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“You make the best coffee.” She grins and it’s pure Disney villainess.
Despite the banal topic, this seems to be a standoff of sorts. After a moment, Jax leans over and murmurs he’ll be right back. He follows with “Okay?” like I might beg him to stay in the room and protect me from his sister. I don’t. She doesn’t scare me.
Once he’s gone, Julieann leans back on the chair she’s sitting in and folds her hands on her lap like Dr. Evil.
“What are you doing with him, Allison? If you think you can come back here and play with his heart and then go home like nothing happened—”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“Don’t talk to me like you’re my therapist,” she warns. “I know him. I know how he felt about you and I know how wrecked he was when you two split.”
“He’s not twenty anymore, Jules. Neither of us is.”
“He’s a good guy. You’re contented with shallow pretty boys now, so why not stick with the Xavier McCormacks of the world? What could you possibly want with Jax?”
Shocked, my hackles rise and I’m either unable or unwilling to keep from defending myself. Typically, I’m good at being coy. Just not right now.
“You think it didn’t wreck me when we split? I was a mess. I didn’t date for a year afterward. What Jax and I had wasn’t easy to forget.” I stop short of telling her the rest. That when I returned here and found him in my parents’ house, not only wasn’t it easy to forget but it crashed into me in vivid full color.
Jax.
Us.
Everything.
And now that sex is in the mix—and after spending the last few nights together, I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk away unscathed this time, either.
“I don’t know how you were, no,” she answers. “I only know how he was. Angry and bitter. He didn’t wait a year, by the way. He didn’t wait long before he had sex with someone else.”
I gasp, unable to hide my shock. It wasn’t only rude, her comment; it stung like rubbing alcohol to a fresh cut.
“Jules.” Jax enters the room with a cup of steaming coffee in each hand, his tone lethal. “What the hell?”
“She should know,” she tells him. “She should know how you felt when you split.”
“That’s up to me to tell her.”
“You’re not going to tell her!” Jules bursts out of the chair, her fists balled.
With an outstretched arm, he offers her a cup of coffee, and after a silent debate she takes it. He hands mine down to me and I hold it, the liquid wobbling from the shake in my arms.
“We’re getting there,” he tells his sister. “And this is too far in for you to put a stop to, so you may as well quit trying.”
Julieann absorbs that news like a blow. Her shoulders roll forward and her eyes shut briefly before opening and landing on me. I don’t know why, but I’m hit with a sudden blast of compassion. She loves Jax and is trying to protect him.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” I tell her softly. “But you don’t understand where I’m coming from. Not really. Jax knows I’m going back to California like I know he’ll stay here. But we can’t let this time pass us by and not be with each other. Even if it doesn’t amount to more than feelings we can’t make last.”
Jax and I exchange glances, his mouth a grim line of acceptance.
With a sigh of defeat, Julieann sits down. She screws her eyes up to her brother’s and mutters in defeat, “Okay.”
Jax doesn’t say anything verbally, but he must send her one of those telepathic messages because Julieann nods in response.
“Soufflé!” Jean announces, stepping into the room with a dessert that definitely collapsed in the oven.
“It’s chocolate,” Joe announces proudly, bowls and spoons in hand.
The tension in the room is so thick that Jean notices but mistakes it for something else. “You do eat chocolate, don’t you, Allie?”
“I love chocolate,” I bleat in support.
“What a relief.” She deposits the tray onto the coffee table in front of me.
Julieann sends me a look I can’t read. It’s either gratitude for being kind to her mother or suspicion over what I’m doing with her brother.
Could be both. It’s hard to say with her.
