Drive (One Night Series Book 1)

by Megyn Ward

  “You like me.” He has a strange way of asking questions that aren’t really questions.

  I nod. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. There’s no use in denying it or playing dumb. He heard Bri on the phone earlier. I know he did. Better just to admit it and move on. “But my feelings for you have nothing to do with the way I feel about Simon. I'd still be—”

  Before I can finish my sentence, Jaxon moves. Slipping into the space between my legs, his hands move lower to rest on my hips, pulling me even closer, until I can feel the press of him widen the juncture of my thighs. “You have feelings.” His face is inches from mine, his mouth hovering so close I can smell the minty tinge of toothpaste.

  I nod. “You brushed your teeth.” I don’t know why but knowing that tips me over the edge. Suddenly, my heart is going crazy, flopping and twisting in my chest. Knocking the breath out of my lungs every time it beats.

  The corner of his mouth kicks up in a crooked smile. “I believe in being prepared for all possible contingencies.”

  “What contingency is this?” I’m not sure how I’m still conscious, let alone speaking in complete sentences.

  His fingers dig into my hips, the press of them hard, almost urgent, at total odds with the easy-going smile on his face. “The I’ve been thinking about kissing you all night contingency.”

  “Oh...” I breathe the word, and it comes out shaky. Sounds far away. “Is it because of what Bri said?” Not that I care. He could be kissing me in order to save the world from imminent destruction, and I would’ve been on board with it. Anything that gets his mouth on mine gets a thumbs up in my book.

  “No.” He leans in, and my eyes slip closed, just before I feel the press of his lips against the line of my jaw. “I pretty much think about kissing you all the time.”

  “You do?” Is this a dream? Am I sleeping? If I am, don’t wake me up. Ever.

  “Uh huh.” His mouth moves along the curve of my jaw before moving on to my neck. “Ever since the night I found you sleeping in my bed.” His teeth nip against the tendons in my neck. “Now I can’t even lie down in it without thinking about what it would be like to fuck you,” he whispers in my ear before taking my lobe between his teeth.

  Ohmygod.

  “I like old movies,” I say softly as a shiver shoots through me, racking my body from head to toe.

  “Movies?” I feel his mouth curve into a smile against the soft spot behind my ear while the hand on my hip moves upward, slipping under the hem of my T-shirt. “Are we talking about the same thing?”

  “You asked me what I was into...” The last word is pushed out on a shuddering breath as I feel his fingers skim along my ribcage. “Movies. I like movies.”

  “Mmm…” His voice hums along my skin, a low-level electrical current that buzzes across my skin, leaves me rattled. “I did ask that, didn’t I?” he says, his fingertips following the curve of my breast.

  “Yes...” My nipple harden beneath his touch, straining against the cup of my bra. I push myself into his hand, loving the way my breast fits perfectly into his palm, the heat of it making the tip of it tingle.

  The hand still on my hip digs in, pulling me closer. “I like hearing you say that.” His hand slips around to cradle my ass, tucking me against him. He flexes his hips, grazing my throbbing center with the rigid length of his cock. “Say it again.”

  “Oh...” My hands, planted on the counter to keep myself steady, come up to fist themselves in his T-shirt. My knees tighten against his hips, heels digging into his ass. “Yes.” I have no idea what I’m saying yes to, and I don’t care. All I know is I don’t want this to end. I need him to keep touching me.

  He groans against my neck, his hard cock rocking against the center seam of my jeans, grinding it against my pussy while he jerks the cup of my bra down, freeing my breast.

  “Jaxon...” I whimper his name softly, tipping my head back while his mouth works its way back to mine, his hips still working and flexing between my legs, each stroke of his cock pressing deeper. Pushing me closer. I can feel the pressure building. My core melting, the heat of it spreading like wildfire. I’m about to come. Just like this, with nothing but the promise of him between my legs and his mouth on my neck. I’d be embarrassed if I wasn’t so far gone. “Jaxon, I’m—”

  I hear a car door slam, followed by the chirp of a car alarm. Footsteps crunching across their gravel drive. The rhythm of his hips falters at the sounds.

