Jackson (Wild Boys After Dark, #3)(17)

His voice was somewhere between his lungs and his throat, but it was loud and clear in his f*cked-up mind.

Don’t marry him, Laney. Don’t ruin us.

She raised her eyes to his, and the sadness in them shattered the silence.

“What are you afraid of, Jackson? Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

Love me, Laney.

He couldn’t force the words from his lungs. She deserved a guy who would give her everything. He wanted to be that guy. Desperately. But he’d never been faithful to a woman in his life. He’d always had Laney. What if he only had Laney? Could he be with only Laney?

Despite his love for her, he didn’t know. He just didn’t f*cking know, and she deserved to know exactly what she was getting.

Bryce was safe.

Jackson wanted her to be safe.

Fuck…He turned away, unable to untangle the desire to be her world from his inability to know if he could give up his own.

“That’s what I thought.” She sounded defeated, and it drove the stake deeper into his heart.

He heard her walk back into the water, leaving him to drown in his own indecision.





Chapter Seven


“IT’S GONNA RAIN.” Jackson stood with one booted foot on the edge of the cliff, his knee slightly bent, his weight on his back leg. His black cotton shirt pulled across his biceps as he held the camera to his eye, aiming across the ravine.

Laney wasn’t looking at the ravine; she was drinking in his perfect ass and the fabric straining across his thick thighs. Maybe it made Laney superficial that she loved Jackson’s body the way some women worshipped shoes or purses. She’d never get enough of looking at him, from the perfect vee of his lats to the tiny little muscle in his jaw that jumped when he was concentrating.

She shielded her eyes from the sun, which had gotten hotter as the afternoon had progressed—or maybe she was still hot under the collar from their spat at the lake. She couldn’t be sure which. She smiled to herself as she thought, Or maybe I’m getting hotter just drooling over my best friend.

He turned slowly, aiming the camera down at her. She flattened her hand over her face.

“Don’t,” she warned.

“Too late.” He lowered the camera, and she stuck her tongue out. “Careful, now. You know how much I love it when you’re cantankerous.” Ever since their argument down by the lake, she’d felt Jackson distancing himself from her. She noticed it in his quick retreats when they stood close and in the way he looked at her—like he was trying not to see her—and it was making her uncomfortable and nervous.

“Ugh. That’s when I’m at my ugliest.” She reached for his hand, and he helped her up. With the camera hanging around his neck between them, he lifted her chin with his index finger and gazed into her eyes.

“No, Laney. You’re at your ugliest when you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. Being who you are makes you even prettier.” He turned away so fast she didn’t have time to think. “You sure you want to chance the rest of the hike? It’s definitely going to rain. The air is heavy, the sun’s blazing the way it does before a storm, and check out the clouds behind us.”

She turned and gazed at the graying sky. “That’ll take forever to get here. I think we can keep going for a while. Besides, otherwise we’re stuck sitting at the campsite, and I’m too rattled to sit still.” She glared up at him with a smirk. “And don’t tell me that you can think of something that requires me to move.” It never mattered how much they bickered, their minds always traveled back to the two of them. Together. Making out. Fucking. Making love? Goddamn it. She knew it always would.

He laughed. “I wasn’t going to.” He walked a few feet toward the woods, then added, “At least not out loud.”

They hiked up the steep mountain, stopping every now and again for Jackson to take pictures. She knew he’d have hundreds of amazing photographs by the time they went home. He made online albums and shared them with her and his family, often adding captions like, Laney picking her nose, when he caught her midsneeze, because he was obnoxious like that. With that thought, her mind turned to the album he’d made for her birthday. The pit of her stomach dipped as she realized that he hadn’t taken any pictures of the two of them on this trip. Not one. He always pulled her into a dozen photos taken at arm’s length.

His pulling away wasn’t just in her head.

She tried not to focus on that depressing thought—after all, what had she thought would happen? That she could spring Bryce’s marriage proposal on him like Bryce had on her and not throw him completely off-balance?

She trained her eyes on the ground. There were no paths in the wilderness, just like there were no paths in life. Every time they came out to the mountains, they were covering new ground. That’s what the proposal was, too. New ground.

Jackson’s powerful back muscles bunched as he moved branches out of the way and reached back to help Laney over fallen trees. She knew she was fooling herself. This forest was hardly new ground to them. They might be covering unfamiliar territory, but they knew the mountain. Their footing was solid. The foundation they traveled upon was familiar, and completely different from the emotional terrain she was stumbling through with Bryce.

“When did you make the album for my birthday? That must have taken forever to get all the old pictures together.” She wanted to know what he’d felt when he was looking at the old pictures—before he knew about the proposal from Bryce.