Page 184 of Cross the Line
Jayden falls back into his seat with his eyes firmly on the air vents above us. Thick fingers knot with mine in his lap.
“You’re the only man I’ve ever had feelings for. That I’ve wanted or needed. Same with Fin. You’re the only people I’ve ever been physically attracted to.”
This is where he doesn’t know he’s changed my life. He opened me up to so many possibilities—to seeing the world in a spectrum of color I didn’t know existed.
“I used to think there was something wrong with me because I never felt the urge for physical intimacy with anyone. Even before what happened…” He stiffens at my low whisper.
My blood chills at the thoughts that unravel in my head. The memories. The nightmares.
It takes me a moment to breathe through it all so I can go on. “I was already like this beforethat. Finley was an anomaly. It’s like she got so deep under my skin that she became a vital part of me. I needed every part of her in every possible way. I still do. The same way I need you.”
I glance up from our tangled hands to find him watching me with tear-glossed eyes. Trying to ease the tension coiled around him, I smile. It doesn’t work one bit. That surly pout stays fixed, a brutal grimace that knots my insides.
“Point is, there isn’t anything wrong with me or us. I don’t feel for other men or women what I feel for you and Fin, because they’re not right for me like you and our girl are. Am I making sense? Connie normally makes it make sense…”
Jayden shrugs, shifting his body to turn into me. “I know what’s right for us isn’t going to be right for everyone else. I just wanted to protect you and Fin from the judgmental bullshit. I’ve been there all my life. If not because of my sexuality, then because of my parents and our family.”
“Other people’s opinions are irrelevant, Jayden. That’stheirright and wrong, not ours. It’s not our problem.”
“The universal right and wrongisour problem, Eli. It’s mine, yours, Fin’s… and it’ll be our children’s problem…”
“You’re right… Our children will deserve better. So I go back to what I said, we need to be us. The us we’ve always been. Steady and strong.”
“Eli…”
“JJ, change happens when we least expect it, through understated action. It’s how I got here. To now. All the little things you did that made me fall so fucking deep for you… the little things that have altered my perception of myself…”
He rolls his eyes at me. The telltale sign he’s thawing. “Maybe I should talk to Connie.”
“She’s pretty amazing at untangling my crazy thoughts.” Lifting our joint hands to my mouth, I give his knuckles a playful bite, followed by alingering kiss when he cozies into me. “You realize that the primary point of this conversation was me apologizing for fucking up, right? I shouldn’t have jumped into your brawl with Ahlgren. Suppose I wanted to protect you…”
“He’s an asshole,” he grumbles beneath his breath.
“You never told me the beef between the two of you.”
Jayden goes deathly still, hand tightening so hard around mine that I feel the bite of it tingling all the way up the nerves in my arm. “He tried to fuck my sister.”
Oh. Wait. “When? He’s like twenty-nine and married.”
“A while back. Kailey had just turned seventeen and—” Jayden shakes his head in disgust. “I have one fucking rule: no one touches my sisters. No one looks at them. They’re off-limits.”
Now I’m pissed I didn’t hammer the bastard harder. If Kailey were seventeen, Ahlgren would’ve been twenty-five. She was barely legal… “Sick fuck.”
“I know eight years in the grand scheme of life is nothing, but she was a kid.Mykid sister.” With a grunt, he sinks deeper into me.
Time feels too normal when we sit in silence. Not slow, not fast—steady—as I stroke my thumb along the back of his hand. Thinking about our conversation.
How there’s no right or wrong. Just perceptions. What we think and feel about facts.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about talking to Finley more often than not. Imagining the right words to say, the different variations that might soften the blow of the truth.
Jayden was right, the weight of holding it back from her is constantly pressing on my shoulders, squeezing around my heart. I don’t want to hurt her, but the more I think about where we are now, the clearer it becomes that I am hurting her more by withholding this part of me.
Because that’s what it is—a part of me that I’ve been so ashamed of that I’ve tried to bury it to my own detriment.
And I think it’s time to cut it off, the rotting limb that it is, and leave it behind. In the past, where it belongs.
CHAPTER 49
