“Jax?”
I wipe at the tears under my eyes. “Hey,” I sniffle, “I gotta go.”
Moving as fast as I can without running into anyone else, I stand and speed walk my way out of there.
“Jax—hey, wait!”
I don’t even bother turning around. I don’t need anyone’s pity. I don’t need to feel like this, and I definitely don’t need the extra attention that being with him would bring.
CHAPTER SIX
KAI
I watch his retreating form,wanting more than anything to go after him but also knowing Coach will chew my ass out if I miss class. He’s super strict when it comes to our schooling, so pursual is out of the question.
“Come on, Kai. We have to go.”
Forcing myself to look away, I walk to my next class, but Jax is on the forefront of my mind.
I’d never seen him before the party, and now, just a couple days later, he’s right in front of me again. But this time, his voice was broken with tears; despite me wanting to say hi and hopefully convince him to give me his number, he was running away from me.
Was the party that bad for him?
Personally, it was an amazing moment for me, something I wish would happen again and again.
Is it something I did? Why was he so fucking upset?
“Come on, dude. We’re going to be late,” my friends call out behind me, but I catch myself looking over my shoulder at the man I really want. I should go after him—would he be into that? But Coach… Fuck. This is hard.
I make the decision to do this later. I’m sure I’ll see him around campus again, especially now that I know who I’m looking for. There’s no way I wouldn’t notice him now.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
JAX
There’s onlyseven months left until I graduate, and I have no plans of seeing Kai ever again. It was fun while it lasted, that whole five minutes in the kitchen on Halloween night, but nope—I don’t need that again.
Add it to my list of shit to forget about…but also kind of not. He will have to be in my thoughts all the fucking time until we do walk across the stage, because I have a new mission to nevereverrun into him. This shouldn’t be too hard, given I don’t think it’s ever happened before, but who knows? I’m not about to take that risk and embarrass myself even further.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JAX
10 years later
“And as I’msure you’ve heard, Mr. Williams had a tragic accident two weeks ago and is currently hospitalized. We’re not sure if he’s going to make it, but there is currently an interim CEO filling that role.”
“I’m sorry, what? No, I’ve been traveling the last two weeks.”
Since the day I graduated, I’ve been working my ass off. I got the engineering degree, and then I did two years to get a master’s in business administration, never even bothering to stop and consider what other options there were because it was so much easier to just be guided and do as I was told. Less thinking on my part, and it was just one thing that didn’t need to be added to my ever-growing list of shit to do. At that point, it just seemed easier to let others tell me what next steps to take. The job, of course, came next, another eight years sitting behind a desk. There came an epiphany about two months ago, though—why the fuck am I just wasting my fucking life away? I’m not in any sort of serious relationship, never had one, and I’m fine with that. Of course, I have my regular flings, but they’re nothing more than that. I’venever traveled outside of my surrounding states, never been out of the country. So, I said fuck it.
I started looking at where I was going to go and how I was going to fund it. Thankfully, there was some financial maturity involved and a good lump sum of cash sitting in my savings account for whatever I may need it for, and that’s what I was going to use to spend two weeks traveling around Asia. I wanted to be able to see what the world had to offer, try new foods, learn and enjoy new cultures, something that isn’t the mundane day-to-day I’ve been doing.
I became an engineer because that’s what I was always told I should do. It’s not something I would have chosen for myself, and maybe that’s why I got so burnt out on it. So, amidst trying to plan this big ass trip, I also started applying for a new job, something completely different from what I am currently doing.
My main focus was applying to listings that said they were entry-level, although there were a few wishful thinking ones that weren’t, and then I waited for something to stick. There were calls back for interviews, but when I finally got the offer for a personal assistant, there was no hesitation in saying yes.