  “Shit.” Jaxon lifts his head, eyes narrowing on my face before bouncing up to look at the clock above the sink. “She’s early.” The hand under my shirt fixes my bra, moving it back into place before slipping out to resettle on my hip.

  His mom.

  “Oh, god...” The thought is like a bucket of cold water dumped over my head, freezing me in place even as my face goes up in flames. She trusted me to watch Simon and here I am, practically fucking his older brother on her kitchen counter. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Stop,” he says, shaking his head. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He leans into me, even as I hear his mom’s footsteps on the front porch. “Neither of us did.” He kisses me on the mouth, a soft, lingering press of lips that instantly start to pull me under. “We’re both adults, remember?” He pulls back again, looking me right in the eye.

  For a second, I’m not sure which one of us he’s trying to convince. Finally, I nod my head. “Yes.”

  He makes a noise in the back of his throat, half groan, half growl, the hands on my hips tightening before pulling me off the counter and setting me on my feet. “You should leave.”

  “Now?” Usually, if I’m still here when his mom gets home, I stick around long enough to fill her in on Simon’s day.

  “Now. Before I stop caring about what she walks in on,” Jaxon says, turning me toward the back door, just as the rattle of keys signal the opening of the front.

  Before my sneakers hit the top step of the stoop, Jaxon snags me by my arm and stops me, turns me toward him. Pulls me against him. He kisses me, his mouth hitting mine with the force of a punch, his tongue sweeping in to tangle with mine, so hot and urgent that I moan, the hum of it buzzing against my lips.

  With a groan, he tears himself away from me. “Your dad’s out of town.”

  It’s another non-question question. I nod, my heart in my throat. I hear his mother in the foyer, dropping her keys into the basket. Going through the mail.

  He doesn’t say anything else, he just lets me go. He doesn’t ask if he can come over. He doesn’t say he’ll call or text.

  Seconds later, I’m sitting in my car, across the street, trying to get my keys in the ignition. My whole body is on fire. Throbbing. I look up and out the passenger-side window.

  Jaxon is standing on the back stoop, arms folded across his massive chest. He’s watching to make sure I get my car started. That I’m safe. Seeing him standing there, same as always, makes me wonder if I imagined it all.

  Six

  Jaxon

  2018

  Memories are funny things.

  Five years ago, if someone asked me what Claire St. James’ address was, I could’ve rattled it off in my sleep. Even now, I know it. I know it as well as I know my own name. I couldn’t forget it if I tried.

  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about her over the years. There were times when the memory of her face was the only thing that sustained me.

  Kept me together. Kept me sane.

  Even now, back in the world, I spend more nights than I should, remembering how she felt against me. Beneath me. Wrapped around me.

  I’ve been with women—before Claire and after—but none of them have been her. None of them have come close to even the memory of her. So, eventually, I stopped trying to replace her and just concentrated on trying to survive her.

  I’m not sure what that makes me. I know it’s not exactly healthy, the fact that I can’t seem to let her go—which is fucking sad considering I did this to myself. I
ruined it. I’m the one who took what she so innocently offered and then just walked away.

  When I think about showing up on her doorstep, I know exactly what I’d say. I’d tell her why I left. That leaving her was the last thing I wanted to do. Make her understand that I didn’t have a choice.

  Which brings me back to the memory thing and why they’re funny.

  Even though I know the address, Even though I’ve worked up the fantasy of hopping on my bike and coming for her, like something out of a goddamned fairytale—a thousand different times in a thousand different ways—I don’t recognize it for what it is until I’m popping open the driver's’ side door and stepping onto her driveway.

  That’s when it hits me.

  Claire St. James.

  I’m here. Standing in her driveway.

  And it feels like fate.

