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“It’s not you…” She looked again behind him. Not at Brad. Someone else. He frowned, turning his head to look where she was looking.
Brad and Britt hadn’t noticed, they were too busy staring into each other's eyes.
But in the booth beside theirs, the mirror of theirs in fact, sat two of Eric’s… Jaxon hesitated to call them friends, but he wasn’t sure what else to call them. They behaved more like attack dogs than anything.
Dogs.That sounded accurate. More so than ‘friend’ at any rate.
Whatever they were, they had their gazes locked on Teagan, and she was shaking beside him. He turned, reaching for her and turning her face towards him, two fingers on her jaw. “Hey… look at me. They can’t hurt you, okay?”
Maybe it was the beer that was making him bold.
Because he leaned over and kissed her again, tongue sliding into her mouth, tasting the sharp tang of her vodka and cranberry. It lingered on her lips and buzzed in his mouth. Or he thought it did. Maybe that was just Teagan.
He didn’t care what those dogs told Eric.
Even though he was pretty sure they could tell him lots of things that should worry him.
He had plenty of time left in life to worry, but only a limited window to kiss Teagan. So he opted for the latter.
Chapter Twelve
The car ride was relatively quiet, except for Teagan’s playlist on the radio and the way she absent-mindedly hummed along now and then.
Her mind was a cacophony of noise, though.
The drive to Blacktown wasn’t long. Perhaps fifteen minutes if the roads were clear. And it had been a split-second decision to bring Jaxon at all. Mom had texted her, telling her that their regular Tuesday night family dinner needed to be pushed to Thursday instead. Would that be alright?
And Teagan turned her phone around and showed Jaxon the screen. “Do you want to come too?” she asked.
He was scrolling through something on his own phone, but read the text when she showed him. Then he shrugged. “Might as well?”
Might as well.
She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel before turning the volume of the music down so she could speak.
They were about five-ish minutes out from Blacktown, and she figured they should at least touch base a little since the extent of their conversation had been “Do you want to come too?” and “Might as well.”
Jaxon had been quiet since that night at the bar with Brittany and Brad. Shea was also there, but she was so far up Frank’s ass, she practically wasn’t. It struck Teagan as odd, given how very talkative and touchy-feely he’d been while theywerethere. And before. He’d never had a problem talking to her before.
She thought she’d felt something else in those kisses. Something real. Especially when he’d said ‘Fuck Eric’ and kissed her silly in front of everyone at Hammer.
The memory made her belly swoop a little. Jaxon wasverygood at kissing her.
It was hard not to fall back on old habits and wonder what else he was good at, but she didn’t want to make this any weirder than it was already. And given his awkward silent treatment for the past few days, it was already pretty weird.
“You okay?” she asked, returning her hands to the ten and two positions on the steering wheel. She felt Jaxon shift in his seat before responding.
“Yeah, you?”
She pressed her lips together in a line and nodded. “Yeah, I am. You just seem… quiet is all.”
The silence that followed was one of the thickest pauses in her life. The air was heavy with all the words he didn’t say.
And then he simply responded with a shrug. “Just thinking, I guess.” He chuckled half-heartedly. “Worrying about meeting your parents, I suppose.”
“You’ve known them all your life,” she teased.
“Not as your boyfriend, I haven’t,” he countered.
