After barely sleeping at all, I stumbled down to the kitchen and blindly started a pot of coffee. I’d been so consumed with thoughts of Jackson that my mind wouldn’t shut off. I spent half the night debating with myself about whether I should go downstairs and get him or not. I decided not. It was a bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea. My body didn’t care.
The coffee beeped and pulled me from even more thoughts of sleeping with Jackson. I’d never been so consumed with a guy before. I was starting to think that normal, civilian life wasn’t quite as boring as I originally thought it was.
I took my cup out to the swing and curled up with my legs under me while I drank it. The caffeine buzzed through my system, waking me up enough that the muffled sound of talking finally made sense as it got closer.
“I’m trying.” Jackson’s voice sounded even more annoyed than when he spoke to me. “I’ll call you later.”
His eyes landed on me and went softer. That was a first. “You’re up.”
I nodded. “Have you heard anything about the Wolves?”
He sat down next to me and looked up as the swing groaned. “Maybe I should’ve been the one to fix this.”
“Shut up. It’s fine.” Even as I said it, I held my coffee away from me so it wouldn’t scald my face if we fell.
“Raptor really wants you. He increased the amount on your head. The deal we messed up that night was big time, apparently. He was gaining a lot more territory to run drugs. A lot. It would’ve put the Wolves on the map as far as power goes.”
I sighed and finished my coffee in one drink, burning my tongue and mouth in the process. “That’s not good.”
“Nope. He let all the clubs around know that he wanted you. There are men from every club in a two-hundred-mile radius searching for you.”
I rested my head against the back of the swing and stared at him. “He’s not going to stop, is he?”
Jackson shook his head. “He seems to be a little off the deep end where you’re concerned. Wants you to pay. You might’ve been wrong about me hating you more than Raptor does.”
I closed my eyes and curled up even tighter. “That’s not funny.”
“Probably not. You’re not going to be safe here forever, Camila. I know you don’t want to hear that, but you aren’t that far from their radius. They’ll find this place eventually. Nearly all of them have cops in their pockets.”
I looked up at him. “That’s the second time you’ve called me Camila. No one has called me that in so long.”
“Pretty name.”
I reached out and picked a piece of lint from his shoulder. “I don’t want to leave. This place is our home. In just a few short weeks, that’s become as true as anything I’ve ever known.”
He looked out at the land and rested his arm along the back of the swing behind me. “I’ll try to figure something out. In the meantime, let me teach you and Micah some things to protect yourselves.”
I looked up at Micah’s window and saw him standing there, watching us. I waved and he grinned before ducking away. “He was scared yesterday. He was worried that I’d run away with you and leave him behind.”
Fingers gently tugged at my hair. “He doesn’t know how much you dislike me, huh?”
I lifted my head and grinned at him. “Clearly.”
“You’re good with him. I don’t know how. Neither of us had great role models.”
“I love him more than anything. That makes it easier. I don’t know if my mom ever loved me. She wasn’t the same kind of sick as your mom, but there was definitely something wrong with her.”
He paused when Micah ran out of the house with Deli at his heels. “I found an old tennis ball! I’m going to play fetch with Deli.”
“What do you want for breakfast?” My question reached deaf ears as he ran into the field and threw the ball. I looked over at Jackson and shrugged. “Maybe I’m off breakfast duty this morning.”
“What happened with your dad? I can’t get it out of my head.”
I sat up and turned away to fully face Micah. “You know. I don’t have to tell you for you to know, Jackson.”
“Is he still living in the old neighborhood?”
“Dead. Died when I was twelve. I got put in the system and ended up with some guys just as awful as Dad. I ran away and lived on the streets for a while before King found me.”
“I fucked up back then. I can see that now. I was so angry. Fuck, I’m still angry. I’ve gone through anger management no less than ten times and it still hasn’t helped all that much. Mom beat the shit out me when she could catch me. I was a big kid and she overpowered me. She was just…everywhere. I blamed you for Dad leaving me with her. Obviously, it made no sense.
“I’m sorry, Camila. I was wrong. I should’ve seen the signs of what you were going through. Looking back, I should’ve. It was pretty clear.”
I turned to face him on the swing and tucked my feet under my legs again. “I wouldn’t have taken help. I wasn’t okay, either. I did things at that age that would make me blush right now. I was just going with the flow of my life. I think I thought it was normal. Thank you for apologizing, though.”
“Does it make you want to sleep with me?”
I laughed and slapped his arm, feeling lighter. “Idiot.”
He reached out and caught a handful of my hair, letting it slip out of his fingers as he watched. “You ever hear from your mom?”
I bit my lip and looked out at Micah again. Deli was sprinting after the tennis ball with Micah cheering him on. “She’s dead, too. I found out when I was on the streets. She was killed by a dealer while trying to steal from him. I guess she’d started using, too.”
