Inevitable: Chapter 20

Every day after that, I’d get a text from him in the morning.

The first morning I got it, my phone became a sort of grenade, one I wasn’t sure I wanted to hold. I stared at it for way longer than I wanted to admit, thumb hovering over the screen to type a response.

It stayed glued to my side as I ate a light breakfast and put on my bright purple camo leggings with a purple sports bra.

As I tied my shoes, it alerted me to another text.

I smirked and before I could talk myself out of it, I texted back.

I threw my phone onto the couch, knowing I’d just pulled the pin and thrown the grenade that might cause me to self-destruct.

The rush of adrenaline from communicating with him surged through my veins. It shouldn’t be something I got addicted to.

Every day that I wanted to go for a run, I’d text him that same message. Every time, he didn’t answer but was there twenty minutes later.

For the next two weeks, we studied and jogged together. In between, I sent Jay off to LA and cried like a baby on Jax’s shoulder when he asked how I took him leaving.

On days Jax went back to the city, I went to visit my girls at the reservation.

We formed a routine.

One I liked to think was a friend routine but Katie, Vick, and Rome seemed to think otherwise.

I argued that I would have run and studied with all of them.

They thought I was full of shit.

I told myself that being close to Jax came naturally. We grew up together, and I missed Jay.

Jax was a decent substitute.

When we ran, he didn’t say much. His breathing was methodical, steady, and rhythmic as if because he was a musical genius, he could make the damn necessary action of life a song.

It infuriated me, soothed me, and hypnotized me all at the same time.

With the summer heat and quick pace, I always reached a point where my muscles just took over. My mind turned itself off, and I just ran while I listened to our feet hit the ground.

That was the part I was addicted to, with or without Jax.

It was freedom. No control, no worries, no thoughts.

That day, I can also say there was no direction or preservation of life in me because one second I was running up the hill and the next I was being tackled onto the grass.

Screaming, my reflexes kicked in and stuck my hands out to catch my fall.

“Goddamn it!” Jax yelled as he landed on top of me.

“What the hell, Jax!”

“Motherfuck …” he yelled looking over his shoulder.

I glanced that way and saw a large man barreling down the hill on a bicycle.

Jax whipped back around to me where I was caged underneath him. “Are you fucking blind?”

“What … of course not … excuse me?” I stammered.

He pounded his hand down into the grass and then leaned closer. “You heard me, Whitfield. That bicyclist almost took you out.”

“So, instead you took me out?” I screamed back at him and shoved him in the shoulder. My hand connecting with him shot pain up my arm and I winced.

His hardened gaze shifted to my hand, and somehow, he gripped my wrist and examined me before I could even examine it myself. “Shit, you tried to catch your fall on the cement before we hit the grass.”

It wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer. Instead, I huffed and tried to pull my wrist back but of course we were doing this the Stonewood way.

“We need to clean this up, Peaches.” His voice was soft and his eyes were back on mine, vivid blue with concern laced in them.

That look—the one he reserved for reading people and seeing into their soul—had me shivering under him.

I tried to move and get up, to get away, to put some distance between us. “I’ll be fine.”

His body on top of mine was stone, immovable.

“Whitfield,” he growled. Then, he ran his tongue over his teeth and I just knew.

“Jax, we should get up,” I whispered.

I just knew.

He gave me that calculating look and then mumbled, “Fuck it.”

I. Just. Knew.

His lips crashed down onto mine. As I gasped, he shot his tongue in my mouth, reclaiming it as his like he’d never lost the title. He staked his flag on the territory and not even I could fight the war and win. We weren’t equal opponents here. It was predator meets prey. I couldn’t survive because he’d already ripped me open.

He kissed me like he was ravenous, like I was his first meal ever, like he’d consume all of me. I would never be able to outrun him.

I wish I could say I shoved him back right away. That I thought about jeopardizing my friendship with Jay or who was waiting for him back in the city.

I didn’t.

I held onto him for dear life because he might have ripped me open and fed on me like he was ravenous but I needed his kiss just as much. It was the blood in my veins, the oxygen in my lungs, and the water in my body.

He tasted like he used to and of so much more than he used to. This was Jax grown-up, primed, and aged perfectly.

His hand snaked up my shirt, and finally I realized where we were and what we were doing.

I shoved him back. “This isn’t right.”

He just looked at me. “We’re always right.”

