Jax and I still went back to see the kids that day and tried to make the most of it.
Everything was different though.
I was different.
When we got back to my apartment, we tried to unwind by getting lost in each other.
It didn’t work.
After showering, I found him on the couch, working on his app.
“It’s almost been a month since you went to see him. The anniversary of my mother’s death is approaching.”
Snapping steely blue eyes my way, Jax nodded as he gauged my reaction and tried to process where my head was at before he responded. “Okay.”
“So, you’re going again soon?”
He shifted on the couch and removed his feet from the ottoman. “Peaches, let’s not do this now.”
“Do what?”
“Fight about him after the fucking terrible day we’ve had.”
I looked toward the ceiling. “I wish I could stop thinking about it but I can’t. You told me to start making days better a little at a time. You know what I thought about? Him. How Ollie had to be a victim to someone even remotely like him.”
Jax winced.
“You go visit a man in prison just like Jerry. And you keep going like he means something to you.”
He sighed and ran his hands through his hair.
“Are you going to see him again soon?” I asked again.
He stared at me. The cold blue washed over me like a polar vortex blowing through. We were back on the battlefield, measuring one another’s army, attempting to figure out who would win and who had the upper hand.
“If you’re keeping tabs on why and when I go visit him, you can add in that I have the launch of my app coming up this weekend. I go visit him around every big event in my life.” Sarcasm and condescension dripped from his voice.
I stood over him, ready to attack, seething at his words. “Great that you’ve been able to share those big events with someone all these years other than me.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted me to share anything with you after I left you.”
“Really? How would you know when you didn’t ask?”
“I know—I called, Whitfield.”
“Oh my God!” I threw my hands up. “Are you counting the time you were so wasted you could barely string together a sentence?”
“I was never that drunk …”
My blood boiled from his denial. I stalked over to my laptop on the counter and typed in my password quickly.
“What are you doing?” He asked and I felt his body heat wrap around me as he looked over my shoulder. Even though I wanted to lean into him and forget the whole conversation, I couldn’t.
I put the voice mail on loud. His voice cackled through, slurring words of love and then telling me about his record deal. I let him hear the voice mail that haunted my dreams for years.
He tried to grab for me. I pushed him back and held my laptop out. “Keep listening, Jax.”
His eyebrows pulled down and his jaw ticked. He turned away from me to run his fingers through his dark hair and pulled at it before he stalked back.
He tried to grab my laptop to stop the message from replaying, but I pulled it out of his reach.
“Why did you save that?” he whispered, pain rasped through his question.
“Does it matter?” I whispered back.
This time, when he stepped up and wrapped his arm around my waist, I let him. I leaned into his chest and let his other hand take the laptop to close it.
“You should have deleted it,” he mumbled into my hair.
“Believe me, I wanted to. But somehow, I can’t bring myself to delete any part of you from my memory or life.”
“Makes two of us, Peaches.”
For what seemed like a moment, but could have been minutes or hours, we stood there, arms wrapped around each other. I absorbed him, taking in what I could. His smell. How I fit against his chest like it was the only home I’d ever felt safe in. His arms so secure like they’d protect me from anything and everything.
Except they couldn’t protect me from him.
I finally looked up to step back and distance myself.
His hands drifted to my hair. “I can’t keep doing this with you. Come with me to visit him tomorrow or wait until it’s over. It will be after my launch.”
I blinked once. Then I blinked again, trying to see if his face changed, to see if he’d retract the offer.
Like stone, nothing moved though. The frown stayed in place and no smile formed. His blue eyes held fear, and he didn’t try to mask it by looking away.
I stared at them like a moth going toward a blinding light in the middle of one of the darkest nights. “Why now?”
“I finally lined up all my ducks. They’re in a row and they’re ready to end this.”
“Why let me go before you end it? After all this time …” I shouldn’t have even asked. I should have just taken him up on the invite.
“Because we’re here. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. I saw you today with Ollie, I saw what I couldn’t control. This, I can. This thing between you and me is mine to control, and I know for damn sure I’m not letting go of that control because of shit with your father. He’s hung over our heads too long.”
My world tipped onto a different axis. It not only tipped, it rolled over and snowballed into a freaking new planet.