  I’ve been home for almost six months, and I’m three-months post-op. I’ve had plenty of time to make it happen. Make it right. But I haven’t. Always find a reason to wait. I pretend that it’s what’s best for Simon. That we need time. That he and I need to get used to the way things are now, not how we wish they still were.

  Truth is, I’m chickenshit.

  Pure and simple.

  Even though I’ve thought about making the drive, forcing the conversation—forcing her to listen to me—I never found the nerve because I was sure she would slam the door in my face. Possibly laugh in it. No way she waited for my sorry ass.

  That’s when I remember why I’m here.

  A bachelorette party.

  Jesus Christ, she’s getting married.

  You dumb, gutless motherfucker.

  You waited too long, and now you’ve lost her for good. And not just you—Simon. What about Simon?

  He loved her. Still talks about her. I know that the loss of her is something he blames me for. I can still see him at five-years-old, peering up at me through narrowed eyes, angry and not understanding the why of how things had to be. For him, it was simple.

  Why can’t we take her with us?

  When am I going to stop fucking things up?

  Someone is looking at me. Watching me from the second-floor window directly above my head. Has been for a while now. I can feel the trace of their gaze along my frame like it’s a real, tangible thing and my skin starts to prickle under the weight of it. I feel naked. Exposed.

  Stow your shit, Bennett. You’re standing in the driveway of an honest-to-god mansion, in a ritzy neighborhood—not some dirty, middle-eastern stan, waiting to get your head blown off.

  I allow myself to look up, aiming a hard stare at the person watching me from above. I can’t see who it is, but I know. The moment our eyes connect through the glass, I feel like someone’s hooked jumper cables to my earlobes. It’s her.

  Claire.

  As soon as I feel her, she’s gone, the connection broken as instantly as it’d taken root, leaving me with a feeling of a momentary free fall before I slam back into my body.

  That can only mean one thing.

  She recognized me and wasn’t happy to see me. Probably ran off to tell her dad or fiancé or whoever, that she doesn’t want me as a driver. Maybe even why.

  Can you say clusterfuck?

  Resuming my posture, I wait for someone to come out of the house and tell me there’s been a mistake. That my services won’t be needed after all. Possibly run me off his property for fucking his daughter and then disappearing into thin air.

  That’s fine.

  Clusterfuck or not, my mind is made up.

  Five years ago, I started something with Claire St. James, and it’s high fucking time I finish it. She can have her daddy send me away. Hell, she can get married if that’s what she wants to do, but I’m not going anywhere.

  No matter what or who comes out that door, I’m here.

  And this time, I’m not leaving.

  Seven

  Claire

  My entire life, I’ve been left behind.

  Our mother left us when Bri and I were eleven. I remember standing in the doorway of my parent's bedroom, dry-eyed, watching her move from closet to dresser, dresser to suitcase while Bri cried, begging her not to go between each hiccupping sob while our dad sat on the edge of the bed, his back turned toward us all while he stared out the window.

  Our mother never said a word. Never promised to come back. Never said she loved us. She just closed her suitcase and walked out the door.

  We never saw her again.

  While Bri went off after high school, attending Fashion school and snagging her dream job as assistant editor of a hot, new fashion magazine, I stayed here. Got my pharmacy tech license and took a job at the only pharmacy in town. I stayed, not because that’s what was expected or demanded of me but because everyone just assumed that’s what I wanted. When Bri loaded her suitcase into the back of the zippy little convertible Dad bought her for graduation, I watched her go, watched her leave me, with the same sort of detached acceptance I watched our mother walk away.

  “No My Fair Lady without me,” she whispered in my ear before pulling away from me to look me in the eye, searching my face for the pain she felt when our mother left. Like she’s been waiting years for some sort of sign that I’m finally feeling what she felt, watching her leave us. Not because she wants me to hurt. Because she wants to feel less alone in her loss. She wants me to feel, period.

