Before You (Before You #1)(49)
Her voice was so soft Jax could barely hear her. He could tell she was still uneasy about what happened between them. “I’ll be waiting in the pick up area.”
Bre didn’t reply, and Jax didn’t say anything else. It seemed as if several minutes passed while he listened to the sound of her breathing lightly into the phone. The sound soothed him like nothing else he remembered for a long time.
“Jax,” she whispered. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I don’t want to lose you. You’re important to me. I know we haven’t known each other for a long time, but you’re one of my closest friends. I love you. I can’t imagine not having you in my life.”
Her words felt like both a balm for his soul and a knife twisting in his gut.
He sighed. “You’re important to me too, Bre.” He could hear her moving around the room and he wished he could see her, hold her.
“And Jax?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for asking Sara to display my artwork. I sold two pieces. It was amazing.”
“I’m glad. You deserve it. See you tomorrow, sweetie.”
“Bye.”
Hanging up, he tossed his phone on the leather ottoman near his feet. This was going to be a long weekend for more than one reason. The thought of being so near to her without being able to touch her would make him crazy, and even worse than not being able to touch her would be watching Cam touch her. The thought of Cam holding Bre’s hand or kissing her made his hands twitch with the urge to hit something.
He respected Cam as a musician and as a friend, but Cam didn’t deserve Bre’s devotion. The way she put Cam on a pedestal as if he couldn’t do anything wrong frustrated him. He didn’t understand why Bre didn’t think she was good enough for Cam. She always told everyone how lucky she was to be with Cam, that Cam was the best boyfriend anyone could imagine. In his opinion, fortune smiled on Cam the day Bre walked into his life, not the other way around. For some unfathomable reason, Bre didn’t see if that way. Apparently, she decided years ago that she needed Cam in her life, and she refused to heed any logic to the contrary.
Chapter Twenty-One
After her phone conversation with Jax, she twirled her paintbrush between her thumb and index finger, focusing on the painting she had been working on all night as a way to occupy her thoughts. It wasn’t her typical whimsical landscape. The colors were deep and heavy with slashing paint strokes, much more passionate and alive than her other work. Unsure whether she liked it or not, she took it off her easel and leaned it against the wall. With all but one of her paintings selling at the opening, both Sara and Michael were pushing her to display more of her work. She loved painting, but she still wasn’t sure how much of her art she wanted to sell or if she wanted to pursue a career as an artist. She didn’t need to decide the future of her art career today, but she did need to finish packing for her trip tomorrow, and it was well past midnight already.
Hopefully, Cam didn’t have plans to drag her from party to party in LA. She wanted to relax after the chaos of opening her gallery. Maybe if everything went well, she and Cam would figure out where there relationship stood, even if it meant they could only be friends, but to do that, they needed time alone. Cam may not agree, but she desperately wanted to remember why she loved Cam so much. Theoretically, she knew there were plenty things about Cam she loved, his wavy blond hair, his love of music, his blue eyes that sparkled when he was excited, his smell, so familiar she equated it to security, but the list was admittedly becoming more superficial the longer they dated.
In fact, she couldn’t remember what she liked about the two of them together, as a couple. When she reflected on their relationship, the best memories of the two of them were as kids or their senior year in high school. Since then, everything felt almost forced, held together by the fragile threads of a shared history.
Luggage trailing behind her, Bre walked out of the sliding glass doors of the airport into the haze-filled California sunshine. The balmy air caressed her skin, and she drew in a contented sigh. The winter in Carbondale, Colorado had already started, and despite the fact that she absolutely loved living in the mountains and being part of a small community, she admittedly enjoyed the warm weather and humidity of Southern California.
Most of the people she passed in the airport were dressed in short sleeves and either a skirt or shorts, except the businessmen, who looked overheated and out of place in their business suits and ties.
A moment later Jax pulled up next to the curb in front of her. As he jumped out of the car, she noticed his familiar smile and she found herself smiling back at him. Jax had one of the most dangerous smiles she had ever seen. Dangerous in the sense that his smile was too sexy to be real. She couldn’t stop herself from staring at his lips, remembering the way they felt as they brushed against her lips, her skin, and the whispered praise he showered on her with those same lips while he touched every inch of her body.
Groaning internally at the direction of her thoughts, she acknowledged this was going to be a long weekend if she couldn’t control them. She mentally slammed the door on those memories and walked toward his car.
Almost immediately, Jax wrapped her in a friendly embrace that felt decidedly intimate, given their recent history, and she abruptly realized that letting Jax pick her up and spending a half an hour alone with him wasn’t a good decision.