Making love on her parents’ sofa after realizing I’ve fallen for my ex-girlfriend in what might be the dumbest move ever by Jackson Burke. I know better.
But my heart doesn’t.
I slow, my body giving in to my heart’s desires to treasure this moment and every long, intentional slide. To keep it on a shelf for when I wake up in the morning aching because she’s not next to me.
“Yes, yes…” Her eyes are on mine, her breaths escaping her lungs in truncated pants.
I cup her butt and tilt her hips, thrusting hard. She tosses her head back and lets out a shout of pure satisfaction. Blood roars through my body, igniting me as I give in to the surge of her shouts and the feel of her channel clenching tightly around me.
I come on a shout, aware of how small she is and careful not to rut her into the arm of the sofa. She doesn’t seem to mind, though, her hands inside my shirt, fingernails scratching my back in a hurts-so-good way.
The world goes black when I squeeze my eyes closed and ride out the orgasm. Not just any orgasm, though. No. A lovegasm. Those three words threaten to spill out of my mouth, but I stymie them by biting the muscle connecting her neck to her shoulder. I soothe her skin with a kiss next—anything to keep from blurting out the I-love-you bomb and making the best sex we’ve ever had also the most awkward.
My breathing slows, my heart rate returns to normal. Her fingers lift to my hair and spear into the strands. She kisses my cheek and then my jaw and then my throat, and I’m aware of wetness there. Not sweat. Not from her kisses.
Tears.
I pull back and watch her carefully, those big brown eyes taking me in as tears roll down her cheeks freely and her mouth fights an ugly-cry tilt.
Embedded deep, and not remotely recovered from the release I had, I have a stark, shocking realization.
I’m fairly certain that she loves me, too.
And if that’s the case, we’re both in big fucking trouble.
* * *
—
“There are dogs everywhere,” Allie is saying as she digs through her Szechwan chicken with a pair of chopsticks. She points to me with them to punctuate the seriousness of her point. “Everywhere. In Whole Foods, in restaurants. Churches, bars. A dog is L.A.’s must-have accessory.”
We’re on the couch we made love on, a comedy special on the television in the background, but the volume’s down too low for us to hear. She’s delighting me with the differences between L.A. and Columbus and they’re copious.
“And you haven’t bought yourself a little take-to-church-in-your-handbag dog yet?”
“Not yet. I have enough going on.” Her smile fades a little. “I miss the blue skies the most. You don’t have as many sunny days around here.”
That’s true. I looked it up once and Ohio has something like two thousand total hours of sunshine a year whereas Los Angeles is hovering around three thousand. In case you’re wondering why we’re sitting here talking about dogs and sunshine it’s due to a swift recover after the fumble following sex.
I asked if she was okay because that’s what you do when your girl is crying. She insisted she was “fine” and awkwardly wiped her tears. She didn’t offer an explanation as to why she cried but she didn’t have to. I wasn’t the only one who felt the earth move beneath us.
“This is better than Cooper’s.” She gestures at the paper container holding her Chinese food. I already wolfed mine down, so my hands are resting on her shins as she lounges, legs draped over my lap. She’s wearing my T-shirt and her feet are bare. Her red-painted toenails are sexy and cute at the same time.
“You think delivered Chinese food is better than five-star cuisine?” I cup her toes, which are chilly in the A/C, and warm them with my hands.
“I have five-star cuisine all the time.” She quirks her lips, affecting a bored expression. Then she grins and my heart lurches forward like a drunk on a New Orleans sidewalk. Damn.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
“What else besides blue skies and dogs in handbags is different?” I prompt, desperate to talk about anything but us.
“You make me feel like someone, Jax.”
Her comment is so baldly sincere, I have to collect my thoughts for a long moment. It gives her enough time to look slightly chagrined, like she’s aware that she shared too much. To her credit, she doesn’t take it back.
“I know that sounds weird,” she admits, “but it’s like I went all the way to Hollywood to be someone and now I feel like less than the someone I was before I left.” She scrunches her nose. “Does that make sense?”
“You didn’t have to leave to become someone, Mini. You were someone when you were here.” And so was I, I mentally add. And then she left and the someone I was had to become someone else. “You’re still someone.”
“I know. Just most days it feels…fake. I never wanted to be fake or false. Never wanted to prioritize the spotlight over the people in my life. I feel like I have.”
“That’s a balance you’re in charge of, sweetheart.” I smooth my hand over her leg.
She stabs the chopsticks into what’s left of her dinner and leans over to place the container on the coffee table. She can’t quite reach, so I do it for her.
“Whenever you feel yourself leaning one way,” I tell her, “just stop and lean in the other.”
“You make everything simple, Jax.”
“Thanks?” I laugh, tired. It’s been a long week.
“That was a compliment. In my head, everything is complicated. My problems have fangs and claws. Then I present them to you and you’re like…calm. All the time.”
“I’m not calm all the time.” I squeeze her foot. “You have no problem riling me up.”
She sucks in a breath and sighs, looking downright depressed.
“What?”
“It’s…going to be harder to leave this time than it was the first time.”
