Stay with Me (44 page)

He carried me upstairs and then I also liked it when he helped me undress, which ended with me wearing nothing but one of his shirts. I got tucked into bed while he headed back downstairs and locked up. It wasn’t long before he was in bed with me, his front pressed to my back, one leg between mine and an arm secured around my waist.

Jax’s lips brushed the back of my neck, and before I slipped back into sleepy land, I heard him say for no reason at all, “You’re beautiful, babe.”

When I woke up, I knew something was different. Jax wasn’t behind me, tucked as close as he could get. I rolled into his space, catching the faint scent of his cologne, and blinked until my vision adapted to the darkness.

The green neon light from the clock on the nightstand said it was three in the morning.

Sitting up, I looked around the room. There was no light peeking under the closed bathroom door, but the bedroom door was open. This was strange to my sleepy brain. I couldn’t think of a time where I’d shared his bed that he’d gotten up in the middle of the night. Granted, we hadn’t been sharing beds that long.

I sat there for a moment as my mind started to come back on line. I knew that a lot of people who’d seen battle had problems with sleep and Jax had said that when he returned, he had trouble with it. Concern tugged at me, waking me up. Was he having a bad night? Since we hadn’t been sleeping together that long, it was possible he had them and I didn’t know.

Throwing the cover off, I slipped off the bed. His shirt settled around my thighs as I stepped toward the door left ajar. That’s when I heard his voice.

“Not now.”

My brows furrowed as I opened the door and walked the short distance to the top of the stairs. From my vantage point, I could see down the whole stairwell and I could see the front door. It was opened, but no one was there.

Then I heard the second voice.

“I know I should’ve called.”

My heart stopped in my chest—stopped like it had hit a brick wall. That was most definitely a female voice. In the house. At three in the morning.

If Jax responded, I didn’t hear him, but I heard the girl again. “I was out and I missed you, baby. I’ve missed you so much.”

Oh. My. God.

I reached out, grabbing the wooden ball carved into the top of the banister to steady myself. I had to be dreaming. It was not three in the morning and some girl, who sounded vaguely familiar, was not in Jax’s house, telling him how much she missed him and calling him baby. No way.

I heard Jax then, but it was only bits and pieces of what he was saying. “. . . now isn’t a good time . . . no time . . . call first, but . . .”

Ice drenched my veins.

From what I could hear, it was pretty obvious. Call before you come over, because there might be someone else here. A second later, my theory was confirmed.

“Is someone here?” The voice rose.

Oh God . . .

Then I heard Jax loud and clear. “Keep your voice down, Aimee.”

No wonder the voice sounded familiar to me.

Aimee? Beautiful ex-pageant queen with perfect teeth Aimee, whom he had a history with and who gave him free breast exams at the bar? Maybe a not-too-distant history with?

I think I needed to sit down.

“Is that a purse?” Aimee demanded. “What the fuck, Jax? You do have someone here. Where is she? And does she know that the last time I was in town, we were together? Which, by the way, wasn’t like a month ago?”

My stomach dropped to my toes. A month ago? I did a quick calculation of the time from when I came home and now, and really, that didn’t add up in a way that made my stomach get back where it belonged.

“Shit, Aimee, it was more than a month ago,” Jax said, his voice louder, too. “Look, you know I care about you—”

“Do you?” she fired back.

You know I care about you
.

I squeezed my eyes shut. A couple of hours ago, we were in bed, and he’d held me and told me I was beautiful, and a few hours before that he’d told me he
really
liked me, and we were making plans for when I went back to Shepherd, but now Aimee with two
e
’s was in his house and they’d been together a
month
ago, and he
cared
about her. I opened my eyes. They didn’t feel dry. The front door was still open.

This was happening. This was really happening.

Something in my chest hurt, like physically hurt, and I let go of the banister and pressed the heel of my palm between my breasts.

Then Aimee was at the bottom of the stairs.

“Holy . . .” She trailed off as her eyes widened. “No. This is
not
happening.”

Well, Aimee and I were on the same page for once, because I was thinking the exact same thing.