He said it like we had our own reality and nothing before it mattered.

I cleared my throat and looked away from him, waiting, hoping he’d move because I wasn’t sure I could keep pushing him away.

He sighed and rolled off me.

We both stared up at the sky for a beat. Then his lethal control was back in place, the one that looked effortless, like I couldn’t cause even the smallest reaction in him.

He smirked his signature smile at me and said, “I asked you before. I’ll ask you again. Want to have dinner with me?”

“I don’t think you asked last time.”

“And yet, dinner still didn’t happen.”

I sighed. “I don’t think dinner’s a good idea.”

He conceded for about a second. “Fine. Why don’t you walk me around, show me some of the best of this college town? First stop can be a drugstore to clean you up.”

“I don’t think …”

His brow furrowed like he couldn’t take another rejection from me. “Humor me, huh?”

The words rolled off his tongue the exact way they did when he’d bring me tea, and I found myself nodding the way I did when he’d hand it over.

We walked in the direction of a drugstore as I tried to clear my head.

Nothing could shake the kiss. Nothing could move it from my memory.

He pulled me over by my waist in the Walgreens, and I felt the same charge as that of his kiss where he touched me. I glanced at him to see if he felt it, too, but he was looking at the Band-Aids.

When his fingers wrapped around my wrist, I eyed him warily. He just nodded at my closed hand. “Open.”

I did.

Then he nodded again and went back to looking at the first aid items on the shelves. Instead of letting go of my wrist though, he pulled my hand to his lips and brushed more than one kiss over the back of it.

It was probably muscle memory to him.

He’d always taken his time with me. Years ago, I’d have expected it.

Now, my whole body seized up. We were too close, and I was too weak.

I snatched my hand back.

He didn’t look over at me. He just smiled to himself and grabbed some bandage wrap.

When I pulled a small cardholder out of my sports bra while we stood in line, his smirk turned wolfish, “What else are you hiding in there?”

I glanced around. “Shut up.”

He sidled closer to me. “Come on. Let me see.” He peered down my cleavage.

I shoved him. “Grow up, perv.”

“Name calling now, are we?” His eyebrows raised a little but he kept peering where he wasn’t supposed to.

When I pursed my lips, he shrugged. “Can’t knock a guy for trying.”

Then, he pivoted in front of me to pay for the bandaging. There was no point in arguing, I mumbled a thank you. No Stonewood man had ever let me pay for a thing.

Once outside, he led us over to a cement wall that came up a little past my hips. He set down the bandaging and I went to open it. “I don’t think I even need this.”

“Right, Whitfield. Do everything by the book except when it comes to you getting an infection.”

I stopped opening the bandaging and glared at him. “I don’t do everything by the book.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Really?” He leaned his hip onto the fence. “Enlighten me then. What are you doing that isn’t by the book?”

My heart skipped realizing that his opinion of my life still mattered too much to me. I went to smooth my hair back and hated that he caught my nervous move immediately.

His expression softened. He rubbed the back of his hand over my cheek, “Never mind, Peaches.”

I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch. He moved closer still and then I felt his hands slide around my hips to hoist me up onto the wall. My hands slammed into his shoulders to steady myself, and the pain from the scrapes seared as I sucked air in through my teeth.

He gripped both of my wrists and moved closer to me. Right in between my legs. “Shit, sorry.”

I didn’t feel the pain of my scrapes anymore, just the pain of him up against me. It hurt more than any scrape could, yet I relished in it. I wanted to roll in it, bask in it, and lose myself in it. His proximity was every type of pain I knew I didn’t need.

“Jax,” I breathed and it sounded like a plea. I just didn’t know if I was pleading with him to move back or lean in more.

Nothing made sense anymore and I needed time to think, to organize my thoughts and feelings. Then, I’d have more control of them.

I pushed him back but he didn’t move like he should have.

Instead, he rustled around in the bag and found the wipes. He didn’t warn me and maybe it was partially to punish me for pushing him away. He took the wipe and smeared it over my hand. When he did, I hissed and his eyes glared up at me. He was baiting me to yell at him and start the fight.

He wanted to war with me, I saw that hunger in his eyes.

I clenched my jaw, lifting my chin.

“I like you stubborn just as much as I like you fighting me, Whitfield,” he ground out, his voice low as he threw the wipes into the plastic bag.

