Chapter 21

Jaxon rolled over on the bed, nearly falling in his haste.  No matter how many times he turned, no matter how long he closed his eyes, he couldn’t sleep.  Every time he was close, his eyes would snap open on their own violation, as if they were waiting for something that hadn’t quite happened yet.  He sighed as he flipped onto his back.  On the ceiling above him, small glowing hearts stared back.  He frowned at the objects, wondering how they had come to be. 

When Amy had walked around this room, stopping to run her hand over one thing or the other, he had seen the happiness in her eyes, but he had also seen the sadness.  So, why was the room still decorated like this?  If she felt sad every time she looked at it, why hadn’t her parents changed it?  Jaxon had a feeling that the reason was Amy.  For whatever reason, she had most likely asked her parents not to change it.  For whatever reason, she let the room bring her bittersweet happiness.

Once more, he closed his eyes to the glowing hearts, but when he did, images flashed through his mind.  Images of Amy laughing at him, images of her staring down her parents with determination in her eyes, images of that false smile she tried to slip by them.  He wondered how many people noticed how fake that smile was.  He wondered if they all saw the hurt deep in her eyes, etched at the corner of her lips.  He shook his head in frustration.  Of course they saw it, and not only did they see it, but they also knew the cause for it.  They knew why she tried to smile even when she was hurting.  They knew why she dreaded seeing her ass of an ex. 

Jaxon didn’t know anything, and when they had first met, he was fine with that, but now, he wasn’t.  As much as it freaked him out to admit it, he liked Amy.  The longer he was around her, the more he wanted to know.  It was a dangerous feeling, one that he shouldn’t allow to grow, but despite himself, despite the panic that beat in his chest, he couldn’t help himself.  Every time she smiled at him, he wanted to find a way to keep that expression on her face.  Every time her green eyes flashed with anger, he wanted to push her buttons more.

What he didn’t want was to be laying here, eyes now open on the adjoining door, wondering what she was doing.  What he didn’t want was to be awake when he was dead tired.  Another sigh, this one full of frustration, fell from his lips as he swung his feet to the side of his bed.  He’d be getting no sleep anytime soon.  His eyes scanned the room, wondering what he could do in the meantime.  His brain was foggy with sleep, his eyelids felt heavy, and he knew that he wasn’t up to facing off Amy’s family.  Around them, he needed all of his wits, and at the moment, he was definitely lacking in the wits department. 

Walking towards the small table in the corner, he flipped on the lamp.  Dim light flew through the room, letting him see the small objects that decorated the table.  In a photo frame, two girls smiled back at him.  Now, Amy was stunning, but in her teenage years, she was beautiful. Her innocent smile, her large eyes, everything about her would be a teenage boy’s dream.  He rubbed his thumb across the photo and had to smile.  He almost felt bad for the girl standing next to Amy.  She paled in comparison.  Her dark hair and dark eyes might have seemed exotic to some, but for Jaxon, he couldn’t stop staring at Amy. 

A light knock sounded in the room, and without having to think, his eyes jerked towards the adjoining door.  He waited for a moment, waited to see if she would knock again.  When no noise met his ears, Jaxon almost thought that he had imagined the noise.  He was just beginning to think that he had wanted her to knock so bad that he had conjured the noise on his own, when another small tap met his ears.

He took two large steps and without hesitation, pulled the door open.  She stared at him with the large eyes in her teenage photo before smiling.  Glancing down at him, a blush immediately coated her cheeks.  “Um, I saw the light.”

His own eyes inspected her, noticing her usual sleeping clothes, a large, torn shirt that most likely belonged to her father or one of her brothers.  It fell right above her knees, and on most people, the shirt would look frumpy.  On Amy, it was the hottest thing he had ever seen.  “I’ll put some pants on,” he mumbled, breaking the tension in the air.

She let out a deep sigh of relief, and he had to smile.  For a woman who had been close to marrying a man, she sure looked rattled when she saw him standing there in nothing but his boxers.  He took a step back and motioned for her to come in as he walked back to grab his borrowed pants.  Throwing her photo onto the bed, he slipped the sweat pants on before glancing back just in time to see her staring at him with a slightly dazed expression on her face.

“You okay?”

“What?” she snapped, jerking her eyes up to connect with his.  Her face turned brighter red as she covered them with her hands.  “Can we ignore that?”

He grinned at her, trying to ease her embarrassment all while feeling something very close to satisfaction.  It was nice knowing that it wasn’t just him that felt something between the two of them, that it wasn’t just him who stared a little too long.  “Not a chance.”  He paused for a moment and really looked at her.  Dark circles complimented her eyes.  Her hair was sticking in all directions as if she had rolled around in bed much like he had been doing moments earlier, and the hands that were now away from her face were fidgeting with a hole in the side of her shirt.  “Couldn’t sleep?”