I watch her, silent. She didn’t say she wasn’t going to leave and she didn’t have to say that. I don’t expect her to toss away her career and stay in Ohio when her life is in L.A.
“You’re not gone yet.” I don’t want her to go. I don’t know what to do with that yet, but I guess there’s no rush, is there? Or maybe it’s the inevitability of it that makes me the Zen master she accused me of being.
“Do you feel like staying?” she asks. “Tonight?”
“I’m fresh out of clean clothes, Mini. I’ll head back home. But I’m not in a hurry. You want me to stay longer, I can.”
“I’ll take it.” She pulls in another breath. “When my parents come home this bubble’s going to burst.”
“Mini, the world knows about us. Your parents have to know about us unless they’ve been living under a rock.”
“That’s a good point. Sorry to drag you into this.”
“You’re famous. I knew that going in.”
“You knew a lot of things going in.” She pokes me in the ribs with her big toe. “And yet here you are.”
“Here I am.” Until she goes back to Cali and then where will either of us be? It’s not like me to be this melancholy.
A feisty twinkle lights her eyes and she bites her lip. “How about a dip in the pool tonight? No suits.”
Latching onto her ankles, I tug her roughly and wrap her legs around my waist as I wedge myself between them. She laughs, a soft sound tumbling around my chest and setting me on fire. I roll the hem of the T-shirt up and am rewarded with a flash of the undersides of her breasts. I kiss my way down her belly as her fingers twine in my hair and pull and push it this way and that.
I’m thrust back to the past—into her college dorm room where we were having a similar discussion about her going to California. When I had no idea we’d implode. When she’d assured me it was just for a summer. When we were trying to hurry up and have sex before
her roommate came back from the library to interrupt us.
As if I conjured a similar scenario, the front door opens and voices bounce off the tall ceilings at the entrance.
“Finally. My own bed,” Stephen announces.
“Keep it down. You’ll wake Allie,” Cheryl warns.
“Oh my God.” Allie’s eyes grow comically wide as she takes in our state with her in my T-shirt and not much else. Me in dress pants and nothing else. Without time to do much beyond throw a blanket over her practically nude bottom half, she straightens on the couch and arranges the too-hot-for-July blanket over both of us. It’s burning me up, so I throw it off my lap.
Allie rearranges her hair and grabs the remote, unmuting the show we weren’t really watching. The sound is a blast in the small space, and Cheryl jolts as she steps into the kitchen.
“Oh my heavens! You scared the life out of me!” She sets her purse on the built-in desk along the back wall.
“Hey, Als…” Her dad’s eyes meet mine in the glow of the television. He frowns as he takes in our state of undress, and hopefully he didn’t notice right away that my boxer briefs are under the coffee table with my shoes and socks. “Hey. Jax.”
“Hi, Stephen.” I bite back a laugh mostly because this is funny. If I was still seventeen, it wouldn’t be. Conversely, Allie scrambles to fill the air like she still is seventeen.
She’s blathering about how she didn’t expect them so soon and how we were about to change and go swimming when we were distracted by the “great special” she found on TV.
Cheryl’s eyebrows pinch along with her mouth. She hasn’t enjoyed catching her only child in postcoital bliss, but she’s not buying Allie’s bullshit, either.
“Okay, enough of that,” I interrupt. Allie gawps at me. I scoop up my discarded clothes and shoes and offer a hand. “Let’s go upstairs and make ourselves decent so we don’t traumatize your parents further. Apologies for the weirdness, guys.” I smile as Allie stands with me. She swipes her dress and heels from the floor, holding the blanket around her like a sarong.
“Your room’s one hundred percent ready, so you should sleep well tonight.” I pat Stephen on the shoulder as I pass by. “Hope you guys had a great time.”
“We did, Jackson, thank you,” Cheryl calls as I follow Allie to the stairs.
She’s already run to the top of them and is looking down at me, her expression a combination of peeved and mortified.
I can’t help chuckling as I stride upstairs to her room and close the door, musing that she’s never been more right than the day she said we weren’t who we used to be. We’re something new, I remind myself when I scoop her into my arms. She resists for a second, telling me “it’s not funny” in as stern of an expression as she can manage while also trying not to smile. I persist, hugging her close and nuzzling her nose with mine. She melts into me.
“Jackson Burke.” She shakes her head, but there’s no fire in it. “What am I going to do with you?”
A jumble of answers crowd my mouth, bumping into each other like a multiple-car pileup on the freeway. I can’t choose one, so to be aloof and cool I say, “Whatever you like.”
By the way, “aloof” and “cool” are what guys default to when they’re scared out of their mind. Just so you know.
Chapter 25
“What are you doing here?”
Allison’s eyes are wide and on me for one reason: I just screeched to a stop and parked crookedly in her parents’ driveway. The second I saw Xavier McCormack—bent over her, head tilted for a kiss—a spike of jealousy fueled my reaction. Which is why the truck’s engine is still idling, and the driver’s-side door is hanging open.
“What am I doing here?” I demand of Allie, but I’m stalking to Xavier, my fists balled.
“We broke up last night, Jax. You were clear about that.” She clutches Xavier tighter as my vision goes red with rage.
