Inside of You (Jessa & Paxton #2)

by Haven Francis

  “I don’t know,” he says, pausing to think about it. “Maybe I’m better at seeing the difference between good and bad. Maybe because I know the epitome of not being loved so I can appreciate the way I feel when I have your love. Maybe because I know how horrific people can be – how horrific I can be – and I don’t want to be that way. And with you, I’m not. With you I can be good. You are the only one who can take all my pain and anger and bitterness away and make me good.” He pauses to look at me and I manage to smile at him but it’s an effort. I am such a winey dramatic idiot. There is no reason for me to be keeping him at bay. But I’m not gonna lie to him and tell him I’m over my drama… because I’m not.

  He reaches for my hand and I give it to him. He looks at me for a moment before telling me, “That first time I kissed you it woke something up in me. I knew in that instant that you belonged to me and it terrified me. I spent that whole year trying to get that feeling to go away because the thought that you and I were supposed to be attached, meant to be together, was more than I could accept. Any time I believed or was told that someone belonged to me it only led to heartbreak. Even with Gabriel. He loved me and I loved him but he was still taken from me. And from that kiss alone I knew you fell into that category – someone I was supposed to love and someone who was supposed to love me back. I knew that first time I kissed you that you were not someone I could lose. So maybe that’s part of it too. I’ve already spent a year coming to terms with the way I feel about you. You’re just starting to see what I have already accepted – that our only happiness, our only purpose, is each other. And yeah, it’s scary as hell to know that, with you, I can have everything and, without you, I have nothing. But it’s a risk I’m willing to take. And it’s also why I will never give up on you. You are, literally, my eyeverything.”

  I turn my eyes away from Paxton because tears are falling out of them and if I look at him right now I will lose it completely. I love him so much. I believe every word he is saying to me. And yet, something inside of me is still telling me that he is too good to be true. That this perfect man can never really be mine. What the fuck is wrong with me? He deserves any kind of happiness he can find, and if the thing that’s going to make him happy is me, then I should be capable of giving him all of me. I was capable of giving him all of me. That’s how we were living when we were in Chicago, wasn’t it? “Were you happy with me before I left you? I mean, did you feel like I was giving you everything you wanted?”

  “Yeah, I did. I thought I had all of you and it was more than I needed. It was all I needed. But I was wrong. There was still a part of you that hadn’t let go. That you hadn’t released. That you didn’t trust me with.”

  “If I can never let go, if I can never give you everything, will you still want me?”

  “I don’t know how to explain this to you so that you’ll understand me, Jessa. It never seems to sink in with you. If all I get is the friend that I had in River Bluff- I’ll take it. If I have to spend the rest of my life chasing you around, trying to convince you that I love you – I’ll do it. If I have to fight for you every day – I will. I have found the only thing in this life that is worth living for and I’m never giving it up. You are the only thing I will ever want. All you have to do is believe me. All you have to do is trust that I will always take care of you and that I will never fall out of love with you.”

  I want to tell him that I can do that – that I will do that. But those words that he’s telling me – that he will never fall out of love with me – are words that I will never be able to trust. He can’t promise me that. No one can make a promise like that. Everyone falls out of love. Trusting those words is not the solution to my problem. Always is not a word that I can believe in. “I don’t want to think about the future. I just want to be able to love you now.”

  “Then do that.”

  “I can’t. I can’t not worry about a future without you.”

  Paxton lets out a long breath and I know he’s frustrated with me because I’m frustrated with myself. “Maybe tomorrow, beso,” he says quietly. “Maybe you’ll figure out how to love me tomorrow.”

  “I do love you,” I say quietly, to myself, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I don’t have the right to say it to him.

  Chapter 19 - Paxton

  I feel like a different person today. Like a nomad. A man without a home or direction. The entire existence of my life is under the roof of my car. It’s both freeing and terrifying. All the answers to my one problem are under this roof. But if I don’t manage to uncover that answer by the time this little road trip is over than my entire existence may be lost.

  The only real issue I’m aware of in Jessa’s life is the fact that her dad left her, and her mom did a one eighty after he was gone. I get that it messed with her head, but I think there is something else going on inside of her that she’s not telling me, that maybe she can’t even see. I don’t know what it is, but if I can’t figure it out I think Jessa will eventually find a way to sabotage us.

  In fact, I’m kind of thinking that all that shit with Stella was just part of this other unidentifiable situation. I mean, her stepping back into my life like she did and those fucking pictures were definitely cause for a ripple in our relationship, but I think Jessa will find ways to convince herself that I don’t love her, that I don’t need her, no matter what. If it ain’t Stella it’s just gonna be some other bullshit.

  We’re in Rapid City, fueling up. Jessa’s sitting on the hood of the car looking at a map that was stuffed in my glove box when I bought the car. She’s in her sweats and t-shirt that she slept in because when I asked her to keep herself covered for the sake of our ‘friendship’ she was listening. She probably thinks that her in her sweatpants doesn’t turn me on, but it does. But I’m more than cool with the hands off approach we’re taking. Waking up with her in my arms for the first time in what seems like forever was more than enough. My head knows it’s what we need right now and my body is willing to rest until it can have her back.

