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“Late night for them?” Jaxon murmured and glanced up in his rearview.
I laughed and brought my legs up to my chest. Jaxon leaned forward and turned up the heat on my side of the car when he saw me shift under my blanket.
I side-eyed him suspiciously. “I know you’re warm already.”
“Nah,” he answered playfully, keeping his eyes on the road.
I studied him and leaned back against the headrest. I loved when he wore his hat backward, and I especially loved his new Miami Heat one. I was always drawn to the color black, and Jaxon had a pretty neutral wardrobe. With the exception of some Carolina and BGSU clothes, he wore a lot of black, white, gray, and red—and of course, it looked good on him.
“Have you heard any updates from Chase?” he asked.
“Yes and no.” I sighed. Since Chase returned to Pittsburgh to try and fix things with Trey, the status changed every other day. “I’m better off tracking the weather.”
“Tracking the weather?” he repeated, amused by the statement.
“Yes.” I giggled.
“So, they are off and on then?”
“One day, they’re working it out, and the next day Chase is on his way home again.” I shrugged and played with the tab on my canned coffee. “I just thought that it’s supposed to be easier once we grow up, ya know? Like you shouldn’t still have to be dealing with that stuff.”
“I think certain parts of your life become easier,” Jaxon said. “But there are always going to be hard parts, Mace. Getting older doesn’t stop bullshit from happening.”
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” I asked.
He did a double take to ensure I was being serious with my question, and a small smile curved into his dimple. “You know I’m in sports management. I wanna be an agent.”
“I know, but what do you want todo? You can’t just sit in your house when you’re an agent. Where do you want to go?”
“I wanna run my dad’s business out in California for a year or two. Then I’d like to open up an office and manage my own branch out on the east coast.” He shrugged. “Be closer to my mom. I know it’s hard for her with all the traveling my dad does for work, and my brother is out in Cali a lot too.”
“That was a quick answer,” I teased. “You’ve thought about that a lot?”
“All the time,” he admitted. “My dad has a huge book of business—one of the biggest agencies out there. I know he won’t just hand it to me, but I want to learn everything from him. Who to talk to, how to network, what makes a good deal . . . everything.”
“He sounds like an amazing dad,” I noted.
Jaxon’s expression went soft and he glanced over at me quickly to keep his eyes on the road. “The best.”
Hearing Jaxon talk about his family was always refreshing. I only knew the life he had at school—with classes, friends, girls, and the little bit of routine that we shared. Whenever he talked about his hometown and how he grew up, I tried to squeeze a few other questions in there. I craved to know everything about him whenever he chose to share it.
“What about your mom?” I sipped my canned coffee, and a huge grin spread across his face.
He completely lit up the moment he talked about her. “My mom is actually pretty badass. She would kill me for using that language to describe her, but she’s like Superwoman. She runs her own event planning business and even takes on some of the catering herself because she loves being in the kitchen. She’s given me everything–along with my dad.”
“How long have they been married?”
“They got married when Alex was two . . . so twenty-three years. But they dated before that, so they like to joke that it’s been a little longer. They actually met in high school and reconnected after college.”
I nodded, impressed by anyone who could be together for that long and still be happy.
“What are you thinking about?” Jaxon observed when I didn’t say anything else.
A smile broke my focused expression when he called me out. He always seemed to know when I was getting into my head before I could. “I think that it’s awesome that your parents are still happy after being together that long. Sometimes I wonder about mine.”
“Your mom sounded cool when you called her after I fixed your car,” he mentioned.
“You remember a phone conversation I had with my mom from back in October?” I emphasized.