“Damn. I’m sorry, Camila.”
I looked back at his dark eyes, reminded of the way they looked inviting to secrets, and let one of mine go. “I’m not. I was glad when I found out. She left me with a sick man, knowing what he’d do to me. She and Dad deserved what they got.”
He moved to scoot closer to me and the swing gave out. We landed on our backs again, staring up at a cloudless sky. “You’re terrible at fixing swings.”
“Also at holding grudges, apparently.”
He looked over at me, a smile clear on his face. “Does that mean”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I was going to say that you don’t hate me anymore. I guess I know what your mind is on.”
I reached over and pushed his face away from mine as I rolled over and climbed to my feet. “Can we call a truce with the fighting and the history lessons?”
Jackson easily stood up and nodded. “Yeah.”
“You can teach us some stuff. Micah needs to know how to protect himself.”
“And you?”
I picked up my coffee mug and lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I do pretty well for myself.”
He moved so fast that I barely had time to blink before he was on me. His arms wrapped around my neck and my waist, trapping my arms to my body and my back to his. “Do pretty well for yourself now.”
“I don’t have my weapons.”
“That’s reality. Come on. Get out of this hold.”
I struggled and wore myself out before deciding to cheat. I rolled my hips against his and tilted my head back to rest on his shoulder. “If you want to hold me, you can just do it. You don’t have to do all of this.”
Jackson’s body stiffened against mine, one part particularly. He groaned and spun me around in his arms. When he saw the smile on my face, he growled. “Cheater.”
I slipped from his grip and moved towards the kitchen. “I’m thinking pancakes for breakfast. That good with you?”
He grunted and moved towards Micah. “You’re not a very nice woman, Cammie.”
“Pancakes, it is.”
I made a big stack of pancakes with bacon and scrambled eggs before calling the boys inside to eat. They came in with a panting Deli, who immediately fell out, belly first, onto the kitchen floor.
“Cammie, look at this!” Micah looked at Jackson and motioned for him to come closer. “Do it, Jackson.”
Jackson lunged towards Micah and Micah spun away and sprinted right out of the kitchen door. Micah reappeared with another slam of the screen door and grinned. “Jackson said my biggest strength is how fast I am! I just have to run. Did you see how fast I spun away from him?”
I grinned at him and nodded. “You really were fast. I wonder what my strength is.”
“Jackson said it’s that you’re a little wild and no one expects it anymore. I still want to hear stories about you when you were little.”
I laughed. “I’m not wild. I’m so boring. Jackson is just a little crazy and that’s probably his strength.”
“No, his strength is his muscles.”
Jackson flexed his arms and I flipped the last pancake right onto the floor. He winked at me, actually winked, and scooped the fallen pancake into the trash can. “I have a story for Micah. It’s a good one, I promise.”
I tensed and waited to get angry at what he was going to say. Most of the stories from my childhood weren’t appropriate to tell to a child.
“So, I told you that she’s a little wild and people don’t expect it. Well, when Camila was a few years younger than you are now, I was always such a jerk to her. I was a bad kid and I picked on her every time I saw her. I was older and I should’ve known better, but I did it anyway. Well, one day, she got back at me. She somehow managed to climb into a tree and waited on me to walk by.”
I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand. I didn’t know he ever found out that I’d been the one to do that to him.
“She jumped out when I walked under her and kicked me right in the head. Knocked me right out. I woke up, still just in the middle of the sidewalk on my back, and had no clue what’d happened. One of my friends told me that little Camila Vaughn had turned into a ninja and dropkicked me right into a stupor. I couldn’t even be mad about it. I never lived that down, though. I’m sure if I ever went back to that neighborhood, people would still talk about Camila flying out of that tree at me.”
Micah fell out in laughter and shook his head. “No way! No way did Cammie do that. She’s too nice.”
I plated the food for all of us and couldn’t help the warm smile I sent to Jackson. “I never knew you found out that it was me.”
He held my gaze and nodded. “Found out and couldn’t forget it. It was the first thing I thought about that night at the diner.”
“No wonder you were so unhappy to see me.”
“He’s going to teach us cool moves to kick someone’s butt. Can we still get ice cream first?”
I shoved a piece of bacon into a pool of syrup and ate it. “Sure. Hoping you’ll see Kate again?”
He shrugged and remained silent.
I looked up to find Jackson staring at me with heat in his expression. His food sat in front of him, untouched, and I felt a shocking wave of arousal shoot straight to my core. I shifted in my chair and crossed my legs to try to alleviate the pressure.
Jackson’s eyes trailed down my body and settled the spot I was trying to get my focus from. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the table top and groaned low in the back of his throat.
I blushed furiously and pushed the syrup towards him. “Eat.”
He nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”