Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(34)

“I didn’t pay for it.” He ran his fingers through his hair as he eyed me. “Like I said, the guy—his name’s Brent—owed me a favor. He took care of the windshield. No charge.”

“He owed you a favor?” I repeated dumbly. “Are you, like, in the mob?”

He tipped his head back and let out a deep, rumbling laugh that caused my tummy to twist. “No.”

I liked his laugh.

Inching away from the window, I suddenly felt . . . I didn’t know how I felt. Relieved? Tense? Stunned? I felt all those things at once, but I knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Thank you.”

One broad shoulder rose. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is.”

A moment passed. “You tired?”

No. I was wired, so antsy I felt like my bones and muscles were going to come out of my skin, but I lied and said yes, because I didn’t think I could be in the same room with him any longer. There was a burning behind my eyes I needed to get under control.

His eyes met mine for a second, and then he dropped down on the couch. He didn’t say anything else as I walked over to the small linen closet and pulled out the other blanket I’d seen earlier. I walked over, placing it on the arm of the couch farthest from him.

“By the way . . .” Jax gave me that half grin that caused my toes to curl inside my socks when I twisted toward him. “Those shorts and those legs? Fucking perfection.”

Flipping onto my back, I stared with wide eyes. Several of the thin panels in the blinds covering the window in the bedroom were broken, so slim slices of moonlight spread like fingers playing peekaboo across the ceiling.

I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, unable to shut my brain down. Each time I moved, the bed creaked a little. Or maybe a lot. It sounded superloud to me, but so did my heart as it pounded blood through my ears.

Jax was lying on the couch, mere feet away from the bedroom. And he’d kissed me earlier. And he’d gotten my windshield fixed. And he’d said my legs and my shorts were f*cking perfection.

What was up with his fascination with my legs?

Flopping onto my stomach, I groaned into the pillow. My legs shouldn’t matter. It obviously wasn’t important, but I was fixated on how it was my legs he kept focusing on. There were other things about me, more noticeable things like my face that got attention. Not my legs.

But he kissed me and he was in the next room, right there, and my lips were tingling again. My first kiss—at age twenty-one, I’d experienced my first kiss. Finally. And I wasn’t even sure if it was a real kiss.

“God,” I moaned into the pillow.

I twisted onto my side, deciding I wouldn’t think about Jax anymore, because that was seriously pointless. So the next thing I thought about was heroin. Lots of heroin. Like maybe hundreds of thousands’ worth of it. How much heroin was that really? Like on the street? How many lives would it infect and ruin? Hundreds? Thousands?

And it had been in this house—Mom’s house.

I squeezed my eyes shut as unease curled in my stomach, spreading like noxious smoke. Was she doing that stuff now?

Okay. This wasn’t good to think about, either. My mind was empty for a few blissful moments, and then I started thinking about school. The initial panic surrounding how I’d pay my tuition had faded somewhat, and I knew I’d get federal aid. They didn’t use credit, but that didn’t fix everything. I’d need to get a waitressing job when I got back because I needed money to pay bills. That sucked because the last few semesters of nursing school were going to be ridiculously hard. And finishing school didn’t fix the rest of the crap—the debt, the bad credit, and everything else.

I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I didn’t want to think about it anymore because I was doing the best I could do. I made fifty bucks today and that was better than making nothing.

Fifty bucks.

God.

I rolled onto my back and that position lasted all of five minutes. This sucked, and I moved again, this time freezing as I settled on my other side, facing the bathroom.

The old hinges on the bedroom door squeaked as it was slowly pushed open. I held my breath. My back was to the door, but I knew it was Jax. His presence practically sucked the oxygen out of the room.

What was he doing? Did my tossing wake him up? Probably, since the bedroom door wouldn’t close all the way, leaving a half-foot gap between the door and the threshold. Something was wrong with the hinges. I didn’t know what and it didn’t matter.

The floorboard creaked under his footsteps.

Oh my God.

“Calla?” His voice wasn’t loud, but it was still like a crack of thunder.

Should I pretend to be asleep? I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking that was stupid, but I was willing to give that a shot.

“I know you’re not asleep.”

Damnit.

I still didn’t say anything because I was pretty sure I was beyond speaking. A wave of tiny goose bumps spread across my skin as I slowly opened my eyes. Sad, but true, I’d never been in bed before with a guy in the same room. Well, not entirely true. Jacob, a classmate at college, had been in my dorm once, but that wasn’t the same thing as right now.

The floor didn’t creak again, but the bed suddenly dipped under his weight. Forget pretending to be asleep. My body wouldn’t allow it. I rose onto my elbow, twisting my neck back, my eyes peeling wide. In the silvery moonlight, I could see the tips of his high cheekbones and the form of his body. That was more than enough.