Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(118)

She laughed harshly. “What? Do you think you’re actually special to him?” Before I could answer, she went on. “That you’re like his one and only?”

“Aimee,” Jax said, voice low.

“Because you’re not,” she snapped. “His bed is like the Philly train station, especially now.”

A pierce hit my chest. I had . . . I had not known that, and as I glanced at Jax, there was nothing on his face that denied it. I exhaled harshly. “Then I guess you are just one of many, too.”

Her eyes flashed, and I didn’t know if I wounded her or if any of that made a difference to her. “At least I don’t have your face, bitch.”

Yep. It hadn’t made a difference.

My feet moved, and I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do, if I was going to introduce her to the epic bitch slap or if I was going to slam my knee into Jax’s groin, but he turned to me. Snagging an arm around my waist, he lifted me clear off my feet as he moved and twisted his body so I was facing the wall and he was facing Aimee. I craned my neck to see her.

He had a finger in her face. “Get out.”

The white under her tan increased. “But—”

“Get the f*ck out, Aimee.”

She took a deep breath and her blue eyes turned glassy. Then her face crumbled, and it might’ve made me the biggest idiot in the world, but there was a teeny, tiny part of me that actually felt bad for her, because I recognized that pain that had broken her face.

I had felt it mere minutes ago.

Then Aimee blinked, sucked her tears right up, and swallowed. “I get it. Whatever this is. I get it.”

I wondered what the hell she got.

She smiled then, like he hadn’t just told her to get out of his house. “We’ll talk later, babe.”

And then she flounced out of the house.

What in the f*ckity f*ck?

Jax all but kicked his door shut and then he turned, settling me on my feet. I started to pull free, but his arm around my waist tightened, and he dragged my back against his chest.

“Let me go,” I said, gripping his arm.

“Okay,” he murmured in my ear. “I’ll admit it. You getting all up in her face like that was hot.”

Fury flared and pulsed around the deep, throbbing hurt. “Let me go, Jax.”

“Especially with you standing there, all fired up in my shirt? Yeah. Hot as hell,” he continued, and my anger overrode the hurting.

One hand dropped from my waist and flattened against my lower belly. He pressed and my bottom tipped back against him, and yeah, I totally got that he really did find that hot. The evidence was right there, and my body, because it was a dumb hooch, reacted. My stomach fluttered and the idiotic area between my thighs throbbed.

And that just pissed me off even more.

“If you don’t let me go, I swear to God, Jax,” I warned, squeezing his arms with my hands.

He dipped his chin into my shoulder and said, “Is it wrong that I find that hot, too, because I really kind of do.”

I lost it and shouted loud enough to wake up the neighbors, “Let me the f*ck go!”

Jax’s arms dropped like I was a hot potato, and I spun on him, breathing heavy. Our gazes locked, and the amusement in his voice was completely gone from his expression. He stared at me. I stared back. In those moments, I heard what I had when I stood upstairs all over again. I felt what I did when I saw Aimee’s expression when she’d seen me standing at the top of the stairs.

Tension formed around his mouth. “Calla . . .”

My feet moved backward. I needed space. I needed time to think about everything that had just happened.

He took a step forward, and I kept moving until my leg bumped into the arm of the couch. He stopped a few feet from me. “I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, but I’m going to wage a guess here, and say what happened is not what you’re thinking.”

In my chest, my heart threw itself against my ribs. “It’s not?”

“I had no idea she was going to show up tonight. She hasn’t been to my house in—”

“A month?” I finished for him. “A whole month?”

The tension around his mouth increased. “It’s been more than a month, Calla. I don’t know the exact time frame, but she hasn’t been here since you came here. You have to believe that. I’ve practically spent every night with you since you’ve been here.”

“Not every night.”

“Every night since she got back into town,” he said, and I had to admit, that was true. “You and I aren’t together every waking minute, but give me a break on that. It’s not like I have all the time in the world to be hooking up with her.”

Another good point. “But you were hooking up with her a little over a month ago.”

“Before you came here, Calla.”

Did that matter? I knew it shouldn’t. I wasn’t even in town and I couldn’t be mad over who he hooked up with before we met, but damnit, I was. I was thoroughly pissed and I was jealous. I was woman enough to admit to my irrational anger over that, but there was more.

“For someone you aren’t seeing, she was awful angry over the fact that a girl was here, Jax. She showed up in the middle of the night like she had a right to be here.”