.That image of him in the media was intentional.But the anger he saw in her eyes and the fire that had drawn him in, took him by surprise.He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from her, but this wasn’t it.
Slowly, she reached out and stroked her fingers along his jaw.“I’m sorry,” Eavie said softly, her voice matching the light brush of her fingers.He gazed into her bright blue eyes, wanting to drown in them.“She didn’t deserve you, Jax.”
His breath backed up in his lungs as he stared at her, the words rendering him speechless.Unable to speak or do anything, he just continued to look at her beautiful face.Inside his chest, Jax felt as if someone was squeezing his heart.
Eavie leaned in and brushed her lips against his.His eyes closed as she did it again, and he closed the gap between them, sealing his mouth to hers as their tongues met in a deep, passionate kiss that spoke of more than any words could.
