Chapter 3
RAELYNN
It’s as much of an admission of how I’ve always felt about Jax as I’ve ever given him, and his strong, hard features soften as he takes the words in.
He squeezes his eyes closed and releases a deep, heavy sigh I can feel all the way across the room before he pushes off the door and advances toward me slowly.
His skin still slick with sweat and the beer I managed to pour all over him, Jax towers over me—a massive, intimidating man full of confidence and swagger, not the boy he was all those years ago. But that shy kid still lives under it—and in his uncertain gaze.
I look away, staring down at my hands now that I’ve made that confession to probably the only boy I’ve ever truly loved.
He stops in front of me and lowers himself onto the coffee table—which somehow manages to support his weight—so his knees brush mine. “You know, I was in love with you since we were five.”
I jerk my head up and let my eyes meet his crystal-blue ones. “What?”
He gives me a sad smile. “I always knew you were out of my league. You were the valedictorian, head cheerleader, most popular girl in school. Everyone knew you were going places. But me”—he shrugs—“I was just the dumb, skinny football player who was never going to leave Hayes Creek. That’s why I never said anything, never told you. ”
“But—” Years of memories come flooding back: of our group of friends always hanging out together, the way Jax would slip his hand into mine and squeeze it, or give me piggyback rides or a strong hug when I needed it.
Always touching me.
Wanting to.
Always calling to make sure I made it home okay after one of our bonfires.
Constantly watching me from across the room, only to offer a shy smile when I would catch him.
I never thought anything of it. I believed we were all just friends looking out for each other. “Wow, I feel really stupid for never realizing that.”
He smirks. “Don’t. I intentionally hid it. I didn’t want you to reject me. If I had lost you, if you had stopped being my friend because of how I felt, I don’t think I could have lived with that.”
Tears start to well up in my eyes, despite trying to fight them back. A thousand what-ifs I haven’t let myself consider in a very long time flood my head. “I wish you had said something.”
He reaches out and grabs my hand, pulling it between his.
Harsh, rough calluses glide over my skin, and goosebumps break out on my arm.
“You were always meant for something greater than Hayes Creek, Rae, and I was never going to be enough for you to stay. It just would have hurt both of us, even if I had known you were interested.”
“Interested? I was a hell of a lot more than interested, Jax.” I release a sardonic laugh, shaking my head and staring up at the beams on the ceiling. “God, Betty would have a field day with this.”
“What do you mean?”
I lock my gaze with his again and smile, thinking about my childhood best friend. “All senior year, she kept telling me to go for it, that I should tell you how I feel. But—”
“But what?” He squeezes my hand between his. “Why didn’t you?”
That same question has swirled through my head for so many years, and I’ve come up with dozens of answers—but none of them have ever seemed right.
Now that I’m sitting here with Jax, his hands on me, only one truth seems real. “I thought you would reject me. I thought you only saw me as a friend. Plus, I was leaving…”
“And you didn’t want to start something you couldn’t finish?”
“No.” I lean forward slightly, closer to him, needing and wanting to take all of him in before I scare him away for good. “I didn’t want it to finish at all, and that was the problem.”
“Fuck.” The word comes out on a low growl, and he squeezes my hand between his tightly. “So, we fucked it up, huh?”
I nod slowly, lowering my forehead to his. “I guess you could see it that way.”
He pulls his head back and lifts his palm to my cheek, cradling it gently. “And look where we are. I’m still here in Hayes Creek, and you’re off doing big things. HR, right? For the Brewers?”
“One of their many HR people.” I grin. “Don’t make it sound more glamorous than it is.”
Pride fills his gaze, and he looks at me the way no one else ever has—full of so much devotion, even after all this time. “I bet you’re great at that job, though. Everybody always loved you. I always did.”
“Did?”
Maybe it’s a stupid question, but I can’t stop myself from asking it. The boy I always wanted, the one I thought I could never have, is now a man, sitting in front of me, telling me I could have had all of that back then.
I could have had him.
He could have been my first everything, but instead, it was some bumbling frat bro I met freshman year in college, whose name I can barely remember. And no one since has lived up to the feeling I had pressing my lips against Jax’s that night.
“I’ll always love you, Rae, but nothing has changed, right? I’m still here. You are still there.”
I slip from his hold, unable to think clearly with his gentle touch and the scrape of his calluses along my skin, and I push up from the couch to pace. He watches me move back and forth through his living room, heat burning across his normally cool-blue gaze.
“I don’t know what to say, Jax.” I release a humorless laugh. “This is absolutely not the conversation I expected to be having when my mother insisted I come to the competition today.”
His brow furrows. “That’s why you came? Your mom told you to?”
The hurt and disappointment in his words slashes at my heart.
A sad smile tilts his lips. “I guess I should have figured you didn’t come to see me when you didn’t even realize it was on my family’s property…”
I stop behind the couch and press my hands onto the back of it, thankful for something physical between us in the tight space that seems to shrink more and more the longer I’m in here with him. “I came home to help my parents, and yes, I had hoped I wouldn’t run into you.”
He recoils slightly. “Ouch.”
“Not because I didn’t want to, Jax. But because I wasn’t sure what I would say, how I would react, not after I kissed you and then literally ran.”
And boy, did I run that night…
I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, out of the woods, to my car, and I drove home like a bat out of hell, hoping he wouldn’t come to confront me about what I had just said and done before I had to leave the next morning to start the rest of my life.
“I should have come after you.” His words are so sincere, full of the heavy weight of all the years that have strung between us since that one moment in time. “I really should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He gives me a sad smile and shrugs his massive shoulders. “Because I knew the truth: that I would only hold you back. And the same is true now, right?”
I chew on my bottom lip as I contemplate his words and what they mean.
Is he saying what I think he is?
He slowly rises from the coffee table and makes his way around the couch, giving me all the time in the world to move away. Sliding in behind me, he presses his chest against my back and buries his face in my hair. “God, you still smell the same…”
“Sweaty and disgusting from being out there in the heat?”
His low, deep chuckle reverberates through me. “If anyone stinks, it’s me.”
“All I smell is the beer.”
He laughs, the sound lightening the mood and taking me back to countless happy memories, and he wraps his arms around me and tugs me back against him.
His lips find my neck, and he slowly kisses his way up to my ear, each press to my skin sending little sparks through my body.
“Let me do to you what I should have all those years ago.”