So I had gone and picked a fight with her. When all I wanted to do was sweep her into my arms and cover her in kisses and promises of never letting her go.
I am an idiot.
I pounded down the grand staircase of my mom's stupid trophy house, making as much noise as I could. I wanted to smash my feet right through the floor, so something else was as fucked up as I felt.
Yeah, I never finished high school. Yeah, I wasn't much of a reader. Maybe I was pretty dumb, but in all of the weird excitement about this sham wedding, it never really occurred to me what it meant to my life. I was just happy it had forced Lily to come back home so I could see her, mess with her, have her close by to torture me, whatever the fuck I was playing at here. Pick things up where we left off, before my idiot ego ruined everything. I just wanted things to be how they were supposed to be: me and my Bit against the world.
In all of that, I never considered that our relationship would change through no fault of my own for once.
Her dad was marrying my mom.
She was going to be my sister.
I suddenly hated my mother. More than before. And fucking Nails too, the tumor that he was. Glommed on to my mom for a decade and only bothered to put a ring on her finger now, after all this time, after Bit and I… fuck.
I wanted to destroy something.
I rounded the corner into the big dining room with the table with mismatched chairs. My mother had more money than God, but she still insisted on living like a college student. Like it gave her "cred" with all these yes men and hangers on that surrounded us at all times, leaving no room for privacy.
That disgusted me too.
I grabbed the ratty wicker back chair at the head of the table and brought it smashing down to the floor. The splintery crash echoed through the big, empty house.
I heard the squeak of a sneaker and waited. They were going to come running soon, all of them. Greg and Bash and Diggs and all of those guys that were always staying over here, surrounding my mother like a flock of pothead butlers. Bash would mostly likely get here first and get pissed at me, possibly even take a halfhearted swing. That was what I needed, a fucking fight.
"Fuck you!" I shouted into the house.
"Oh, what the fuck, Jaxson?" Bash was indeed the first person to see me standing there with a broken, jagged chair leg in my hand.
"What the hell did you do?" Greg drawled, stoned as ever.
Then my mother pushed her way between them.
"I broke the chair," I announced. "You need to buy some new ones anyway. This bullshit, boho poverty chic is pretty pathetic when you consider how much your net worth is."
My mother just looked at me, nostrils pinched. I wanted her to lay into me. I itched for a fight so I could tell her exactly how stupid this whole wedding idea was.
She shook her head once. "What?" I challenged her. I sounded like a petulant teenager, which only pissed me off more.
"Diggs, can you grab one of the contractor bags? I think they're on the porch," she said, as calm as I was angry. She turned back to me. "Don't worry, Jax. Mommy will clean up your mess. Again."
As soon as my mother spoke, that was the end of that. They all turned away, done with me.
All except for Lily.
She was so little, I hadn't seen her there, staring with her wide, brown eyes.
"Lily?" I didn't give a fuck what the others thought of me, but the thought of Liliana staring at me with contempt nearly sent me into another round of chair breaking.
"You okay?" she said. Softly, so softly I would have missed it if I weren't focused completely on her lips.
I had forgotten. The desire—fuck, the love—was still there, but I had forgotten this part. When the world narrowed down to a pinpoint and she was the only thing I could see.
When I was with her, everything quieted down, both on the outside and inside of my head. When I was with her, things got clearer.
The answer to her question was clearest. "Am I okay?" I shook my head. "No. No, Bit. I'm not."
Chapter Eleven
Liliana
Jax broke a chair, and everyone just went about their business like it was nothing. Just swooped in and took care of it for him. So he didn't even have to clean up his own mess.
That should have made me angry. I fully expected to be seething over it the whole ride to dinner.
But the look in his eyes, utterly hopeless and defeated when he told me that no, he wasn't okay, haunted me instead.
I sat in the back of the limo with my fingers knotted together, resisting the urge to take his hand in mine. Let him lean his head against my shoulder, just for a bit.
It didn't have to mean anything. Just a friend comforting a friend.
But just as I got up the nerve to touch him, the car stopped and the doors opened to reveal that the paparazzi had gotten wind of our location.
"Dammit," Nails seethed. "Why won't these vultures leave you alone?" He stepped protectively in front of Annie, shielding her with his bulk.
"They're not after me," Annie chuckled.
It was true. All of the lenses were pointed right at Jax. "Mr. Blue! Over here! Mr. Blue!" came the shouts.
He looked startled for a moment, a deer caught in the headlights. I bit my lip, watching as he recovered. It was like watching him put on a mask, slipping a bright, beguiling smile on over his despondent features. It gave me the chills.
I hung back by the car, watching him handle the crowd like a pro. The maître’d came flapping up to Annie, mouthing apologies, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Jax.
The tightness around his eyes was a tell that only I could discern. He was ready to blow at any second.
My heart gave an involuntary lurch, propelling me into the fray. "I'm sorry, guys, Mr. Blue is done for today," I called, doing my best impression of a bustling personal assistant. "Thank you, thank you, we really appreciate it." I wrapped my arm around Jax's shoulder and made to hustle him into the relative safety of the restaurant.
"What are you doing?" he hissed.
"Getting you out of there."
He made a noise, but allowed himself to be ferried. I gave one last wave to the paparazzi who, if anything, were snapping even more furiously, then I ducked us both into the restaurant.
"You okay?" I asked him.
He looked me up and down. "Remind me to hire you onto my team."
I squared my shoulders. "You couldn't afford me."
He laughed. "You're right about that, Bit. You're fucking priceless."
A slow heat spread from my blushing cheeks, warm and sliding down my spine. The part of me that hated him was dissolving like a lump of sugar on my tongue.
We moved to the corner table, away from the windows—the maître’d had made sure—and took our seats.
As I looked at the menu, my eyes bugged. This was definitely not my chosen New York lifestyle of poverty and ramen. For one brief second, I felt like I was fifteen again, tossed into the world of touring. My wide-eyed reaction to the wild scene I found myself thrown into left me vulnerable to the point of gullibility. Back then I was looking for any way to make sense of my new surroundings and looking for someone who could show me the ropes.
And the best person to do that was Jax.
Jax grew up in the madness of touring. His mother dragged him along on every single one, and he spent his childhood listening to the foul mouths of roadies and sneaking cigarettes behind the bus. He was a man before he ever had a chance of being a boy. It was a good thing the guy never had a true awkward phase, because his life in the limelight left him constantly under scrutiny. And his good looks made him a target.