Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(75)

“Should we have checked upstairs?” I asked as the door closed behind us.

Jax shook his head. “Ritchey isn’t lying. Mona isn’t there. We’ll check out Ike and see if he has any idea.”

I headed down the stairs, my mind caught up in everything. I’d come home thinking I could get my money back from Mom, or at least have it out with her; realized neither of those two things were going to happen; and tried to make some much-needed money, but in the end, found myself in the middle of a million-dollar drug dispute.

Mom.

Sigh.

“You okay?” he asked quietly, squeezing my hand as we hit the sidewalk.

Glancing up at him, I realized something else, something that was probably the most unexpected part in all of this. I’d found Jax. I nodded, and then I said, “No. I mean, it’s been so long since I’ve been around any of this stuff. I forgot what it was like.”

Jax tugged me closer until I was walking with my body pressed against his side and, letting go of my hand, he dropped his arm over my shoulders. This was nice. Brandon would do this sometimes, but it never felt like this.

“Not cool that you have to remember what this was like,” he said. “That you couldn’t just forget. I didn’t want that—”

Tires squealed, shrieking, and the smell of burnt rubber filled the air. The sound raised the hairs all over my body as Jax’s arm tightened on my shoulders. He spun around, keeping me tucked close, just in time to see a black SUV cut between two parked cars, smacking into one. Metal crunched and grinded, giving way as the SUV jumped the sidewalk.

My heart stopped and then sped up.

The SUV was coming straight for us.





Nineteen


Holy crap on a cracker, we were going to be run down in the middle of the crappiest part of Philly, looking for my jerk of a Mom.

The SUV was so close I could make out the damn emblem and smell the engine fumes. Air lodged in my throat as my heart threw itself against my ribs.

Jax sprang into action.

One second he had his arm around my shoulders and the next, he had an arm around my waist and my feet were off the ground. We were flying, or at least it felt that way, because I was up in the air and we were moving fast.

We crashed through a dried bush. Tiny, scratchy branches dragged over my arms and snagged in the hair tucked up in a bun at the back of my neck. Jax rolled at the last minute, and when we hit the ground, I landed on top of him. The impact was jarring and the air was knocked out of my lungs, pushing my eyes wide.

Jax rolled as he shoved me onto my back and reached behind him. He flipped up into a sitting position, his body shielding mine as he extended his right arm. Something black and slim was in his hand.

The SUV spun out over the sidewalk, bouncing back into the road and peeling off, sending puffs of white smoke into the air as the tires squealed again. Rising fluidly, Jax kept his arm trained on the quickly retreating SUV.

I lay there, half on the bush and half on a patch of yellow, burnt grass, absolutely stunned. Unless the driving ability of those who lived in Philadelphia had significantly gone down the pooper, someone had tried to run us over. And Jax was holding a gun. Not only was he holding a gun, but he had to have had the gun the entire time, and I remembered him coming out of the townhouse, tugging the back of his shirt down. And not only that, if that wasn’t enough reason to be totally mind blown, he’d tucked and rolled like a pro and he handled that gun like he knew what he was doing.

Jax faced me and was suddenly kneeling beside me, placing his hands on my shoulders. They were shaking. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

His face was pale, strained. “Are you sure?”

I nodded as my heart pounded for a different reason. There was panic in his face—a stark fear. “I’m really okay.”

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “When I saw that car coming, I thought . . .” He shook his head. “The roadside bomb—we never saw it.”

“Oh God,” I whispered.

His eyes were dark when they reopened. “Just f*cked with my head for a second.”

“Understandable. You okay now?”

He nodded, and the color was back in his face. Cursing under his breath, Jax jerked around as one of the doors down the street opened and someone shouted something. It sounded like Ritchey, and it also sounded like he was yelling something about bringing bad shit to his doorstep, but my attention was focused on Jax.

He looked down at me.

“Do I even know you?” I asked.

One eyebrow rose as he reached around to his back, and when his hands returned to where I could see them, he wasn’t holding the gun anymore. “You know me.”

I blinked up at him as I sat up. “That . . . that was pretty impressive. You know, the whole thing.”

“Had a lot of practice dodging shit in the past, honey.”

That’s right. Military training. Duh. “And the gun?”

“Working at Mona’s, I’ve ended up face-to-face with people that make me feel a bit better chatting with knowing I’m holding a gun.” He reached down, took my hands in his, and hauled me onto my feet. “Plus, holding and firing a gun aren’t anything strange to me.”

Double duh. Military training. “What . . . what do you think that was all about?”

A door—most likely Ritchey’s—slammed shut. “Probably not something good.” He gripped the sides of my face, tilting my head back. “You really okay?” he asked once more.