“Jax, we can’t do this.”
Turning her around to face him, he placed one hand on each side of her face. His smoky gray eyes studied her for a moment and then she watched with detached fascination as his head lowered, letting those flawless lips brush across hers. Part of her knew she should stop him, but she ignored that part, deciding instead to let herself have this one moment before she severed the connection between them forever. So she closed her eyes tightly and lost herself in the moment and in the feel of his lips against hers. They couldn’t be friends, or anything else if she still wanted Cam and his family in her life, and giving them up wasn’t an option. She and Cam broke up last night, but Cam and his family had always been the center of her life, her air, and she couldn’t fathom life without their support.
The soft groan escaping his mouth brought her crashing back to reality. Turning her head to break the kiss, she drew in a long, shuddering breath. “No, I won’t do this to Cam. I’ve known him all my life, and what we did was hurtful not just to Cam, but all of us. I don’t do this. Doing this…” she waved her hands back and forth between the two of them, “isn’t me. I can’t be that person. Even if I don’t want to be with him, I still love him. We’ve been friends as long as I can remember and being with you will hurt him and his dream.” She knew she should say more or try to explain what she was thinking, why her relationship with Cam was essential to maintaining her sanity, how without him she was in danger of becoming like her mom, but the words were stuck in her throat. The longer she remained quiet, the tighter her throat constricted, and she didn’t think she could say much of anything even if she wanted to.
“I guess I misunderstood. I thought you and Cam were over…”
“We are,” she interrupted. “But I can’t be with you and still be his friend, and I need his friendship. I’m sorry I misled you. Last night, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Fine,” he said, his voice not much more than a husky murmur. “It would never work between us. We’re too different.” He laughed lightly. “You know me, I’m not the relationship type of guy. We should let it go. Forget it ever happened. Cam doesn’t need to know. I won’t say anything. Technically, you weren’t together, so it doesn’t matter. We’ll go back to being strictly friends, nothing more.”
The minute the words came out of his mouth, her breath caught. He said exactly what she wanted to hear, but it felt entirely wrong. Looking at his face, she no longer saw the charming Jax she knew, she saw the perpetually jaded Jax that she watched dismiss hundreds of overeager girls without a second thought.
She stared at him with horror as he pulled out his phone and started scrolling through his contacts. Tears streamed down her face, and he looked… bored, ready to move on with his life and on to his next conquest. She wanted to rip the phone out of his hand and smash it into a thousand pieces. Did she mean so little to him? Did he even care about his friendship with Cam? Was this just a joke to him? She thought he cared about her, about Cam. Isn’t that why he showed up last night?
“I need to call a taxi to get to the airport. I think I can catch an earlier flight. I’ll wait outside.”
“Wait. Why did you come last night?”
“Cam thought you might be upset. I had some free time so I volunteered to check in on you.” He shrugged noncommittally as he pulled something from the inside pocket of his tailored black jacket. “This is for you,” he said, dropping an envelope on her entry table.
“You’re not going to the gallery opening tonight?” The minute the words fell out of her mouth, she knew it was a dumb question. Of course, he couldn’t come now.
“Given the circumstances, I think I’ll pass.”
“Okay,” she mumbled as she watched him walk out the front door without even bothering to say goodbye. She waited to feel a surge of relief that he hadn’t put up a fight; that she was off the hook, and there wouldn’t be any complications or messy feelings. Instead, an unexpected hollowness formed in her stomach and she sank to knees on the stairs, sobbing silently.
Hours passed while she stared absently at the front door and her cell phone. Having no idea how to continue on with her life now that she had betrayed Cam and destroyed her friendship with Jax, she couldn’t bring herself to move. She had difficulty swallowing against the dryness in her throat, and her eyes were puffy and swollen, but most of all she felt vacant, desolate, and exhausted.
She couldn’t decide if she was waiting for Cam to call or for Jax to come back. Jax promised her he wouldn’t say anything to Cam and that they both could pretend as though nothing happened. That may be easy for Jax, who had a constant stream of new women in his life, but not for her. Cam was her one and only boyfriend and the one and only person she had ever been intimate with before last night. Ignoring that there were now two people on her list of sexual partners rather than one was virtually impossible. Groaning, she feared she’d succeeded in becoming a soon to be forgotten notch on Jax’s bedpost while, for her, the night with him would be firmly embedded into her psyche, seared into mind like a brand.