Before You(30)

“Bre,” the voice zinged through her body like an electric shock and her eyes flew open. She knew that voice.

“Jax,” she said in a whisper, her eyes searching his face, wondering why he was here. “Where’s Cam?” She looked toward the entrance of the room and the silence stretched uncomfortably making her anxious. “Jax, is he okay?”

“Yes. He’s fine, but he couldn’t make it. He had a business meeting for an upcoming event in Seattle and he couldn’t get the time off from work.” His voice was hard, and she almost felt as though he were angry with her.

Bre sucked in a breath. Her immediate anger and betrayal at Cam’s careless abandonment threatened to overwhelm her tenuous hold on her emotions. She swallowed hard, trying to push them away again. “Okay. Why are you here?”

The corners of his mouth turned up, and for a minute she forgot where she was, and smiled back at him. “I’m coming to support my friend. We are friends, right?”

“We’re friends, good friends.” And for some reason, she knew it was true. Seeing him here felt right, and her initial resentment toward Cam faded away. In that moment, it didn’t matter that Cam couldn’t come. She had Jax.

Jax grabbed her hand and squeezed it, but unlike the other acquaintances, who had done the same, he didn’t drop it, he pulled her closer to him and leaned toward her ear. “Are you ready to do this?”

She turned toward him, resting her head on his chest for a moment while he caressed her back with his free hand. “Now I am,” she responded, tilting her head up to look into his silvery eyes. “Thanks for coming.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead and led her down the aisle.

When they neared the open casket, she squeezed his hand so hard she thought she might be cutting off his circulation, but she couldn’t let go. Stopping about a foot from the casket, she released a breath that came out more like a whimper than an exhalation. Her grandma’s fragile age-lined face was covered in wax-like paint, and her long gray hair was pulled away from her face in a bun on top of her head.

Bre reached out, running her fingers across her grandma’s cheek. “She hardly resembles the woman I knew,” she said in a small voice.

“Were you close?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.” Bre stared, unseeing, at the flower arrangements that lined the back of the room, not wanting to remember her grandmother as she looked right now. “I loved her, but our relationship was strained. My mother left me alone with her for long stretches of time, and sometimes I think my grandmother resented being my primary caretaker. Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t openly hostile or anything, but she seemed cold and detached at times, and I got the impression that she sacrificed a lot of things because she had to take care of me.”

“Knowing what I do about you, I’m sure she loved you. How could she not? Helping raise her granddaughter probably wasn’t in her plans, but I’m sure she didn’t regret it.”

“I hope she didn’t. She just seemed angry sometimes.”

Music started, signifying the beginning of the service, and Jax guided Bre to a chair in the front row. When they sat down, Jax kept their hands intertwined, and she noticed a few people staring at them with questions in their eyes. Everyone knew she had been with Cam since high school, but Cam was noticeably absent, and she was clutching some stranger’s hand as if it were her lifeline.

Sara slid into the seat next to her, and motioned pointedly to her hand that was now resting in Jax’s lap. Bre shrugged and turned away. She couldn’t bring herself to care what anyone thought about Jax’s presence. Holding his hand made it easier to breathe, and maybe that made her reckless or inconsiderate of Cam’s feelings, but she refused to give up his comfort for the sake of appearances.

Sara leaned forward, looking at Jax. “Hi,” she whispered. “I’m Sara, Bre’s friend from college.”

“I’m Jax, a friend of Bre’s,” he responded without elaboration, and Sara looked at Bre with raised eyebrows, indicating she wanted a full explanation later.

Bre smiled inwardly at Jax’s reference to her as his friend rather than Cam’s. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. She liked that he thought of their relationship as something separate from his relationship with Cam. During her last week in LA, she couldn’t wait to wake up and meet him to surf, and every morning since she left, she wished she could call him, but she didn’t have his number. She didn’t want to ask Cam for it because the idea of involving Cam meant having to answer questions about her relationship with Jax, and she didn’t want to explain it to Cam.