by Paula Cox
Mitch lifted his fist, but Jax blocked the blow and kept pummeling his chest. He could hear the room and the club starting to close around him when Eric ordered the boys back. Seeing his chance, with no barriers blocking his way, Jax kept throttling him, when Mitch took hold of his hand.
“She ain’t worth it, kid! Don’t you like fucking see that now?”
Jax brushed him off and brought his fist to his jaw. Mitch moaned as he fell of the pool table.
“Leave it, Jax,” Artie said as he tried to take him by the arm. “Maybe…maybe another beer?”
“Not yet!”
Picking up a cue, Jax twirled it over his head and started to crush the end into his sides. He felt nothing but a cold kind of satisfaction as Mitch groaned at the force of each impact and tried to scramble away. Jax allowed him the idea that he was on the verge of escape, but as soon as Mitch managed to move a few inches through discarded peanut shells, Jax forgot that this was a kind of brother and moved to strike again. Lena’s smile, the one he couldn’t help but remember, even though he tried to force the image from his mind, flashed before his eyes. Maybe something in her had shifted, but she still deserved better than a forced fucking when she was still unspoiled and so sweet. Did she have someone else? Someone far away from home? Jax choked on the idea, but even if he were out of the running, there was still no way in hell he would hand her over to the likes of Mitch.
“You will not touch her!” Jax screamed. “She’s not for you!”
Bringing the pool cue down again and again, Jax felt Mitch squirming underneath him, and he resumed bashing his head in, wanting nothing more than to kill any man that looked at Lena sideways. Let her push him back with both hands; he would still fight for her and he was ready to land the fatal blow when a soft, familiar voice hit his ears.
Chapter Seven
Lena knew the spot. This was where adults had pointed as they smirked through their eyes. It was the place that the likes of Sawyer and Ric thought of as nothing more than a joke. Sometimes she had asked Jax to bring her around. She told him he had nothing to be ashamed of. After all, he had seen her home, such as it was. But Jax always said that it wasn’t the same thing.
And now, even as she clutched her purse close to her thigh, Lena couldn’t help but think he was right. The place reeked of all kinds of smoke, and she felt what seemed like a million eyes leering at her breasts, even though she had taken care to wrap a sweater around her shoulders and cinch it shut. She took some comfort at the sight of Mitch writhing about the pool table in the throes of pain. To hear her uncle tell it, he was where she should focus her rage. And then there was Jax, the weapon in his hand, his lip appearing to quiver as their eyes locked. Wanting to touch him again, she started forward when Eric Stiles blocked her path with a smirk.
“Well look who’s here,” he started. “Home from school or something?”
Lena froze, unable to voice the answer to his question. Wanting nothing more than to just get out with some stretch of her pride intact, Lena reached into her bag, and she pressed a loosely bound brown envelope into his arms.
“Forget forty-eight hours,” she started. “Here’s your vig.”
Eric lifted his eyebrow and peeled open envelope. Lena watch him finger the bills in the pouch, and she held her breath as his eyes were blank, and when he finally finished his count, Eric whistled and slammed the envelope to Artie’s chest.
“All here,” Eric started. “Now how the fuck did you manage that?”
Lena held her ground and stared into Eric’s eyes as she pressed her hands to her hips.
“It’s enough, right?” she said. “What more do you want?”
Jax was up and on his toes as he pushed between them. Seeing the money that had somehow come to pass, he spoke up. “It…what does it matter?” Jax asked. “It pays the debt, right?”
“And then some,” Eric answered.
Jax nodded, seemingly just wanting her to get out. Lena should never have come here; she shouldn’t be here now. But if she had made good on her uncle’s obligation, then there was no need for her to stick around.
“You done good.”
Lena cringed at the feel of Eric’s fingers on her chin, and she lowered her eyes as she saw Jax watching the scene unfold with baited breath.
“You keep in check, baby,” Eric said. “Of course…if you can’t…” Eric nuzzled her cheek, and as she started closer to his side, he smiled. “Always other ways,” he said. “You know what I mean.” He kissed her hair and took off to join the party with pile of money in his hand. Eric promised more booze and several pizzas.
Loathing that fact that this was the product of her sacrifice, Lena started to back way with no attention but to do anything but to walk back the same way that she had come. But Jax was suddenly right there...
“Something you want?” she asked as she struggled to avoid his eyes. Jax started to speak when the screams and the catcalls from across the room caused him to push past her, his hand balled into a fist
“Think the little slut asked you a question!” Mitch teased as he iced his cheek with a cold bottle of beer. “Course, if you ain’t up to showing her what you really need---”
Jax started to charge forward again when Lena suddenly grabbed his arm and tugged him away from the clubhouse.
“Lena, what are you---?”
“Just cool it,” she hissed. “Haven’t you already made enough of a scene?”
