Chapter 15

Jax

I held my cards close to my chest, so fucking close they were practically inside it, and this was the result. Fuck, I didn’t have to discuss my history at length with anyone. I’d have done it eventually with Riley, but it’d been a goddamn week. A week.

How the hell was I supposed to know that my sister would pop out of fucking nowhere after years of no contact?

The last time we’d spoken had been a month after I’d gone to prison. That’d been, what seventeen years ago? That panic attack had been bullshit. She didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her.

“Dude, are you OK?” Bane asked, from the passenger seat of my Lamborghini.

“Fine,” I replied and shifted gears. “I’m dropping you off at the office. You good with that?”

“Of course,” he said. “Whatever you need. So, that was your sister, huh? Veronica? She was—”

“A total fucking loon,” I replied and took the corner way too fast.

Bane didn’t sweat it. He’d driven around with me enough to know I wasn’t about to go careening into the pedestrians on the sidewalk. That or he’d simply developed nuts of steel.

“Still, she was pretty.”

I kept my eyes on the road but stiffened. “Don’t even think about it, dude. She’s my sister. And she belongs in a nuthouse if she thinks I’m some kind of ex-con manipulator who’d—”

“Easy.” That was like his catchphrase today. I couldn’t blame him. Things had gotten intense back there. I cruised to a halt in front of the office building, and he cuffed me on the shoulder. “Seriously, Jax, take it easy. All right? Things will get better. I guarantee it.”

I grunted by way of reply.

He got out on Brickell Avenue and patted the top of the Lambo. “Keep calm, aight? I’ll call you in the morning about the restaurant.”

“Right,” I said.

He shut the door and left me in relative peace. My thoughts chased it away.

I took off down the avenue and headed for my apartment building in Miami Beach. It was a twenty-five minute drive, traffic factored in, and it gave me too much time to think about Riley. About Veronica. About all the bullshit going on.

Christ, if only I knew where the hell my crazy-ass sister lived, I’d drive over there now and pull Riley right out. I should never have let her go with Veronica. Who knew what bullshit she’d feed her? Some crackpot story about my convictions when she knew exactly dick about them.

Thirty minutes later I was in my apartment, the scent of Riley’s lavender and vanilla perfume still on the air, and my mind racing. I paced back and forth in the living room, over the white carpeting, the view out of the windows lost on me. What did the distant city matter? What difference did the ocean view make?

She wasn’t here.

She was with someone who thought I was the devil’s right-hand man.

I charged through the living room to the hall and down it, to the guest room. Her door was closed, and I pulled it open so fast it slammed into the wall and rebounded against my palm.

“Where are you?” I growled. “Where the hell are you?’

She had to have an address book or something. Find the address book, get Veronica’s address, get over there and win her back. Goal set.

I pursued it with all my focus, charged to her dresser and ripped it open. There was nothing but sports bras, cotton panties, and a few lace ones inside. They would’ve given me pause any other time.

Had to get to her and make her understand that “Cole” wasn’t who I’d become. He wasn’t the real me. Riley had been the first person to see that “real me,” and I wouldn’t let that go.

I shut her dresser and moved to the armoire, tore the doors open, and went through that too. Nothing but a few pairs of clothes, the same ones she’d brought with her the first night I’d found her. Her gym bag was on the floor in the corner. No address book there either.

Frustration pulsed through me. “Fuck, Riley, where are you?” I whipped out my phone and tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message, tried again, and again.

Third time wasn’t a charm. Her phone was off.

I stowed my cell back in my pocket, then walked to the desk, drew the chair back and sat down. I was never defeated. Defeat could kiss my ass. I rested my elbows on the desk, scrubbed my fingers through my hair. My gaze landed on the desk drawers.

I slid the top one open and removed several documents from it.

What was this?

Medical records? Why the hell did Riley need her medical records? Fuck, was she sick?

A fresh wave of frustration rushed through me. I couldn’t help her if she was sick, unless it was financially, and would she even let me do that? I shifted the records to one side and lifted a small book from the drawer.

Pay dirt. This has to be it.

I opened the address book, scanned the first page, all exasperation dissolving. Shock replaced it.

“What the fuck?”

It wasn’t an address book, it was her journal. Riley’s journal. I knew it was wrong to read it, I wasn’t a fucking skeaze, but I couldn’t stop. The words on the page had galvanized something in me, an anger I couldn’t contain.