“You’re with her?” Her voice pitched as her head swiveled in the other direction, and I wondered if it could spin right around like the chick from
The Exorcist
. “Seriously? Calla Fritz?”

I flinched.

Son of a bitch, I actually
flinched
.

Because I could totally get the WTF expression she was wearing and the surprise in her tone. I got it. Jax was gorgeous in a way that was almost unreal. He could get girls dropping their panties just by giving them a half smile and a crook of his finger. I had a giant scar down my face and then some. And my mother was a well-known crackhead. I wasn’t exactly someone the vast majority of people would picture Jax with. I seriously did get that, because it was human nature to want to pair flawless people with other flawless people.

Jax appeared in my line of vision. Shirtless. All those muscles on display. For some reason that struck me harder. That he was half undressed with Aimee in his house, that there was a level of intimacy between them. Which was a big fucking duh, because they’d been banging each other like a cheap screen door at some point that wasn’t
too long ago
.

“You need to leave,” Jax said, not looking up at me. “Now.”

Aimee ignored that. She raised a slender, golden arm and pointed at me. “You’ve got to be joking, right? Her? I mean, I know guys like to slum every once in a while but seriously?”

Another direct hit to the chest, but man, that nasty little remark hit me like a spark over a pool of gasoline, and it happened.

I exploded.

“W
hat the fuck?” The words burst out of me like a bottle rocket and I was down the stairs and in Aimee’s face before I even knew it. “First off, I don’t think anyone in the last ten years used the word
slumming,
but you’d probably know that if you didn’t fry your brain fake-baking or overdosing on bleach to get your hair that color.” I flicked a strand of her hair, and she took a step back. I advanced, beyond furious. “Yeah, mine’s natural. And second, I’m
over
you.”

Her skin paled a bit under her tan and then a flush raced across her face and down her neck. “I’m sorry. Is
trash
a better word for you?”

Jax must’ve snapped out of his stupor and out of the corners of my eyes I could see him moving forward. “That’s enough. Aimee, you—”

“Trash?” I cut in, hands balling into fists. Jax was wrong. It so wasn’t enough. “Who in the fuck are you calling trash?”

Her gaze raked over me from the top of my bedraggled head, all the way down my bare legs. She sneered. “Could be the whore standing in front of me in nothing but a shirt?”

Jax shot forward, looping an arm around my waist and hauling me out of the way and giving me a shove away from her, and then he was in Aimee’s face. “You will fucking apologize. Right now.”

“Apologize for what?” she screamed.

His jaw had locked down, muscles tense along his back. “Fucking apologize, Aimee. I’m dead serious.”

Aimee must have tasted his anger, because she shrank a little, like a weed choked by a bushel of fucking roses. “Jax,” she whispered.

Hearing her whisper his name like that, like she couldn’t believe he was defending me over her, sent me off into the stratosphere. I was not going to be placed aside. I stormed forward, coming at Aimee from the other side. “You know what? You don’t need to apologize. I don’t need your fucking apologies. The fact is you want to be the girl wearing
his
shirt who was sleeping in
his
bed. You reek of jealousy.”

She turned a heated glare on me, but my bitch shades were up. “I was the girl,
honey,
and for a hell of a lot longer than you.”

Ouch.

Okay. Burn. She got me there. And my anger swirled, mixing with the raw hurt that had sliced deep in my chest. “You know what, Aimee? Call me trash. Whatever. I’m not the girl at the bar every night who’s throwing herself at a guy who’s with someone else. And I’m not the girl whose idea of making a living is being a ‘ring girl.’ I’m in college. To be a nurse. You know, doing things with my life. So yeah, if that makes me trash and a whore? Fucking proud of it then.”

She laughed harshly. “What? Do you think you’re actually special to him?” Before I could answer, she went on. “That you’re like his one and only?”

“Aimee,” Jax said, voice low.

“Because you’re not,” she snapped. “His bed is like the Philly train station, especially now.”

A pierce hit my chest. I had . . . I had not known that, and as I glanced at Jax, there was nothing on his face that denied it. I exhaled harshly. “Then I guess you are just one of many, too.”