  I put the nozzle back on the hook and go join her. “Where do you want to go?” I ask, slinging my arm around her shoulder, looking down at the map. The interstate we’ve been driving ends in Rapid City and we have to make a decision to go north or south.

  “How many days until you have to get back to Chicago?” she asks me.

  “I already told you, kid, I don’t have to get back. We can drive forever.”

  “Seriously, Paxton. We have to go back eventually. We’re gonna run out of money and your band is in Chicago.”

  “Seriously, beso, I don’t give a shit about the band and I have enough money to get by on for a while. Where do you want to go?”

  She stares at me for a minute, her eyebrows pulled together like she can’t take me seriously. Like I’m not really willing to drop out of my life for her, but I am. She should know this. Why doesn’t she know this? I’m about to ask her when she says, “I think we should go south. Depending on how long you can keep driving me around for….” She pauses, not saying what she wants to say. “I thought we could head down to Denver… and then maybe to Venice.”

  “Really?” I ask, instantly conflicted about the fact that she wants to go to my home town. This is just supposed to be me and her.

  “I mean, you’ll probably have to head home to Chicago before we make it that far, and I don’t know if you want your family to meet me, but if we could I would really like to meet the Paxton that lives in Venice.” She finally looks up at me with a timid smile on her face.

  I grab a hold of her face and lean into her. “I don’t have to go back to Chicago. Ever.” I pause, hoping she’ll finally understand this. “And we can go wherever you want to.”

  She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me down to her, kissing me lightly on my mouth. “Thank you,” she whispers.

  I release her and she hops off the hood, map in hand, before jumping back in the car. I take a deep breath and then get in myself. I pull out of the gas station and Jess
a flips the stereo on. “I can’t believe you, of all people, don’t have a kick ass system in your car,” she says frustrated by the fact that all I got is a stereo and all the stereo wants to play is country music.

  “This car’s perfect the way it is. I’m not about to fuck that up.”

  She comes across a station playing Burning Ring of Fire so she stops and turns to me with a wicked grin before turning up the volume and settling into her seat. She’s thinking about that night when I first came home and Vi drug us to the country bar and me and the guys sang karaoke. This was the song we sang and after it was done I brought her out to the parking lot, laid her down in my backset and tasted her for the first time. I reach down and adjust my dick that is instantly hard at the memory.

  “Do you want me to change the station,” she asks, her eyes on my hard on.

  “Changing the station isn’t going to get the taste of you out of my mouth,” I tell her.

  She lets out a heavy breath and squirms in her seat. “Why are we doing this again… keeping our hands off each other?”

  “So you can breathe,” I remind her.

  “I can’t breathe, Pax. Everything inside of me is tense and shaking. Everything inside of me wants out. I can’t breathe.”

  I remind myself that she needs space. That she needs to think without our physical needs getting in the way. That I promised her I would be the strong one. “It will pass, just give it a minute,” I force the words out through my teeth.

  “Okay,” she tells me through a long breath.

  I open my arm and she slides into my side. “This is stupid. I’m being stupid. I don’t want you hurting,” she tells me, tentatively running her fingers over my hard on.

  “There’s only one way you can take my pain away and it’s not with your hand.”

  Jessa sighs and tries to move out of my arm, but I keep her close to me, “I’m trying,” she says with a hint of defeat in her voice.

  “I know you are, beso. We got all the time in the world. Don’t worry about it. Just breathe.”

  “If you want me, Pax, I’m yours. I’m being selfish and stupid and it’s not right. I’m willing to live with my fears and just be with you how I was. I shouldn’t have ever put you through this. I’m sorry.”

  Her words should make me happy, but they don’t. “I want more for you than that, beso. I’m no longer okay with you living in fear. I mean… thank you. I’ll obviously take whatever you’re offering me, but I want more now. I want us to be able to take that fear out of you. I don’t want you worried. I want you to be as happy as anyone can be.”

  “So we’ll keep driving until we figure it out.”

  “Yep.”

  “Thank you, Pax,” she tells me through a breath of relief.

  #

  The sky is starting to become dark again. We’ve been on the road for nine hours but we haven’t put a huge dent in our travels. We keep stopping at every road side attraction and even hiked around some lake in Wyoming for an hour.

  Talking about Jessa and her issues has come to a halt and we have spent the day having fun. As friends. And it feels good. I’m completely relaxed as night time approaches and we cross the border into Colorado. I think we are both breathing just fine.

  “So what am I gonna find out about you when we get to Venice?” Jessa asks from her spot tucked under my arm.

  “Find out about me? Shit, I don’t know, I guess whatever my family feels like telling you.”

  “Vi thinks that you have a secret life, like you’re probably a professional surfer or skateboarder.”

  I laugh at that. “I probably could have been if I really lived there. I can definitely teach you a thing or two about skating.”

  “I already know how to skate. I want to learn how to surf.”