I have no idea what she’s talking about. Last night I got dressed in her bedroom, kissed her good night, and left. I also left my cellphone here, which is probably under the coffee table where it fell out of my pocket.
“What the hell are you—” I cut myself off when I catch the slight widening of Allie’s eyes paired with the subtle lift of her brow. That’s when I blink and snap my gaze from her to Xavier to the guy with a very large camera perched on his shoulder filming this entire thing.
Shit. Shit.
I don’t know if he’s a paparazzo or a cameraman from a reality TV series or a guy Xavier hired who wanted to make a quick hundred bucks. I don’t know anything.
I blink again, correcting that thought. I know one thing. I’m in love with Allison Murphy and she’s clinging to Xavier McCormack. I assume she’s putting on a show for the camera guy and whoever nabs this footage and broadcasts it for anyone who cares. Most likely Allie’s future employers, who will be watching to see if she’s still marketable. So they can decide whether or not she’s worth paying as much or more than the douchebag who’s smirking at me.
“I’ve forgiven her for her indiscretion,” Xavier tells me, the smug asshole.
“You two were over when we started.” My teeth are bared, my spine rigid. I would love nothing more than to pummel the life out of this jerk, but Allie stops me. Not with her words but with a barely there head shake that the camera guy misses since he’s aiming the lens at me.
“Jackson. What are you doing here?” Allie dips her chin like she’s trying to remind me of my line.
Oh. She wants me to play along. Well, fuck that. I don’t want to play along. I want to beat the life out of Mr. Oscar-napper for the world to see.
But that wouldn’t be for Allie—that would be for me.
Without much of a choice, I mutter, “I forgot my phone.”
Relief shows in the relaxing of her shoulders before she crosses her arms and addresses me with a terse expression preceding an award-winning performance. “You should have thought about that when you left me high and dry. I thought we were starting over.”
“I thought you were over this guy.” I gesture to Xavier. Unable to help myself, I add, “I thought you said he was a tiny-dicked nobody who couldn’t act for shit.”
“She’d never say that,” Xavier says, but there’s a question in his voice.
“I wouldn’t.” Allie slides her hands over his chest and pegs me with a look that might be pity. She’s so damn good this is beginning to feel real. But it’s not, I remind myself.
“Go home, Jax,” she tells me. “You broke me last night and I’m not in a forgiving mood.”
“Is he here to white-knight you back to L.A.?”
“I was always going back to L.A.”
And there it is. The truth buried in the lies we’re standing here spouting for the public eye. Fact: she was always going back to L.A. I shove my hands in my pockets and stare her down, trying to decide what comes next and realizing it doesn’t matter. I climb in my truck and briefly consider running Xavier over. Tempting. Very tempting.
Instead, I dare myself to do something else brave and un-take-back-able.
“I love you, Mini.”
“She doesn’t want you,” Xavier blurts out, ruining the moment. Allie’s face is a mask of shock for a beat before she recovers with an expression that’s more controlled. Slipping into anger as seamlessly as an eye blink, she says, “I used to love you.”
On that note, I back out of the driveway and squeal my tires as I zoom from her neighborhood.
It’s for show. All of it.
She didn’t mean what she said.
She didn’t know I meant what I said.
I did it for her.
My mantras aren’t helping as I replay what she said over and over and over again. I used to love you.
That feels true.
Way too fucking true.
*
* *
—
“Get your hands off me.” I shove Xavier’s chest once the camera shuts off and stomp toward the house.
“Where are you going?” he asks quietly, since my neighbors are standing on their driveways and peeking out the windows, happily watching the show.
“I’m going to call Jax,” I hiss at him from the front door. I walk in. Xavier follows.
“Oh. M-My gosh. Oh my…Xavier. McCormack. In my house.” That’s my mom, stuttering and stumbling over herself as the cup of coffee she’s carrying wobbles. She’s dressed in jeans and a button-down blouse, and a classy pair of flats. I’m glad I won’t have to hear stories for years about the time she met Xavier McCormack and she looked a fright. That’s the only gratitude I can extend for her behavior. It’d be nice if she wasn’t starstruck over this jerk.
“You must be Mrs. Lockhart,” he says with an easy smile.
“Murphy,” my father corrects as he walks from the kitchen, chest puffed. “You know that Lockhart is my daughter’s stage name, right?”
“Of course. Right.” Xavier’s smile doesn’t budge.
“Could you give us a minute?” I ask my parents through clenched teeth.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” my mom tells me. Then to Xavier, “Can I offer you a coffee or tea?”
“If you have a green juice of some kind—”
“He’s fine.” I slice him with a glare. “Please. A few minutes,” I say to my parents.
“We’ll be on the patio if you need us.” My father burns Xavier with a glare of his own and palms my mother’s back as they leave the room. I can hear her say something to the effect of “Xavier McCormack in my own house!” under her breath, which only fuels Xavier’s ego and my temper.
“Nicely done out there,” he praises.
“Shut up. I have to call Jax and explain…” Except I can’t. Because his phone is on the kitchen counter where my mom put it after she vacuumed this morning.
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