“Yeah,” Jax growls into his cell phone. My eyes are refusing to open, even though I can tell by his ensuing silence something is wrong on the other end. “When?” More silence. “Where’d they take him?” He breathes out a long breath of air and I manage to open my eyes in time to watch him rub his hand down his face and swing his feet over the side of the bed so he can sit up. “I’ll be there in two hours.”
He doesn’t turn to me, just puts his head in his hands and rests his elbows on his knees.
“You OK?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” No emotion in that statement. Just blank.
“You gotta leave?”
He finally turns a little to give me a sideways glance. “I do. I know it’s bad, Sasha. I know I should stay here with you. But I have to go.”
“Should I go with you?”
He smiles then. Like big. And then he lies down and pulls me up to his chest. “God, I wish. See, if you take me up on that offer we could be partners. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
I picture it in my head. “Am I Scully or Mulder?”
“Definitely Mulder,” he says with a huff of laughter.
“I think so too. Can we look for aliens and take on weird X-Files cases?”
“For sure.”
It’s my turn to smile big. I think I might really like Jax. He’s nice. “I’ll think about it.”
“Will you be OK here?”
“I’m OK everywhere, Jax. Don’t worry about me.”
He leans in and kisses me on the lips. It’s a little kiss. Not meant to be spectacular. But for some reason it feels amazing. “I gotta go. That call was about my brother.”
“Oh, did something bad happen?” Jesus, I hope not. I can tell his brother means everything to him.
“Very bad. Very, very fucking bad. But he’s OK, so I can’t ask for anything else without being selfish.”
I prop myself up on my elbow. “Are you religious?”
“What?” He shoots me a confused look.
“Do you have guilt for wanting more out of life, even when you have plenty?”
“A bit.”
“And you think asking for too much makes the bad luck come?”
“In a way, I guess. I just try to be grateful for the small things.”
I lie back and think about that as Jax drags himself out of bed and starts to get dressed. “Do you think we bring our own bad luck? Or do you think sometimes our luck mingles with the luck of someone else, and gets tangled up in it?”
He’s pulling up his pants when I ask this question, but he stops with his fingers on the zipper to look at me in the approaching dawn. “I never thought of it, I guess.”
“What time is it?”
He points to the bedside clock. “Four-thirty. I don’t know when I can come back, Sasha. It’ll probably take me all day just to sort out what happened. So if you want to go home, it’s only a two-hour drive. There’s a car in the garage. The keys are in the kitchen drawer next to the fridge.”
“Is someone coming to pick you up?”
“Yeah,” he says, grabbing a white dress shirt from the closet and sliding his arms into the sleeves. “The jet. There’s an airfield about a half a mile away. By the time I get over there, the jet should be landing.”
He buttons his shirt and grabs a tie. I watch him as he dresses and feel… like I should not ask for too much more right now, either. If he’s right, and we should be satisfied with the little things that makes us happy, then I’m way overdue for some bad luck. Because I really want more with this man.
“Next time,” he says, leaning down to kiss me as he ties his tie, “I’ll make you breakfast. I promise.” Another kiss, this time with a little tongue, and then he’s gone. Dashing down the hallway. A few seconds later the front door opens and closes.
And I’m alone.
I’m used to being alone. But now that I’ve had a taste of Jax, I don’t like it.
I weigh my options. I could stay here. But I’m not sure I can stand looking at all those pictures of Nick all day. And what if Jax can’t come back at all? What if his job just swoops him off to DC or something?
I could go home. But what’s at home for me? An empty house? A non-existent career in academia?
Or… I could go to my real home. My mom and dad are gone. I know that. But Five said today is Sparrow’s birthday and she was having a party. How hard could it be to find the party?
I don’t want to be alone anymore.
I get up and go searching for my coat. My phone is in there. I have a moment of panic that I left it in whatever vehicle brought us here, but when I open the coat closet, there it is. My phone is even in the pocket, right where I left it.
Can Jax be any more perfect? It’s like he thinks of everything. He’s the guy who just takes care of shit. Like, I bet if he came into my house and saw the leaky faucet in the first-floor bathroom, he’d just fix it. Or if the car needed an oil change, he’d take it to get it done on his lunch break.
Jax is reliable.
I like reliable.
Plus he’s hot.
I like hot too.
But right now I need to be grounded. I need to go home. So I search my contacts and find Harrison’s name. I’ve called him dozens of times for the favor I’m going to ask for. But not since the abduction. I haven’t gone anywhere since the abduction.
I press send and it rings. Just twice.
“Yeah,” Harrison says, clearly asleep.
“I need a ride.”
“Sasha,” he growls at me. “It’s three-thirty in the morning.”
I say nothing. I know what time it is. And he’s on Mountain time, so it’s an hour earlier than here.
“Is it an emergency?” he asks.
“No. But I need to go home. Sparrow’s having a birthday and I need to be there.”
“She’s not having a party at three-thirty.”
“I know, but you hate last-minute trips. So I’m calling ahead.”
He laughs. “Your idea of calling ahead kills me, kid.”
“You love me though.”
“I do. But not enough to come get you now. I’ll be in Lawrence at—”
“No, I’m not in Lawrence. I’m in… hold on. Let me find my map app.” I page through my phone until I get to the maps, and then open it up and zoom in. “I’m in a place called Falls City, Nebraska. And there’s an airfield there. You know it?”
“I know it. Be there at noon your time, and not a minute earlier.”
“I love you, Harrison.”
“I know, kid.”
And then I get the three beeps that say he’s ended the call.
Harrison was the pilot we used to pull that last Company takedown. He’s really a friend of James, but he always liked me better than James because James is a crazy asshole.
A lovable crazy asshole, though. I’d love to see him and Harper again. But they almost never leave the yacht they live on. But seeing Rook and Veronica is just as good. Better, probably. I can talk men with them.
Jax is just as good a catch as their husbands. I bet they’d approve of him.
I set the alarm on my phone for ten AM, and then climb back in bed to daydream about Jax. I’d like to get to know him better. I don’t know if I want to take that job he’s offering, but he said he likes me either way. Maybe I don’t need to work or go to school at all? Maybe I can sit around and be lazy and live off my money?
I don’t have to decide now, though. So I drop it and drift off to sleep thinking I haven’t felt this happy in years.