I bit the insides of my cheeks to hold back the smile that worked out of me. If he knew how close he was to breaking me down, he’d push our friend boundaries even further.

Friends didn’t admit what he just had. Friends didn’t move in this close, and friends didn’t put their hands all over me like he did.

Mostly though, friends didn’t like all of this closeness as much as I did.

So, when he pulled the bag up to his elbow and then put his hands above my knees so he could lean in, I didn’t back away. I should have. I should have done a lot of things in that moment but I was saved when I heard a girl screaming behind him.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Are you Jax Stonewood?!”

His hands clamped down tight on my upper thighs and he shut his eyes hard as if trying to calm down. When he opened them again, he’d transformed from brooding to megawatt-smiling, lovable singer-songwriter Jax.

He turned to greet a peppy blonde girl about my age. “You caught me.”

“Oh my God!” It seemed to be the only thing she knew how to say.

“Keep my location to yourself and take a picture with me?” he offered, but more people were already turning our way.

I felt more and more eyes on us, and I wanted to disappear into the shadows. Jax must have felt it too, because after he snapped a quick photo with her, he grabbed my wrist and moved so fast, I had to jog to keep up.

He didn’t say anything.

I didn’t say anything.

We moved together.

In sync. Connected.

When the crowd started closing in, my breathing picked up.

I could feel the air getting thinner, my window of sanity getting smaller.

Would they get a photo? Would they recognize me?

I tried so hard to ignore the panic creeping in.

He yanked me onto a side street just as I started to wheeze. His eyes snapped to me. “Peaches, focus on me, okay?”

I looked back instead. The first paparazzi camera was as blinding as it had been that day on his mother’s porch. The crowd faded to black as my mind focused on the one paparazzi who snapped blinding photo after photo of me.

I wheezed again and Jax stepped between me and the huge camera. “Move, Whitfield.”

My gaze jumped to him. His eyes were assessing me, calculating something.

I didn’t have time to figure him out.

Couldn’t he see I was panicking? Couldn’t he hear me wheezing?

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. And there was definitely no way I could move.

His gaze hardened. He didn’t wait for me to gather myself. He shoved me backward instead. “Move your ass.”

“Seriously?” I stumbled backward and used the momentum to pivot away from the crowd down the alley. “You’re pushing me?!”

He didn’t say anything from behind me.

Great, because I had more to say anyway. “I couldn’t breathe back there! Do you know how that feels?”

The only answer I got was the pounding of his footsteps behind me.

Of course, he didn’t sound at all winded back there either.

“You know, those people wanted nothing to do with me. It’s your fault they were taking our pictures in the first place, yet you have the audacity to shove me when I’m having a meltdown, nervous they might dig up my past or something. I could have fallen and scraped my hand again!”

I heard him scoff. So, I did it right back.

I wasn’t wasting my breath on him anymore.

I focused on weaving through more alleys to get back to my place as quickly as I could, on the route. Not on the fact that I could be in the spotlight again, that someone really could dig up my past if they wanted to.

I sighed when I got to the apartment complex and was able to get through the lobby.

I reminded myself that no one could follow us any farther, but my hands still shook when I tried to unlock my door.

Jax didn’t say anything. He just took the keys from my hand quickly and looked at me with pursed lips and worried eyes as he unlocked it for me.

When I rushed inside, he stepped in behind me and shut it.

He followed so close. So close, I could smell the mint mixed with just him.

My body wanted to lunge for him and rip his clothes off. How ridiculous that just his scent could erase all the panic and make some part of me want him again.

I cleared my throat, not sure where to start and not sure I wanted to turn around to see him standing there with that same worried look. Did I tell him to leave because people were gathering outside? Did I tell him to stay because I’d just had too good of a day with him?

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you,” he blurted from behind me.

I was pretty sure my eyes almost bugged out as I turned around to face him. Never had he ever apologized to me. Not when we were together and definitely not when he had left.

“But you needed me to push you metaphorically and literally. It got you moving.”

There it was. Somehow, I was the wrong one. I nodded and rolled my eyes. “What a great apology …”

He brought his hands to his face and scrubbed them over it. “Look, as much as I would love to work you up into a fit, this is too serious. This is a fucked-up situation. I know you don’t like attention and publicity. I don’t like it either. This might make the news, and I know it scares you and—”

“I’m not scared of it.” My response was a knee-jerk reaction.

“Whitfield, you’re still shaking.”