  “Okay.” I remember smiling. Squeezing my hands around her arms before letting her go. Waving and blowing kisses as she started her car and drove away. I always expected the loss of her to hurt. But the truth is, it didn’t.

  Not even a little bit.

  I like to think it would’ve, if not for Jaxon.

  What happened between us.

  What he did to me.

  What I begged him to do to me.

  Waking up the morning after to find him gone confused me. The unanswered texts I sent him in the days that followed worried me. Chipped away at the paper-thin shell that held me together until I was covered in cracks, just waiting to break.

  I was supposed to sit for Simon on Friday. I’d wait. Talk to him then. There had to be a reasonable explanation for why he wasn’t answering me.

  Friday would come, and Jaxon would apologize. Explain. Even if it was something I didn’t want to hear, he’d give me a reason. I’d understand why he left without saying goodbye.

  But when I got to his house to sit for Simon, Jaxon wasn’t there. It was just his mother and Simon, watching cartoons in the living room.

  There were moving boxes everywhere.

  That’s when I knew. Understood.

  Jaxon was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.

  Simon and his mom were leaving too.

  I went numb after that.

  Been numb ever since.

  I’d been infatuated with Jaxon Bennett from the first moment I saw him. Over the years, watching him with Simon, the patient, thoughtful way he spoke to him. The way he read to him. Took care of him without complaint. The way he smiled at me like we shared some sort of secret, the silly infatuation I felt grew into something more. Something deeper.

  I can say I fell for Jaxon fast, or that what I felt wasn’t love at all. It was lust. Crazy, hormonal, hard-bitten lust. I could say that.

  But it would be a lie. The fact is, it took me years to fall in love with Jaxon Bennet but it only took a single night for that fall to break me.

  My mother left me behind.

  My sister left me behind.

  The boy I fell in love with left me behind.

  It’s strange that the loss of him, the one that should hardly matter, is the one that matters most.

  Eight

  Claire

  2012

  By the time I get home, Bri’s party has gone from just a few friends to totally insane. Like every high school party you’ve ever seen in a John Hughes film, insane. I have to park three blocks away and walk back. Even so, I’m not worried about the cops showing up. Our house is on
a huge lot, set back off the street and the neighborhood is patrolled by private security. The most that will happen is one of them will pull up in his golf cart and tell us to keep it inside.

  Besides, we’re all graduating seniors—most of us are eighteen. And the police chief’s son is doing kegstands in the kitchen. We’re practically untouchable.

  I push my way through the front door, weaving myself through the rowdy crush of people trying to find my sister. I get waylaid by her ex-boyfriend and his merry band of jockstraps, listening while he goes on and on about how even though he dated Bri, it was really me he was into the whole time. That’s about the time I start laughing and tell him he’s full of shit before walking away.

  I spot Bri in the living room, holding court on the couch. As usual, she’s in her element. Surrounded by admirers. Laughing and talking. Flirting and teasing. Not wanting to fight my way across the crowd, I tap out a quick text instead.

  Me: I’m home.

  It’s rare that I feel jealous of her, but I feel it now. Just a twinge. On its heels follows a wave of guilt. It’s not my sister’s fault she’s better than me in almost every way. Prettier. Smarter. More confident. More likable.

  It’s not her fault but sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes it just sucks.

  As soon as she gets my text, her head comes up and swivels, looking for me. She spots me, waving me over before pushing on the shoulder of the guy sitting beside her, telling him to move so I can sit next to her.

  I shake my head and she rolls her eyes. Just because she knows I don't like parties, doesn't mean she understands why.

  Bri: How was dinner?

  The question heats my cheeks. I want to tell her what happened. That Jaxon kissed me. More than kissed me. That he’s coming over. But I don’t. For all her eggplant emojis, Bri is protective of me. If she knew what happened, she’d kick everyone out, just so she can talk to me about it. And I don’t want to talk about it. I’m afraid if I say anything out loud, none of it will have been real.