Chapter 15
Kendall
Two weeks after the fire, I'm watching Jax struggle to fit his oversized couch through my apartment door.
"Pivot!" Hudson shouts from inside.
"I am pivoting!" Jax grunts back.
"PIVOT!" Kane joins in, clearly enjoying this too much.
"If one more person quotes Friends at me—" The couch lurches forward, nearly taking out my lamp.
"Your couch is too big," I observe from my safe spot by the kitchen.
"Your door is too small," Jax counters.
"It’s standard door size. This is an abnormal couch size."
"This couch has a history. My dad helped me pick it out when I got my first apartment."
That softens me. "Fine. Then we'll make it work."
It takes another twenty minutes, some creative angling, and Hudson removing the door from its hinges, but finally the monstrosity of brown leather is in my living room. It absolutely does not match my cream and blue décor.
"It's—" I start.
"Hideous with your stuff, I know." Jax flops onto it, exhausted. "But it's comfortable."
I sit beside him, and he's right. It's like being hugged by furniture.
"Your boxes are labeled with a complex system I don't understand," Kane announces, carrying in a box marked "K-7-Blue."
"Kitchen, priority 7, blue tape means fragile," Jax explains.
"You have a system. Of course you do." I laugh.
"You have your binders color-coded by property and sub-sectioned by date," he points out.
"That's different. That's work."
"This is life. It’s more important than work."
Hudson brings in Jax's coffee maker—a complex machine with more buttons than my car. "Where does this go?"
"We don't need two coffee makers," I point out.
"Yours makes brown water. Mine makes coffee," Jax says.
"Mine is perfectly functional—"
"Kendall, honey," Grace interrupts, appearing with baby Emma, "I've had your coffee. Let the man bring his machine."
The afternoon becomes a parade of Jax's possessions versus my space. His sports memorabilia, ‘But I caught that foul ball!” versus my gallery wall ‘These are professionally framed prints!’. His lucky fishing rod ‘It caught a marlin!’ versus my decorative vase ‘It's from Paris!’.
"This is harder than I thought," I admit, looking at the chaos of two lives trying to become one.
"It’s just stuff. It doesn't matter," Jax says, pulling me against him. "We'll figure it out."
"But where will we put everything?"
"Storage unit?"
"For whose stuff?"
"We'll take turns. Monthly rotation."
I look at him. "You want to rotate our belongings?"
"Or we could get a bigger place, eventually. Our place, not yours with my stuff or mine with yours."
"Our place," I repeat, liking how it sounds.
An hour later, I'm standing in my apartment watching Jax arrange his collection of vintage police badges on my—our—bookshelf for the third time.
"They need to be chronological," he insists, moving a 1950s Miami-Dade badge to the left. "It tells a story."
"They're badges, not a novel."
"They're history. Look, this one's from 1892." He holds up a tarnished star. "First police badge issued in Hibiscus Harbor."
"And it needs to be displayed prominently because...?"
"Because it's cool."
I bite my lip to keep from laughing. We've been having variations of this conversation all morning.
His baseball memorabilia ‘needs’ the entire hallway wall.
His grandfather's fishing trophies are ‘essential’ décor for the living room.
And don't get me started on the neon Budweiser sign he claims has sentimental value.
"We can't put a beer sign in the bedroom," I tell him for the fifth time.
"It's vintage. From the bar where Hudson and I watched our first Super Bowl."
"It's tacky."
"It's meaningful."
"It can be meaningful in storage." I argue.
He gives me the look—the one that probably works on suspects but just makes me want to kiss him. "What about a compromise? The badges get one shelf, the baseball stuff gets the hallway, but the neon sign goes in the closet?"
"And the fishing trophies?"
"Guest bathroom?"
"We don't have a guest bathroom. We have one bathroom that guests sometimes use."
"Then that's where they go."
I watch him carefully arrange each badge, his face serious with concentration. It's such a small thing, but it represents something huge—Jax Masterson, Mr. By-The-Book, is making my space his space. Our space.
"Tell me about them," I say, sitting on the couch. "The badges."
He lights up. "Well, this one from 1892 belonged to Officer Patrick O'Brien. He was the first official law enforcement in Hibiscus Harbor, back when it was just a fishing village."
"How do you even know that?"
"Research. I collect the stories, not just the metal." He picks up another one. "This is from 1943. Officer Sarah Williams, one of the first female officers in Florida. She worked here during World War II when all the men were overseas."
