AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll get you a towel.” He stands up and starts walking.
I scoot to the side of the bed and watch him walk away, tension radiating along the lean lines of his impressively muscular body. With every step he takes, the fireplace that still flickers withorange and blue on the nearby wall warms me less and less. I’m cold because he’s walking away. That’s what really hits me.He’s walking away. He wasn’t, and now, he is. He’s not hunting down a towel. He’s withdrawing. He’s putting space between us. My gaze flicks to the box of tissues on the stone nightstand. It’s a gorgeous nightstand. This castle is gorgeous. I want to explore it with the gorgeous man who owns it. Decision made to chase him the way he just chased me, I grab a few tissues and quickly clean up before I race after him. The door shuts right when I reach the bathroom, and it does so with him on the other side. I’m right. He’s shutting me out. I was about to leave, I was shutting him out, and apparently, regardless of what just happened between us, I did. It worked.
I press my hands to the heavy wooden surface that now divides me from him, only it’s not the door that divides us. It’s so much more. I was leaving when we ended up naked. I felt like I had to leave. My forehead settles on the wood, and I replay everything that just happened, I walk myself through why I was in that place, why I pushed him until he shut me out. This is what I wanted, and yet, I’m not running to get dressed. I’m naked, waiting for him to come out of the bathroom. I’m willingly naked, but he doesn’t know that.
He keeps saying “us.” He keeps fighting for us, and I’ve established over and over that I believe in Jax. I believe that he has no agenda that isn’t honest and real with me. Bottom line: I’m not being honest and real with him. Instead, I’m running, and if I’m honest with myself and him, I’m the one with the agenda. One I need to be honest about. One he deserves to hear. He knows it, too, and if I want us to have a chance, he needs to hear me confess everything.
I inhale and dare to open the door and shove past the barrier it’s created between me and Jax. A barrier that I created, albeit with the help of our families, but I did plenty myself, whichmeans it’s on me to tear it down. I have to make this my confessional. I need Jax to know that I’m willing to be naked in all ways with him.
Chapter fifty-seven
Emma
Icatch a glimpse of Jax naked and perfectly male as he steps into the shower, almost the same moment that I enter the bathroom.
My chest pinches with the confirmation that he had no intention of returning to the bedroom. I replay the moments we’d had in the bedroom, in his bedroom, in his bed where he’d invited me, where he says he invites no one. I think of the emotions we shared, of how much I loved and feared every moment we’d shared. I’m afraid of falling in love and getting hurt, and instead, I hurt him. I think I really did hurt him. I have to fix this.
I shut the door with me inside with Jax.
I have no idea why I shut the door behind me, but I do. It’s symbolic, I decide. I’m here to stay. I’m in here with him. Certain I have one shot to make this up to him, I lean on the wooden surface and listen as the water comes on, steeling myself for deserved rejection, contemplating where Jax and I are emotionally right now, no, where I want us to be. And that leads me to one place: all in. That means being vulnerable, at allcosts. I push off the door and move toward the shower. Real and honest, rawly honest, is my plan. This very idea doesn’t slow my steps but speeds them up. I close the space between me and the shower, between me and Jax. Suddenly, I have so much to say to him and the idea that he won’t listen undoes me in a way only he can undo me. I’ve known men who pretended to want just me, but they didn’t. I knew they didn’t. I’m all but running naked through a castle by the time I’m at the door to the shower.
I pull it open, and Jax is standing under the water, his face down. His gaze jerks up, and before he can even turn to face me, I’m standing in front of him. I’m wrapping my arms around him. “I’m sorry. I got spooked. That’s all. I reacted and—”
He backs me up and presses me against the stone wall behind me. His hands plant on the wall on either side of me. “You—”
“I know everything I did,” I say, stopping him before he makes a point that I’ve already made in my head. “And I’m sorry for all of it. The truth is, I’m really deep in this emotionally with you, and I wasn’t running from what was inside that envelope. I was running from your reaction. I decided that I was all in, and you were one envelope from being all out.”
I reach up and stroke his wet hair from his handsome face, and I don’t pull back, not physically or emotionally. “I’m terrified of finding out that my family isn’t worth protecting, that they killed your brother. And that would end us and break me. That’s how all in I am with you. If you walk away—”
He catches my hand and his eyes, those piercing eyes that always manage to see too much, smolder and not with desire. He’s angry, he’s furious even. “I didn’t try to walk away,” he says, his voice low, taut. “You did.” His jaw sets hard. “Twice.”
“I know,” I whisper, and while he holds me, I have this sense that he could let go of me at any moment like I haven’t said enough, like maybe I can’t say enough to fix this. The idea that I’ve lost a good thing, and wearea good thing, guts me, it drivesme to confess what I would never dare with anyone else. “I’m used to everyone having an agenda. I’m used to them wanting something from me. I’m used to—” Unbidden emotion wells in my throat, the past month of loss and bombshells punch me right in the throat, but I don’t look away, I don’t hide from him. I push forward. “I’m used to being alone. I’m used to counting on only me. It’s how I survive. This,us, you, Jax, it’s going to take me some time to know I can trust that this is real, but it’s not about you. It’s about me.”
He stares at me again. God, these stares are killing me, his expression unreadable, his energy humming with a rough purr along my nerve endings. I can’t read him and that scares me. I’m coming apart from the inside out with the idea that this is it, afraid I’ve given too much, too late. He’s the one who lost his brother. He should be pushing me away. I’m a Knight. And yet, he isn’t. The certainty that he will now has me ready to bolt, but that’s how we got here, that’s how he ended up in the shower without me. I’m not running again. I’ve bared my soul to Jax. I’ve told him everything, and now he’s my judge and jury. I have to have the courage to wait for that ruling, but I just can’t take it. I can’t take his silence. “Jax,” I whisper, and it’s as if his name on my lips is what he wanted, what he was waiting for.
He drags me to him, our naked bodies molded close, his hand sliding over my hair, and dragging my gaze to his. “No more running.”
Relief washes over me, but it’s marginal, it’s not fully realized. “I don’t want to run, but why aren’t you?”
“If you were anyone else, I would, in a blink I would, but I can’t walk away from you.”
“Why? Because—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t say it. Not if it involves me having an agenda. What part of me being insanely into you, do you not get?”
“I don’t know what happened to your brother. I don’t, but what if my father killed your brother? What if it goes deeper than him? How do we survive that?”
“Together, baby. We do it together. Because you’re not alone anymore. And neither am I.”
My heart swells. My heart is going to shatter for Jax. “We can’t survive that.”
“I have always been a man who goes for what he wants, who fights until I’m bloody, but bloody doesn’t mean I lose. It means I can take the pain if it means we win. Watch and see.” He kisses me and pulls me under the water with him. We hold each other there, but his words radiate through me. He can take the pain if we end up together. I can’t walk away from him either, but I should, I should, because he just told me that he expects me to cause him pain. I probably already am.
Chapter fifty-eight
Emma
We don’t end up standing under the water for long.
