Shattered (LOST #3)(9)

But her guide had just thrown open the door. “Jax! She’s here!” That bellow was close to deafening.

Jax spun around. His eyes widened when he saw her.

“Uh, hi there, Jax,” Sarah mumbled.

He was alone, thank goodness. No half-naked woman to be seen.

The door closed behind her. Her guide had sure vanished fast.

Jax was stalking toward her. “What are you doing here?”

“I—” She broke off, trying to think of a fairly believable explanation. The truth wouldn’t work. Every time I tried to close my eyes, I saw my dad’s face. I heard screams. And I started to wonder if Eddie was really so wrong when he came to kill me. Because I think I’m just as much of a monster as my father ever was.

Maybe more.

But she couldn’t tell that to her friends in LOST. They wouldn’t understand. Wade was already treating her with kid gloves. Her closest confidante on the team—Victoria Palmer—was still recovering from an attack on their last mission. So she sure couldn’t go to her.

None of her friends had ever understood about her past. They’d sympathized, they’d told her how very sorry they were for all that she’d had to endure. But they didn’t understand. And their pity drove her insane.

Jax’s blue stare was on her. And there was no pity on his face or in his gaze.

“I shouldn’t be here.” There. Those were the words that finally came out of her mouth, they were so true. “You’re dangerous and you’re too sexy and you’ve got a stripper on the stage outside of this door.”

His brows shot up. Then he laughed. Hard.

She kept staring at him.

“Which of those,” he finally murmured, “bothers you the most?”

Sarah rubbed her arms and started pacing around that little office. “Why do you even have this bar? It’s a serious hole in the wall.”

He seemed to consider her question for a moment, then he said, “When I was eighteen, I was begging for money outside this place.”

She stopped pacing. Sarah turned back around and stared at him.

“The owner said he had something to give me. I was starving, desperate—and he brought me around back.”

She waited. The owner had helped him? He’d—

“Then he beat the shit out of me and told me to never come back and loiter in front of his business again.”

That wasn’t the end of the story she’d expected. Sarah shook her head and said simply, “Bastard.”

Jax shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Oh, he was. But don’t worry, the guy got exactly what he had coming to him.”

“What was that?” Sarah was almost afraid to ask.

“I healed up. Lucky for me, someone found me and took me to the hospital.”

He said the words so simply, but she knew it must have been a brutal experience for him. He’d been so young then . . .

“When I was healed up, I made a vow to never beg for another damn thing in my life.” He was so close to her, less than a foot away. “I took every job I could find, and, no, all of those jobs weren’t exactly what you’d call legit. I worked my way up the ladder down here, I became a fucking force to be reckoned with, and on my twenty-first birthday, I bought this bar and four others.” His smile was cold. “I took the former owner out back on my move-in day. I told him that I had something for him . . .”

She wet her lips. “I think I know where this tale is going now.”

“He’d just beat two of his dancers so badly they could hardly walk. I figured it was time he had some payback coming his way.” Jax shrugged. “So I paid him. In full.”

She glanced toward the door. Coming there had been a huge mistake.

“Sarah.”

Her gaze slid back to him.

“No judgment,” he murmured. “There’s no anger in your eyes, no rage or disgust at me for being a cold bastard. No pity for the kid I was who got beaten in a dirty alley and left to die.”

“Don’t be too sure you understand what I feel.”

“Why not? I actually think I understand you very, very well.”

Sarah backed up a step.

A faint smile curved his lips. “It was there from the first time I saw you. That instant connection. Doesn’t happen often. Actually, it’s never happened to me before. I looked up, saw you, and thought—”

Sarah pretty much ran for the door.

But he caught her. His hands wrapped around her and Jax pulled her back against his body. His hold wasn’t hard or rough. Oddly, it was infinitely tender.

“Do you know what I saw when I looked in your eyes?” he whispered into her ear.

Sarah shook her head.

“You were hurting. Trying to hide your pain, but I could still see it. I looked at you and thought—I never want her to hurt again.”

Tears stung her eyes. “You don’t know me. Or what I’ve done.” Jax thought his past was bad? It was nothing compared to hers. She still had nightmares that had her waking in the night, choking for breath, and begging for help.

Help that hadn’t come. Not in time.

“Tell me why you came to see me tonight, Sarah.”

She sucked in a quick breath and decided to go with the truth. “Because I didn’t want to lie in bed and be afraid. Because I didn’t want to think about the past or the future.” Because she’d felt that insane connection between them, too.