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But he made it impossible.
As my continued silence forced Jett to turn away from me, the sense of loss had me nearly doubling over.
“Why?” I found myself asking as I fought back the very emotions I’d been forced to bury deep in the darkness of my head the moment I’d heard Marcus say my name. All the fear, confusion, rage, doubt… it was all there just beneath the surface of my skin, and it was all I could do not to grab on to Jett before he got too far away from me. “Why me?”
I sensed rather than saw Jett move back to my side. I was still crouched so I could see him in my periphery. I used every ounce of strength I had to keep my eyes on the ground, but when Jett’s strong fingers fluttered along my chin and clasped my cheek, I had no choice but to look at him.
Jett smiled softly as our eyes once again met. “You’re making it sound like I have a choice in the matter.” He pulled his hand back and settled it on the gun. Then he dropped his head, giving it a slight shake as he did so. The smile remained on his face, though. “It’s like the color of my skin or my body being attracted to men instead of women. It just is,” he explained.
Jett’s beautiful eyes returned to mine. “Sawyer, those things are a part of me and I wouldn’t change them for anything, even if it made life easier or safer. Every moment of my life, good and bad, has led me right here, right to this spot,” he continued as he pointed to the ground. His eyes never left mine and I’d never felt so ensnared in my life. Happily ensnared.
“I wouldn’t change any of that either,” Jett added, and I knew he meant what he said. It was clear as day in his eyes. For the first time since he’d arrived at the sanctuary, he seemed… at peace.
Jett’s willingness to let whatever internal walls he’d been keeping between us fall caused my own to fracture, and that little tiny spark of hope I kept hidden deep inside of me soared in my chest. I tried really hard to ignore it. I tried to come up with some stupid, simplistic response that would help me bring my emotions down a notch so he wouldn’t see how fucked in the head I really was. But those tiny fissures in my walls began to grow and grow.
“I’m so tired, Jett,” I admitted.
And just like that, Jett maneuvered me so that he was facing me instead of being next to me. His strong fingers clasped my face. The unspoken promise in his voice as he said, “I know you are, baby,” had tears stinging the backs of my eyes.
The endearment was my undoing. His touch was too. My body suddenly felt like it was being deflated. My muscles, which had been screaming with tension just seconds earlier, went lax and my brain thankfully began to shut down instead of dragging me down into one of the many rabbit holes that made it so easy to lose myself in.
All because I knew Jett was there to catch me.
To take care of me.
To make it so that I didn’t feel so fucking alone even when I was surrounded by people.
“Sawyer, look at me.”
I did as Jett commanded because it was all I could do. He released his gentle hold on my face and held out his hand. “Come lie down with me for a while,” he murmured.
It was a choice.
One that he needed me to make. To prove to him and me that I wasn’t just falling into some role I thought I should play to appease him. He wasn’t Marcus.
Jett was giving me a choice, but it was like he’d said, it wasn’t really a choice. Whatever was happening between us just was. The reality that I felt the same way made linking my fingers with his one of the easiest things I’d ever done.
I just wished with everything that I was that I could hang on to this moment for a little while longer because the second Jett realized what I’d become, what I’d allowed Marcus to turn me into, everything would change.
Everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JETT
I was certain with every step we took toward Maddox and Isaac’s house that I’d lose him. That whatever fear and shame was consuming him would win out and he’d do what he’d probably been doing for a very long time.
Run.
But Sawyer didn’t pull away from me, not even when I had to release his hand to open the door for him. I didn’t expect him to let me wrap my fingers around his again once we were inside the house, but that was exactly what he did.
