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Also just like our love.
Not everyplace though, not all the time.
How can the world of feelings be so different from the cool, hard world of reality and logic? I don’t have an answer to that, never did. Until now.
It was always his logic. He’s always been the one insisting I could and should do better than him. And now he’s gone and made any kind of a normal future for us impossible.
He’ll go to prison for the rest of his life. Which could be short if he gets the death penalty which he very well might. The marshals have already apprehended four of the men who escaped with him and the FBI is now involved in capturing the rest. Those men will be facing the death penalty. Jax will be too. If they catch him. And if he stays with me, they will.
Unless I give up all dreams of having a career as a singer/songwriter and hide out on some Mexican beach with him for the rest of our lives.
And then what?
He decides to up and leave me again with some bullshit excuse that life on the run is no life for me?
He would. He’d never let me make this sacrifice in the first place. But he’d also leave if I went ahead and made it.
Fact is, I’ll soon be twenty-six and I’ve been putting my dreams on hold for years. My dreams of touring and making a career from my music and a life with Jax. Mostly because my parents were always so worried about what might happen to me if they let me go out into the world on my own. And because Jax wanted to keep our love a secret.
And because I’m shy and reclusive and don’t do well out in the world on my own. As I’ve proven with Manny.
I’ve checked his social media and it’s full of pics of him in a hospital gown with a messed up face, but as far as I can tell from his captions and comments, he is sticking to the story Jax told him to tell. Except for mentioning thatsometimes a pretty face is worth it, which could be an allusion to the fact that he got beat up because of me.
I’m in a clothing store at a mall not far from the motel where the rest of my stuff is, picking out clothes for Jax. I’m tempted to get him the ugliest stuff of which there’s no shortage of here—neon pink shirts and jeans so ripped they have more holes than cloth—but I won’t do that.
It’d be petty of me and I don’t do petty.
The fact that I want to is sign enough that the decision to let him go is a shaky one. I finally made it after getting a call from my father in which he made no secret of the fact that he wants me to come home. And when I refused, he insisted that I accept no less than four of his MC brothers as my round-the-clock protection.
It’s the last thing I want. But he wouldn’t hear no on that, not even a little bit.
So at least I’ll be safe.
I guess.
But Jax won’t be.
My father and Cross and all the rest think he escaped from prison because he means us all harm and he’ll be using me to get it. It was much the same story Jax finally revealed to me before we left the motel. Fiction on both sides, I’m sure.
My father wants me safe behind the walls of Sanctuary, the MC’s HQ, and Jax wants me to need him, so I’ll forgive him and let him stay.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” a woman’s voice interrupts my train of thought. It’s one of the sales ladies, a woman about my age with glossy, gleaming black hair cut short around her head in a 1920s style.
“Ummm, do you have these in XXL?” I ask, indicating a three pack of t-shirts—black, white and heather grey. I’ve found them in XL, but I think he outgrew that size.”
My arms are aching from the several pairs of jeans, sweats, sweatshirts, underwear, socks and a couple of black baseball caps that I’ve already picked out.
She searches the stack of shirts and deftly pulls out the size I asked for, then makes a confused face as she tries to hand it to me but can’t because my hands are so full.
“What happened?” she asks. “Did you have a fire or something?”
“You could say that,” I reply without thinking.
“Well, he’s a lucky guy to have you doing all his shopping for him,” she says. “The least he could do is help you carry it.”
She looks pointedly at my bare and bruised throat then into my eyes. I really shouldn’t have unzipped my jacket, but I was just so hot. “You don’t have to stay with him.”
“He didn’t do this to me,” I say in a shaky, hoarse voice, then clear my throat. “And I’m not staying with him.”