"That's actually interesting."
"You sound surprised."
"I expected the stories to be about dramatic shootouts and car chases." I laugh.
"Some are." He grins. "But mostly they're about ordinary people doing their jobs, protecting their community. Like this one—1967, Officer James Rodriguez. He saved three kids from a burning building. Never made the headlines because he said he was just doing his job."
"Like someone else I know who ran into a building full of gasoline." I give him my best side-eye and raised eyebrow.
"That's different."
"How is that different?"
"That was to save you."
The simple honesty of it makes my chest tight. I pat the couch beside me. "Come here. Bring your badges."
He sits still, holding the box of history. "You think I'm weird."
"I think you're passionate about something. That's not weird." I lean against him. "Tell me more."
"You really want to know?"
"I want to know everything. The badges, the baseball stuff, all of it. I want to know what I missed over the years."
He sets the box down, turning to face me. "What do you mean?"
"Ten years, Jax. We lost ten years. I know the highlights—you became a cop; I became a property manager. But what about the rest? What shaped you into this badge-collecting, rule-following, goat-borrowing man?"
He's quiet for a moment. "The academy was hard. Not physically, but emotionally. Every night I'd think about calling you, apologizing, begging you to take me back."
"Why didn't you?"
"Pride. Fear. Stupidity." He runs a hand through his hair. "I threw myself into the training instead. Graduated top of my class because I had nothing else to focus on."
"I know that feeling."
"Yeah?"
"I got my property management license in record time. Took every certification course available. If I stopped moving, stopped working, I'd have to feel things. Think things."
"What things?"
"How much I missed you. How angry I was. How much it hurt to see you around town and pretend we were strangers when you came back."
"We were never strangers. Even when we weren't talking, you were everywhere. Hudson would mention Kate's friend Kendall. Your name would come up at Hooplas. I'd see your car at the Bean and Bagel and sit in the parking lot like a creep, trying to work up the nerve to go inside."
"You did that?"
"Multiple times. Once I got as far as the door before chickening out."
"I saw you," I admit. "Through the window. Kate asked if I wanted her to call you in, but I said no."
"Why?"
"Because I wasn't ready. I'd built these walls, these rules, and you threatened all of them just by existing."
He picks up one of the badges, turning it over in his hands. "I dated a few people. Tried to move on."
My stomach clenches even though I have no right to be jealous. "Anyone serious?"
"Sarah. Nurse at the hospital in Dallas. We dated for about a year."
"What happened?"
"She said I was emotionally unavailable. That I was comparing her to someone else." He looks at me. "She was right."
"I dated too. Mark, the accountant. David from the bank. A few others."
"Anyone special?"
"No. They were all nice, successful, appropriate. And boring. God, they were so boring." I laugh. "David collected stamps. Not even interesting stamps. Just regular stamps."
"My badges are looking better now, aren't they?" He smirks at me.
"Your badges have stories. David's stamps were just... sticky paper."
We both laugh, and it feels good. Natural. Like the decade between us is shrinking by the second.
"What else did I miss?" I ask.
"I bought a motorcycle in my second year on the force."
"You did not."
"Did too. Harley Davidson. Chrome everything. I was insufferable."
"What happened to it?"
"Sold it after I crashed into Mrs. Taylor’s garden gnome collection."
"You didn't!"
"I did. Destroyed six gnomes. She made me replace them and help her repaint them. Have you ever tried to paint ceramic gnome faces? It's surprisingly difficult."
"Is that why she calls you Officer Gnome Killer?"
"She swore she'd never let me forget." He shakes his head. "What about you? What did I miss?"
"I learned to kickbox. Turns out I had a lot of aggression to work through."
"That explains how you thought you could take down Morrison by yourself."
"That was particularly satisfying." I grin at the memory. "I also went through a phase where I was convinced I'd become a chef."
"You can't cook."
"I know that now. But for six months, I took classes, bought all the equipment, and nearly burned down my kitchen twice."
"Twice?"
"Flambé is harder than it looks."
"What made you stop?"
"Kate banned me from her kitchen after I somehow managed to burn water."
"How do you burn water?"
"Determination and a poor attention span, apparently."
He laughs, pulling me closer. "I missed this. Just talking. Being us."
"We're not the same us, though."
"No. We're better. Older, hopefully wiser."
"Definitely more stubborn."
"That, too." He's quiet for a moment. "What do you want, Kendall? Not today or tomorrow, but long-term. What's your goal in life?"