A loud breath whooshed out of her mouth as she shook her head.  “I’m scared,” she blurted, looking almost shocked that she would admit to such.  He kept his eyes on her, wanting her to elaborate, needing her to elaborate.  “I said I’d go tomorrow, and I will.  But, I’m scared.”

Walking towards her, he reached towards her hand and pulled her towards the bed, and he knew he had to be tired when the only thoughts that ran through his mind were getting her to talk.  “This is the first time you’ve seen him since the two of you broke up?”

“Yeah,” she agreed as she settled down on the heart shaped bed beside him.  “I’ve ran into him a couple of times, but I’ve always taken the cowards way out and walked in the other direction.”  She rubbed her free hand over her eyes, and Jaxon did the only thing he knew to do to ease her pain.  He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a side hug that should have been awkward.  Instead, it felt perfect.  It felt so right that he didn’t want to let her go.

“I know I said I’d wait, and if you still don’t want to tell me, I’ll continue to wait, but I want to know, Amy.  I don’t think I’ve wanted to know anything this bad in a very long time.”

“It’s the reporter in you,” she dismissed with a laugh.

He pulled away slightly to stare down at her.  Unwinding one of his arms, he brushed a piece of wild hair out of her eyes.  “Maybe,” he said with a shrug.  “Maybe it’s the reporter in me, but maybe it’s because I just want to know more about you even if I shouldn’t.  Or maybe, I want to have a very good reason for kicking the man’s ass tomorrow.”

A genuine laugh spilled from her lips, and Jaxon smiled at the sound.  “I think Logan did enough damage to last him a while.”  She leaned towards him again, resting her ear against his chest.  He knew that she could hear his heart beating a little wildly, but he couldn’t force himself to move away even if he had wanted too.  “The photo you dropped on the bed,” she began, “she was my best friend for a long while.  From the beginning, it was her and I against the world.  Don’t get me wrong, my brother’s really are the best friends I could ever have, but all of these boys drove me insane.  When I finally met Mirabelle in the fourth grade, we stuck together like adjoined twins.  Everywhere she went, I went, everything that I did, she did.”

Amy took a deep breath, and he could feel tears drop onto his chest as she let it out.  “You don’t have to keep telling me,” he whispered.  He couldn’t take knowing she was in pain, not when he couldn’t do anything but be her shoulder to cry on.  He wanted to do more.  He wanted to go back and stop whatever had happened to her.  He wanted to go back and do everything in his power to keep her safe.

“I want to tell you,” she said, her voice sounding more in control than it had moments before.  She rubbed her cheek against him, almost as if she was trying to comfort herself.  Jaxon slid his hand up and down her back before resting it in her hair.  He ran his fingers through the wavy mass, and when she smiled against his chest, he knew he had found at least one way to help.  “Mirabelle comes from a family different from mine, and I didn’t realize how different until we were older.  Whereas I had everything I had ever wanted and the name to back up my talk, she had nothing.  Her mother was a single parent, raising three children on a waitress salary.  Her mom would work days while they were at school, and during the summer, Mirabelle would have to watch her siblings.”

Jaxon could already begin to guess where her story was heading, but he didn’t say a word when she paused. Instead, he ran his hand through her hair again, comforting her in the best way he knew how.  “When I say she did everything I did, I hadn’t realized how literal I meant it until now.”

“Her and your ex?”

She nodded against his chest and a fresh bout of tears ran down her cheeks.  “It isn’t how you think though.  Mirabelle introduced the two of us.  You see, my ex and I ran in the same social crowds.  We were both forced to go to the same country club by our parents, which my father used solely for ironing out deals with other lawyers.  Mirabelle didn’t have a membership there; she had met my ex when she was cleaning the tennis court one day.  It was a fluke really.  Mirabelle already had a job but was covering for her cousin.  Anyway, she introduced the two of us, and we instantly hit it off.  It took me two years to find out that I was the other woman.  They were together before he and I even met, and they were together throughout our entire relationship.”

“Amy,” he whispered, breaking up her story.  Pushing her back slightly, he wiped the tears from her cheeks.  “They’re both hateful idiots for doing anything to push you out of their lives.”

“I tend to agree with you,” she said with a laugh.  “But it was as much of my fault as it was there’s.  I refused to see how close the two of them were, even after he and I got engaged.  You see, he wanted her, she wanted him, but his parents wanted a daughter-in-law that had a powerful name and money to back her.  They were getting the best of both worlds; until he found out I couldn’t have children.”  She pulled away from him completely and wiped away the fresh tears with an aggravated scowl on her face.  “His parents said they’d rather he be with someone who had nothing, but could give him children than a woman who couldn’t even do the one thing women were built for.”

His jaw clenched so tightly, he was afraid he was going to chip a tooth.  His nails bit into his palms and it was that pain that kept him from snarling his next words.  “They’re asses.  All of them are complete, worthless, idiotic, hateful asses.”