Jax came with her willingly, even as the laughter continued to ring behind them. The tension in his body made the simple act of getting him away from the club a monumental errand, and Lena wondered if she should just release and break into a run. She had done what she’d set out to do, so what was the point of leading him on? Or believing that his words might make any kind of a difference?
“Lena?”
The sound of his voice stopped Lena in her tracks, and she realized that they were in the fresh air at the precipice of an alley strewn with garbage. The sight and stench matched the way that she felt, and she started to keep moving, her fingers leaving his body, when Jax curled his arm around her waist, giving her no choice but to look up into his stark green eyes.
“How…how did you come up with the cash?” he muttered, his brow furrowing as he spoke.
“What difference does that make?” Lena challenged. “A payment is a payment. Aren’t you proud to see how well your tactics worked?”
Jax gritted is teeth, and Lena took note of the slight quiver in his lip as he hung his head. Despite the rage bubbling in her soul, she couldn’t help but mourn the loss of his eyes. Time was when she thought of living in those emerald pools without ever needing to come up for air. Knowing it was wrong, knowing that she should pull away from him and run while she still had a chance, Lena still could not resist the urge to bring her fingers to his chin, and she tilted his face towards hers.
“Lena…”
His lips were near enough to kiss, and he started to lean closer when Lena’s voice, flat and calm, tripped off her tongue. “Guess this is how you handle all your problems now,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Lena glanced down at his knuckles, bruised and bloodied, and Jax started to hide his hands in his pocket when she caught hold of his wrist, her eyes narrowing on the broken, swelling flesh.
“Why mince words when you can just pound your point home?”
Jax’s face started to fall, and she watched his lips curl into what had to be an apology, a lie that she had no thought of feeding into. But his fist came back to life. Pushing her away, he slammed his fingers into the nearby brick wall and smirked. “Time was when you had no problem with it,” he said. “Guess it’s okay as long as it’s for your own good, right?”
Lena blushed under the weight of his words and choked down a guilty breath. If she were being honest, there was something exhilarating in the idea that he would slay any dragons that dared to cross her path. And she knew who he was, what he was, from the moment that t
hey first met.
“But you always swore you would never hurt me,” she said.
“And have I?” Jax asked. “When have I ever let anything happen to you?”
“You think roughing up my uncle doesn’t hurt me?” she spat. “He’s good for any losses. You know that. So would you hurt him?”
“Why do you even care?” he cried as he grabbed her shoulders and pressed her body against the wall. “Who hasn’t been around in god knows how long? Who didn’t even say goodbye?”
She always knew it had to have hurt him; while Lena’s classmates went through the motions of freshman orientation, attended mixers, and signed up for anything and everything that screamed fun, she spent the better part of her first month on campus forcing a smile by day as she cried herself to sleep at night, the sound of his voice and the image of his face always the last things crossing her brain before she finally drifted off to dreams where things could have been so different. He was always near enough to touch, but before she could reach him, the dream came to a sudden stop, and Lena woke in a lonely bed, left to wonder where he was and how he was. Sometimes she longed for him to find forgetfulness with someone else; other times that thought made her sick.
“Yeah. Maybe I should have called.”
“Maybe?” he said. “Maybe I should have left you to fend for yourself. Maybe you wanted those assholes to have their way with you.”
Lena’s heart shattered in two, and she suddenly thought him a stranger. Worse – someone she never had any desire to know, let alone love. Flattening her palm, she slapped his face hard. Jax recoiled under the force of her blow, and he tried to grab her again when she repeated the assault and watched him turn away. As he buried his head in the brick, his eyes hidden from her view as his back tensed, Lena stretched towards his side, and her lips met his ear.
“And you wonder why I didn’t say goodbye?” she asked. “Because you’re just like him. Eric Stiles’ boy through and through.”
He peered up at her with a wounded look, but Lena shook any pity off and started to turn on her heel, when his voice peeled through the air. “Why even come back, then?” he asked.
Lena kept her eyes on the way out as she swallowed hard and struggled to speak. “I don’t even know anymore, Jax.” She faced him again. In the right light, he was still the brave boy, the one she craved with every breath in her body. But as soon as a cloud passing over the moon concealed him in shadows, Lena realized that any idea of him as something or someone sweet was little more than the dreams that ended too fast. Would the dreams leave her now? Or would they stay in her heart, destined to torment her for all time. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Should have done this a long time ago.” Steeling her strength, Lena dared to step back to his side. She thought she saw his face start to soften, but she refused to acknowledge any show of sweetness as her jaw tensed and her tongue untied. “Goodbye, Jax.”
Chapter Eight
She’d been up all night. Staring up into the shadows crossing the ceiling, the branches just beyond the house forming gray swirls over her eyes doing nothing to lull her into anything close to a dream. Without the sounds of her roommate clicking away at her computer or loud feet stomping up and down the dormitory halls, she felt like she was going crazy. At least the sound of Sully snoring was some source of comfort, and when dawn finally started to break, she showered quickly and waited for her uncle to rise. Another series of endless hours passed until he stirred.