Her eyes flashed, and I didn’t know if I wounded her or if any of that made a difference to her. “At least I don’t have your face, bitch.”

Yep. It hadn’t made a difference.

My feet moved, and I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do, if I was going to introduce her to the epic bitch slap or if I was going to slam my knee into Jax’s groin, but he turned to me. Snagging an arm around my waist, he lifted me clear off my feet as he moved and twisted his body so I was facing the wall and he was facing Aimee. I craned my neck to see her.

He had a finger in her face. “Get out.”

The white under her tan increased. “But—”

“Get the fuck out, Aimee.”

She took a deep breath and her blue eyes turned glassy. Then her face crumbled, and it might’ve made me the biggest idiot in the world, but there was a teeny, tiny part of me that actually felt bad for her, because I recognized that pain that had broken her face.

I had felt it mere minutes ago.

Then Aimee blinked, sucked her tears right up, and swallowed. “I get it. Whatever this is. I get it.”

I wondered what the hell she got.

She smiled then, like he hadn’t just told her to get out of his house. “We’ll talk later, babe.”

And then she flounced out of the house.

What in the fuckity fuck?

Jax all but kicked his door shut and then he turned, settling me on my feet. I started to pull free, but his arm around my waist tightened, and he dragged my back against his chest.

“Let me go,” I said, gripping his arm.

“Okay,” he murmured in my ear. “I’ll admit it. You getting all up in her face like that was hot.”

Fury flared and pulsed around the deep, throbbing hurt. “Let me go, Jax.”

“Especially with you standing there, all fired up in my shirt? Yeah. Hot as hell,” he continued, and my anger overrode the hurting.

One hand dropped from my waist and flattened against my lower belly. He pressed and my bottom tipped back against him, and yeah, I totally got that he really did find that hot. The evidence was right there, and my body, because it was a dumb hooch, reacted. My stomach fluttered and the idiotic area between my thighs throbbed.

And that just pissed me off even more.

“If you don’t let me go, I swear to God, Jax,” I warned, squeezing his arms with my hands.

He dipped his chin into my shoulder and said, “Is it wrong that I find that hot, too, because I really kind of do.”

I lost it and shouted loud enough to wake up the neighbors, “Let me the fuck go!”

Jax’s arms dropped like I was a hot potato, and I spun on him, breathing heavy. Our gazes locked, and the amusement in his voice was completely gone from his expression. He stared at me. I stared back. In those moments, I heard what I had when I stood upstairs all over again. I felt what I did when I saw Aimee’s expression when she’d seen me standing at the top of the stairs.

Tension formed around his mouth. “Calla . . .”

My feet moved backward. I needed space. I needed time to think about everything that had just happened.

He took a step forward, and I kept moving until my leg bumped into the arm of the couch. He stopped a few feet from me. “I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, but I’m going to wage a guess here, and say what happened is not what you’re thinking.”

In my chest, my heart threw itself against my ribs. “It’s not?”

“I had no idea she was going to show up tonight. She hasn’t been to my house in—”

“A month?” I finished for him. “A whole month?”

The tension around his mouth increased. “It’s been more than a month, Calla. I don’t know the exact time frame, but she hasn’t been here since you came here. You have to believe that. I’ve practically spent every night with you since you’ve been here.”

“Not every night.”

“Every night since she got back into town,” he said, and I had to admit, that was true. “You and I aren’t together every waking minute, but give me a break on that. It’s not like I have all the time in the world to be hooking up with her.”

Another good point. “But you were hooking up with her a little over a month ago.”

“
Before
you came here, Calla.”

Did that matter? I knew it shouldn’t. I wasn’t even in town and I couldn’t be mad over who he hooked up with before we met, but damnit, I was. I was thoroughly pissed and I was jealous. I was woman enough to admit to my irrational anger over that, but there was more.

“For someone you aren’t seeing, she was awful angry over the fact that a girl was here, Jax. She showed up in the middle of the night like she had a right to be here.”

“Calla—”

“And every night she’s been in the bar, hanging all over you and you let her.” My hands curled into fists again. “The first time my friends met you she was feeling you up.”