“Thanks, but even though it hurts, I’m starting to move passed it,” she said with a small chuckle as she brushed away the last of her tears with an embarrassed shrug.  “I thought I was done with the tears,” she explained.  “I didn’t mean to cry all over you.”

“Any time you need a chest,” he said with a smirk, making her laugh more.  The laughter echoed away, and a serious expression settled onto his face.  “Is that everything, Amy?  If there’s more, you can wait to tell me.  I’m not going to push you, but tomorrow, when I go along with you, I don’t want to be thrown for a loop.”

“It’s all the important stuff,” she said with a nod, before freezing.  “What do you mean, when you go with me?”

“You really think I’m letting you go in there by yourself with that man?  He’s a royal idiot, and I would bet my last dollar that he’s going to start begging you to come back to him the second he sees you.”

She rolled her eyes at him.  “He doesn’t want me.  If he did, he wouldn’t have been sleeping with my best friend, before and during our relationship without me knowing.  Plus, I can’t give him what he wants.”

Reaching out, he pulled on a strand of her hair, loving how it sprung back into a thick wave.  “You have everything that any living, breathing male could ever want, Amy.  I can promise you, when he sees us tomorrow; he’s going to be kicking his own butt.”

She groaned at his words, and he frowned at her, wondering why.  “You’re turning into my brothers,” she muttered, and he shivered at the thought. “I can handle a couple of curse words, and you don’t have to treat me with kiddy gloves.  I know he doesn’t want me.  I know he’s moved on with Mirabelle, and I know that the two of them are living happily ever after in a house with a white picket fence.”

“White picket fences are boring and overrated,” he offered before narrowing his eyes at her.  “And I am not one of your brothers; I’m just starting to understand why they don’t do certain things around you.”

“Because I’m their baby sister.”

“Because they respect you, Amy.  They look to you for courage, and they know that no matter what they do, you’ll always love them.  So, if I start cleaning up my language a little bit while I’m around you, it’s for the same exact reason.  I’ve never met a woman as strong as you are, or one with a bigger heart, and I respect the hell out of you for it.”

“Courage?” she said with a small snort.  “I’m shaking in my shirt, just thinking about showing up at his work tomorrow.”

He smiled down at her.  “Yeah, but you’re still going.”

She blinked up at him, taking in his words.  With a small smile of her own, she nodded.  “But you’ll be there with me.”

“I’ll be there every single second, showing your ex exactly what he’s missing out on and what he will never get back.”  He reached towards her again, pulling her into a tight hug.  He kept his arms around her, wondering if he’d ever be able to stop pulling her close.  “It’ll be alright, Amy.”  Her lips brushed his chest as a yawn escaped her lips, and he laughed.  “I guess our talk wore you out,” he whispered. 

He began to ease his arms away from her, but before he could, she reached up and tightened her hold on him.  Clearing her throat, she whispered, “Can I stay here?  Just for tonight, Jaxon.”

His own grip tightened as she asked the question he himself was afraid to voice.  He wanted nothing more than to keep her with him, to lean back, wrap her in his arms and experience some much needed sleep.  “Just for sleep,” he reminded himself, only realizing he said the words out loud when she chuckled. 

“Just for sleep,” she promised.  “I’m even making you keep the pants on.”

“You want to go to your room?” he asked, knowing this one held bad memories for her.  “Why do you keep it decorated like this anyway?”

“My little cousin loves it,” she mumbled, and he should have expected the answer.  Amy would experience all the pain in the world to make those she cared for happy.  Leaning back slightly, she smiled up at him.  “And I want to stay right here.  This room needs some happy memories.”

With a smile on his face, one that he couldn’t fight back even if he tried, he pushed the photo off the bed and grabbed the edge of the covers.  She shook her head at him when the sound of cracking glass flew through the room, but her grin didn’t lessen in the slightest.  With one arm still wrapped around her, he eased her back onto the bed.

She curled around him as he threw the covers over them.  Sighing, she snuggled closer, her head on his arm, her arms wrapped around his waist.  Soon, her breathing became even, her expression relaxed.  Jaxon just lied there, staring at her with a mix of trepidation and anticipation.  After tonight, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to let her go.  After tonight, he couldn’t even begin to wonder what it would feel like when she wasn’t curled around him as if he was her favorite teddy bear.

He pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind, knowing that he’d dwell on them all night long if he didn’t quit now.  Tilting his head to the side, he pressed his face into her hair, took a deep breath, and let his eyes fall shut.  Whereas before, images of Amy kept him awake.  Now, her smell, the feel of her pressed against him, settled his nerves.  Turning carefully, making sure that she wouldn’t wake, he wrapped both arms around her, and with her safe in his hold, he could finally relax, finally let sleep take over.