Lena stood at the stove and sloshed a pat of butter into a frying pan. So much for the idea that an olive oil based cooking spray would be better for her uncle’s cholesterol. But she had to work with the tools at hand.
As the butter softened into a milky yellow puddle, Lena snatched a few eggs from the fridge along with a small loaf of bread. Placing two slices into the toaster, she proceeded to separate the yolks from the whites. It was a small step, and one that Sully was sure to rail against when he emerged from his bedroom, but she hadn’t compromised her chances of making a clean break from Deerfield only to have him die on her another way.
The sound of a motorcycle peeling down the street distracted her from the task at hand, and she instinctively glanced out the window, expecting to see Jax despite the fact that she gave him her final word. A small part of her almost hoped he was racing to meet her, unwilling to let her go down without some kind of a fight. Would she resist? Was it wise to allow him the chance to offer an explanation that was bound to make no difference? But just the thought of seeing him made her warm inside and set her hands trembling. Lena stretched to the tips of her toes and narrowed her eyes through the glass.
A chopper all right. But no sign of Jax. Just a weekend warrior playing at being everything Jax was. The leather jacket gracing the man’s back was too sharp and shiny to suggest any kind of danger. And that’s what Jax was. She had to keep reminding herself of that. The corners of her mouth fell into a frown. I have to keep my distance. But how the hell I supposed to do that?
“You’re up early!”
Sully’s voice distracted Lena from her thoughts. The man was sprouting a fresh patch of stubble as he smiled at her through bleary eyes.
“It’s almost eleven o’clock,” Lena said as she pointed at the clock.
Sully blushed as he shuffled his feet. “Suppose you want to lay into me for being a slacker,” he said.
Lena was tempted, anything to try to whip him into shape, but the fight was all but knocked out of her, and she simply shook her head as she gestured for him to take a seat at the table.
“Coffee?” she asked, filling the carafe with water and spooning the grounds into the filter before she received a response one way or the other.
“Got any Bailey’s to go with that?” Lena rolled her eyes as Sully smirked and tossed his hands in the air. “Joke,” he said. “Just trying to see if you’re paying attention.”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Take a look at the stove, why don’t you.”
Looking at the pan, Lena gasped as the sight of her attempt at something nutritious starting to pop and bubble. Turning down the heat, Lena worked her spatula around the frying egg whites, salvaging the meal as the aroma of coffee wafted all around her.
“Here you go,” Lena said as she presented him with a fresh cup. Sully sipped slowly as the toast came to attention, golden brown and as she arranged the food on the plate, Lena handed him his breakfast only to be met by a confused stare.
“It’s better for you without the yolks,” she started. “You really need to---”
“Ain’t that,” Sully admitted. “Where’s your own helping?”
“I’m not really hungry,” she said as she sat wearily at his side and smoothed her hands across her face.
“Still think you try,” Sully suggested at he tried to offer her a piece of toast. “Got to keep your strength up for your studies or---” He stopped himself before finishing the thought, and Lena saw her frustrated stare reflected in his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “Guess you’ll be hanging around here for a little while longer.”
“The money had to come from somewhere,” she confessed sadly. But with her account drained for the moment, why bother to go back? Even with her tuition taken care of, she had nothing left for books, no way to contemplate a meal even though she felt certain her appetite would never return.
“Looks like,” Lena admitted. “But you know I would do it again, right?” Laying her hand over Sully’s, she could still see the shame in his stance. “It’s what family does. You’d do the same thing for me.”
Sully nodded slowly before releasing a great sigh. “Fact is, though, you’re one thing I don’t have to worry about,” he said. “Especially when you had that boy in your corner.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Lena said. “There are things you don’t know.”
“About the kid?” Sully asked. “Look I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately, but you really gonna sit here and tell me he didn’t always have
your back?”
On that fact, she couldn’t lie, could do nothing but nod even as it felt like she had a rock resting in the pit of her stomach. “Doesn’t matter anymore,” Lean said. “We finally said our goodbyes.”
Sully seemed eager to press the point, but Lena left the table and rinsed out the pan, hoping to stop the conversation dead in its tracks. But Sully wouldn’t let it drop. “Hello and goodbye?” he asked. “Little girl, tight as you were, you two should at least try to talk it out. Don’t you think you owe him that?”
“I don’t owe him or his family anything,” Lena seethed. “Not anything else. Not after…” Lena’s voice caught her throat, and as Sully pushed away from the table and took her into his arms, she felt the tears stinging her eyes as her lip quivered. Her uncle said nothing, just held her and let her sob, his hands moving down her back as Lena thought her legs might give out from under or she would fall asleep on her feet.