  I look at her, waiting for her to start laughing, but she doesn’t. “You know how to skate?”

  “You sound like you’re shocked.”

  “Well yeah. Kind of. What does that mean… you know how to push yourself around on a board? Because I hate to tell you, kid, that’s not really skating.”

  Her response is an eye roll.

  “I mean I’ve seen the pictures of you at the parents’ house – on the softball, soccer and basketball teams- so I know what you look like dressed up as a boy, but I can’t picture you on a board.”

  “As you know very well, Paxton – people change.”

  “Tell me about jock Jessa,” I say, curiously.

  She stares at me for a while, like she’s not sure if she’s gonna tell me, or like she can’t remember. “She was kick ass,” she says with a shrug of her shoulders and a hint of a smile on her lips.

  I slouch further into my seat, getting comfortable, nodding for her to go on.

  “It’s really not that fascinating, Pax. Sports were just what I did,” she tells me like that’s the end of the story.

  “Like you were a jock? That’s who you were. Or it was just something your parents made you do?” I prod.

  She shrugs her shoulders but then says, “Like…they were my whole life. If I wasn’t in school I was in a gym or at the park or in the neighborhood playing whatever sport I could with whoever I could find to play them with. Or I was practicing my jump shot and three pointer in the driveway or dribbling my soccer ball. Or trying to nail an Ollie on my board.”

  I can’t picture her like that. Beautiful, girlie, fashion-obsessed Jessa caring about sports at all. “Did you… nail your Ollie?”

  “Yeah, Pax. In one day. It took me a whole month to get the kick flip down though. My shins were a mess that whole summer.”

  “The kick flip, huh? What else?” I ask, trying to picture it. I can’t.

  “I don’t know, I got most of the basics down… heel flip, pop shuvits, indi grab, nose stall…. I could grind the curb like no one’s business but, you know, River Bluff is not the mecca of skate boarding so there were no skate parks… I didn’t have anything vertical to work with, not even a crappy homemade ramp. So unless it was a trick I could do on the street, I was pretty much never gonna learn it.”

  “No shit.” I shake my head and smile at her words. She’s serious. “That’s a fucking trip, beso. I can’t see that…you on a board. Or shooting a three pointer.”

  “Yeah, well, I was a different person then.”

  “When did you quit it all?”

  “I gave up organized sports when I was twelve, all of them but basketball… I never really quit practicing in my driveway and I started playing again competitively my freshman year of high school. I started skateboarding when I was twelve because I had to do something with myself, but I quit that when I was fifteen too,” she tells me while chewing on her cuticle.

  “So you just stopped – all of it.”

  “Yep,” she tells me and I can tell she’s uncomfortable.

  “How come?” She shifts out of my arm and I let her. She turns her focus to the darkness outside her window. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Based on the time frame, I’m guessing it has a lot to do with her dad.

  “Sports required parental involvement and I didn’t want to be anywhere in public with my mom… or have to show up there without my dad.”

  Jessa never talks about her dad except when she’s ranting about women who get hurt by men. She never talks about being his daughter and it’s clear she doesn’t want to do it now, but I’m gonna push it anyway. “Was he one of those dads who never missed a practice and was the obnoxious sideline guy?”

  “I don’t know,” she mutters.

  “Come on, Jess. Just tell me. It’s not gonna kill you to talk about it. I want to know.”

  “Yeah, Pax. He never missed any of my practices and yes, he shouted through all of the games because he coached all of my teams. Sports were something I did with my dad. It was what we did together.”

  “So you were close to him?”

  “Obviously.”

  “So why’d you keep playing basketball after he left?”

  �
��I don’t know. It was the sport I was best at and I missed it. Once high school hits your dad doesn’t get to be your coach and my mom didn’t have to be involved either. I just stayed after school and took the activities bus home.”

  “Why didn’t you want your mom involved?”

  “You know why, Pax.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  She takes a deep breath. She’s trying for me… talking about shit she don’t want to talk about. “I didn’t want her involved because I was embarrassed. I had been the girl that everyone wanted to be. I had the perfect parents: the dad that my friends looked up to and adored, a beautiful mom who was always on the sidelines with a cooler of water and boxes of granola bars. We were the perfect little family. I didn’t want to show up without him and with my mom who had aged twenty years overnight, who had no life in her, who would shout out random things or break down crying for no apparent reason.”

  For the first time ever I can see Jessa pre-divorce. I can understand why it affected her so much beyond the fact that he left her mom for another woman. It sounds like she was close to him. Like it was the two of them and when he left he took everything important from her. I reach over and wrap my fingers around her leg but I don’t know what to say.

  “I don’t need your sympathy, Paxton. I don’t need to be comforted right now,” she tells me with a laugh like I’m over reacting.

  “So none of this shit upsets you?”

  “No, Paxton, not anymore. It was years ago. I don’t even remember that girl.”

  “Bullshit,” I mutter.

  She laughs at me. “Honestly, Paxton - it’s the truth. I’m not pining for my days spent on parquet courts. I promise you.”