I stumbled back, trying to get my footing but this planet didn’t have solid ground. It was thin ice over freezing cold water. “You can’t be serious,” I whispered.
He stepped toward me, his footing so sure I wanted to push him, rock him into my unsteadiness, tilt his axis just a little.
“I’m ready to go whenever you are.”
It was a challenge just as much as it was him trying to overcome our demons. I saw the cold, calculated determination in his eyes that never wavered when he had set his mind to something.
Most of the time, he was setting his mind to pushing me and this wasn’t any different.
Every single time he pushed me though, I rose to the stupid occasion. On our battlefield, no one could back down or show an ounce of hesitation. One misstep out there and life would never be the same.
Could I do it this time? Could I walk into that prison and look straight into those eyes that mirrored mine? After all these years of silence from my father and my silence being reciprocated? Open my mouth to say words I had thought about millions of times but never thought I would get the chance to say?
“Tomorrow I have class.”
“Then, Friday.”
I sucked oxygen into my lungs. I heard it going in, I couldn’t feel it though.
I didn’t feel anything when I replied, “I’ll be ready.”
If someone asked me what I did on the day before I went to visit my father, I wouldn’t be able to recall. I assume I ate three meals, went to class, and drank whatever concoction Jax went to buy from Jackie.
I assume I studied or tried to lose track of time with Jax. I wouldn’t be able to bet my life on it though.
I didn’t remember that day. It paled in comparison to the days surrounding it. I wish I could have told myself that those days, the ones with nothing happening, were the ones to remember.
I should have listened to every whisper of a moment I had with the man I’d fought not to love for so long but who sat with me to stare out a window and appreciate the way the wind danced through the trees. I should have snuggled closer to him on the couch as we sipped the chai tea he’d made us and enjoyed the calm silence of steam off our warm drinks. I should have tried to bottle the feeling of being kissed by his lips, wrapped in his arms, and enveloped in his scent.
Instead, the day came and went like lightning, so fast, I barely saw it.
Like a flash, I was standing in front of my mirror trying to figure out what I would wear to go visit my father in prison.
White.
A color my father insisted upon.
White, so clean and pristine.
Like walking into a room with fresh, clean sheets free of any stains. No one would ever guess how quickly you had to wash blood off that white color to make sure it didn’t set into the fabric. Or how many times we’d had to clean that fabric to make sure it was white enough for the next event.
White. It was our show color. And there I stood, donning it again just like he would have wanted.
I wondered if my mother would have approved of me bending to his will. Would she have told me to keep the peace one last time, even knowing he couldn’t hurt anyone behind bars?
I sighed. She couldn’t answer the question and neither could I.
Jax had left my bed early that morning with the excuse of needing to work, but I knew he’d gone to the living room to give me space. Now though, he pushed open the door without a knock as if he owned the place. “Jax, you could knock.”
“For what reason?”
“Well, for one it’s polite,” I sighed.
His smile was slow. “You think I want to be polite with you?”
I rolled my eyes. “I could have needed some privacy.”
He shook his head. “You don’t get privacy with me, Peaches. I’ve seen every part of you.”
I stared at him, wondering if he could see how my insecurity over the day melted away when I looked at him.
When he stood in front of me, all I could see was him. His broad shoulders, how they took up almost the whole width of my doorway, how he dominated every place he was in and didn’t have to try. I found myself wanting to swim in oceans of Caribbean blue as I looked into his eyes.
He crossed his arms over his chest.
Without thinking, I blurted, “You’re back in a suit.”
The small smile that crept over his face held sadness when he replied, “You’re back in white.”
I didn’t know if he was referencing how my mother and I dressed for my father or my lack of colors in general. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.
Nodding, I tried my best not to stumble when I walked toward the doorway.
I’d go see him to end these years of no contact and to figure out if he’d be sorry or remorseful or anything at all.
I’d do this for me and for my mother.
Jax grabbed my arm as I brushed past him in the hall. He leaned in close. “You don’t have to do this, Whitfield.”
For years, I hadn’t seen any vulnerability like this in Jax, and I didn’t know how to take it.