Thursday, June 21st

A new journal for a new me, I guess. Lame as that sounds. Anyway, Michael’s officially out of the picture. Gone. Done. Good riddance, or so Veronica says. I tend to agree with her because he trampled all over my heart.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened and what’s next for me, and I’ve come to a single conclusion.

If love is real it’s not the love you find in another person. By that I mean, romantic love. If love is real, it’s the type you get between mother and daughter or son. And that’s exactly what I want. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but Michael said he didn’t want that either. Fuck, don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy of that statement given his current situation with his fiancée.

Ugh, I’m getting off track.

The point is, I’m not going to sit around and wait for Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right for me. I’m thirty this year. Each year that passes cuts away at the time I have left to have a child and raise it.

So, I’m taking matters into my own hands.

I’m going to have a baby all by myself. No man involved. More on this later. Classes starting now.

I gripped the pages so hard my thumbs left imprints in the ink. A baby on her own? She’d never mentioned this to me. She’d never told me that she wanted a child, immediately. How could she want one when her business was failing? When she could barely look after herself, financially?

It was harsh but rational. And it was only part of what made me furious about this.

I flipped through the journal, found an entry dated a week ago.

August 12th

Today, I did something really fucking stupid. I went home with a strange guy who found me sleeping in my dance studio—not technically, but I was about to. Whatever. Beside the point. He wants to buy the studio. I’m never going to sell it. I can’t give up on this place, on Jessa’s memory, and I won’t give up on the baby either. I’ll have it all.

I’ve spent the past five years giving up on my dreams, living Michael’s dreams instead, and I’ll be !damned! if I ever let that happen again. I’ll be damned if I restrict myself from having what I want for once in my life.

Anyway, this guy is unbelievably attractive. He’s temptation in a suit, and I don’t know how to handle this situation. All I know is Veronica is going to flip her shit when she finds out what I’ve done.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. If this will help me get closer to setting up the business long-term and saving enough money for the insemination, then so be it.

It’s sweet, really. In this day and age, I’d never have expected a man to act chivalrous or offer to help like he did.

Jax King.

Even his name is a fantasy.

“Fuck,” I grunted, and dropped the journal on the desk. “What the fuck?” She wanted a baby, I’d known that, but the plan? This plan to go get some other guy’s spunk injected into her pussy, my pussy… if I’d known then—then what? I’d have gone batshit fucking crazy and forbidden her to do it?

We’d known each other a week. She didn’t know anything about my past. It was fair I didn’t know anything about her planned future. Totally rational.

Except, I didn’t give a flying fuck about rational. This woman was mine. She’d been mine since the start, whether we’d wanted it or not, and I’d be damned if I let her fuck herself like this.

I needed to protect her, even if it meant protecting her from herself.

I paged forward and landed on an entry written two days ago.

August 22nd

I’m so scared. I hate being scared. Fear isn’t part of who I want to be or who I am, but I can’t help this feeling.

The more time I spend with him, the more time I want to spend with him. He’s crept into my soul. He’s in my veins, in my cells, now. Every step I take is governed by thoughts of him and that cannot be the case.

I swore to myself I would never let another man decide my future or the path I chose. This is my life. I’m supposed to be living it. I’m supposed to be planning for the future, but each night I’m here I lose focus of that future.

The studio is still making too little money. It’s enough to pay Veronica what she deserves and cover basic living costs for me—food, sanitary stuff. I can’t make a move in any particular direction because my hands are tied, financially, at least.

I’m stuck in limbo in so many ways, and it’s driving me mad. I’m supposed to be the go-getter, prove mom and dad wrong. Right now, I’m the do-nothing. Except when it comes to thinking about Jax and how he felt inside me. How he looks at me. How his lasagna tastes—ha ha.

What the hell am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?

I can’t think straight anymore.

“Fuck,” I repeated. It was the word of the hour.

A week. It’d been a week, and she was addicted to me as I was to her. How could she dream of doing this? I turned the page, dragged my fingers over the words. The final entry had been written today, probably in the afternoon before she’d headed to the restaurant.

August 24th

This is it. I’m going to introduce him to Veronica. As cheesy as it sounds, she has a kind of radar for scumbags and she wants—

“What the hell are you doing?” Riley’s voice sliced through the room and through my thoughts.

I faced her, the diary on the desk, my fingers still on the pages, and heat barreling through me, demanding I make her understand that she wouldn’t—She couldn’t—

“Jax, what the fuck are you doing with my journal?”