I knew he didn’t want me to know what all his visits were about. I assumed he was nervous that I’d figure out something he’d kept a secret all this time. I assumed a lot at the moment and it started to make this trip about finding answers about Jax and my father, not about my mother and me.
The car ride was more of the same. I knew the protocol Jax took. He entered a black SUV, now with me. He took precautions to make sure we weren’t seen as I am sure he had in the past and we started the long drive there, both of us in the back with a driver behind a partition.
I paid attention to none of it. I worked on stacking block after block of my defensive wall up in my mind. Each block had some damn memory attached to it, a slap on my mother’s face, a bruising of an arm, a locking of a door.
Then, the other blocks came for them both. The calls Jax ignored, the events we’d been at but he’d only politely addressed my presence before leaving, the secrets they kept together. The wall got taller and taller and stronger and stronger.
Jax moved his hand to my thigh but instead of it bringing me any comfort, I jerked from his touch.
His eyes searched mine for a minute but he left his hand there. Maybe he was baiting me to push it away but I saw the look he had and knew I wouldn’t win that battle.
I sighed and tried to relax. He sighed too, like the damn visit was causing him anxiety. Like he didn’t do this every couple of months.
Maybe it was though. Maybe they had enough secrets to hide from me that he didn’t want me there.
Maybe this was a test.
The drive could have taken a year but it felt like no time at all had passed. When we pulled up, the car idled outside the prison’s gate.
Like every time before, the paparazzi had found him. Had found us. They were buzzing at the gate like they knew we would be there any minute. They rushed the vehicle as our driver waited to be ushered through.
Flash after flash went off. I heard them yelling questions, trying to provoke an answer out of Jax and me.
Jax’s posture didn’t change. He kept his eyes forward and didn’t address any of them at all. “They can’t see us in here. The windows are tinted. Ignore them.”
I wanted to growl that ignoring them was impossible.
Who had tipped them off? My paranoia set in and had me thinking that maybe this was all a set up. Maybe my father and Jax worked to set up the paparazzi together. The idea felt ludicrous and completely logical at the same time. My mind was a tornado of emotion, yet I sat there completely still beside the statue of a man next to me.
Maybe we’d both been programmed to deal with trauma and unorthodox situations in this way. Maybe, we were just that screwed up.
As our SUV rolled slowly through the crowd of paparazzi and entered the prison grounds, I realized no panic had overwhelmed me with the cameras flashing. I’d focused on the other problems, and again was able to overcome that illogical fear I used to have.
Now though, my breaths were shorter. My palms started to sweat and my heart beat picked up. As the vehicle pulled to a stop, I looked over at Jax and met his cool gaze. “You haven’t said a word to me about what I should and shouldn’t say to him.”
“He’s your father, Whitfield. You can say whatever you want.” His tone was soft.
“All these years, and now you’re both okay with it?” I accused.
He looked off toward the prison and his hand bunched into a fist before he moved away from me to slide out of the SUV.
Flashes went off from afar as he rounded the vehicle and came to open my door. He ducked his head and watched me.
His stare gave me options. He talked to me through that damn stare, saying I didn’t have to do this but he was there for me if I wanted to. Somehow, he let me know he was the fucking rock I had needed all these years and that he would be for a long time after this.
His commitment walloped me like a wrecking ball. I felt how much I wanted him as my rock. I felt my weakness to him, and I felt myself retracting and withdrawing from the whole damn idea of coming here in the first place.
I didn’t want to know what they talked about. I just wanted to love him.
I didn’t want what we had to be ruined by their relationship. I wanted to ignore it so we could stay this exact way.
I wanted him to stop whatever the hell they were doing. I wanted us to forget it ever happened.
I wanted a damn happily ever after, and I should have known I couldn’t run from the biggest problem to get it.
I did just that though.
I shook my head at him as my vision got blurry and rolled my lips between my teeth like I was trying to hold in every emotion I wanted to have burst out of me.
“Peaches, you want to go home?”
I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t face my fears out loud.
Instead, I just nodded.
He nodded too. But he looked disappointed as he told the driver to take me home and send him another car.
Before I realized what had just happened, the door slammed, and I was on my way back.
Without Jax.
I realized too late that I was a coward and Jax had left me to be on my own as he continued the same damn meetings that slowly bled us dry of faith in each other.
