11. Jax
jax
Felicity is in my world again.
Not just home in our small town, not just wandering the streets and being with her family again, not just making waves with her presence and becoming the topic of conversation.
She is here. In my world.
The ranch is a second home for me—has been since I could ride—and now that I work and live here, it is slowly but surely becoming the largest chunk of my life.
And she is here.
Sunday afternoon lunch was open to just about anyone who had a connection to the Trevors’ family, and it was becoming quite the production. Inviting the Vogels to lunch was, of course, inevitably going to happen whether I liked it or not.
There are probably over sixty people here, and avoiding her should have been easy. Except it isn’t.
Because whether I like it or not, I’m drawn to her damn orbit every time I see her.
She was best friends with Dani back in high school, and I was great friends with CT.
Not to mention, my brothers usually congregated together, and therefore, I was bound to end up sitting near City Girl for this lunch.
I just don’t expect it to be right beside her.
The picnic table has one slot open at the end of the bench when I arrive with food piled high on my plate, and I take one look at my cousin’s deviously sneaky grin and know that it was all planned.
I think about walking away, about finding the kids, ditching my food, and starting a game of cornhole.
But my stomach growls, reminding me that my cupboards at home were bare this morning, and I had skipped breakfast.
Hence, the overflowing plate of food.
Grumbling under my breath with my heart in my throat, I make the move to sit down beside the one person in this world that ever meant anything to me outside of family.
Felicity’s bright green eyes flash to mine in surprise when I sit down, not asking if it is okay first. Why would I ask? This is my home, not hers.
“Oh.” Her voice is a whisper against the side of my head.
I glance over at her and can’t help the way my eyes devour every morsel of her image.
Her long blonde hair is down around her shoulders, leading to her neck that holds a delicate gold chain, and her dress is doing more for her than I should be taking note of.
“Hi, Jax.” Her soft voice pulls my attention to her eyes again, and I clear my throat, realizing that I was staring at her when I shouldn’t anymore.
“Hi, City Girl.” The nickname slips effortlessly across my tongue, and I watch as her expression softens. I was the only one that called her that, the only one who was allowed to at one point in our relationship.
I shouldn’t have said it now.
Her lips part, and I wait for whatever she wants to say to me. Is she going to yell at me for using the nickname, for sitting too close, for invading her space? Or was she going to act like we were old friends, like we could use this opportunity to catch up?
Hell, part of me hopes she will. I’d love to know all about her life, about how she caught her big break, about her writing process in the studio, about her life on the road.
But she does none of those things, turning away with a smile and listening intently to a story Stetson is telling across the table.
My stomach growls again, dragging my attention back to the task at hand, and I dig into my food, trying and failing not to worry about the woman sitting next to me.
Fuck, was she a woman.
I’ve done my best not to catch any sight of her since she’s been gone, avoiding looking through pictures on the internet, not following her on social media as much as I could.
It wasn’t easy.
Especially when her shit was trending constantly.
I used social media to build up my reputation as a rodeo clown, and it worked.
I wasn’t famous by any means, but at seventy thousand followers, I had people who gave a shit, at least. Using it to find gigs around the country, I was hired to show up to places I’d never been before to help entertain the crowds with my ability to get the hell out of the way of a bull.
So I wasn’t immune to the use of trending songs to help make my content more visible.
I’ve even used some of hers, because I was a masochist like that.
However, I haven’t updated my page in weeks because of my injury and basically retiring myself here. I don’t know if I will ever use it again.
“Bonnie was inquiring about the rodeo school,” Stetson says to CT, who sits down the table from me. “She wants to get it going again.”
“Well, I was thinking about looking into it,” Bonnie says, correcting my brother and patting him on the shoulder like she was embarrassed.
“What happened to the rodeo school?” I hear myself ask, wiping my napkin across my mouth and tossing it onto my now empty plate.
“Ah, it got shut down a few years back. Mr. Henley couldn’t do it alone, and no one was willing to step in.”
I frown. “It’s not even a thing anymore?”
“Nope,” Logan says, shaking his head before looking at me. “There wasn’t anyone who was suited for it.”
I roll my lips together and take a sip of the beer to my right before I look to my brother’s girlfriend. “You’re thinking of taking it on?”
Bonnie blushes, and I feel a little bad, knowing how she doesn’t like the attention on herself. “I was going to do some research, see if there was interest in it.”
“I bet there would be,” Felicity surprises me by saying. “When I was in school, over half of the students were in rodeo school.”
“Yeah, Mitch and Jax included,” Stetson adds.
I glance around then, wondering where my big brother is, and am not surprised to find him standing near a certain Weaver sister.
“Jax was dedicated to rodeo school. He never missed a day,” Felicity tells Bonnie, as if it was normal for her to explain something about me to someone else. Although she was technically around for that portion of my life, so she wasn’t wrong.
“I want to help,” I hear myself tell Bonnie, a tendril of excitement coursing through me at the idea.
Bonnie’s eyes widen a little in shock. “You do?”
I shrug. “Yeah, definitely. I know my way around it.”
She looks to Stetson who nods his head in encouragement, though knowing his spitfire girl, she wouldn’t have let him hold her back. “Okay, let’s figure it out.”
A few hours later, dusk is falling over the ranch. The early signs of true fall are here, and the family gathers around the porch for discussions about the Fall Festival the ranch puts on every year.
I am on the outskirts of the meeting, half-listening to the information, given that I technically have nothing to do with the festival, when I see Felicity wandering down toward the barn.
My feet move before I can tell myself not to, and I trail her there, not once giving away the fact that I am right behind her.
I watch her enter the barn, walking slowly and petting each horse as she goes. Seeing her here, in this setting, sends a pang of nostalgia through me.
We would come hang out at the barn all the time when we were kids, when we were teens. I’d bring her around for a ride whenever I could because I knew that she enjoyed it, and her family weren’t ones that had the means to keep a horse.
“Brings back memories, huh?” I finally alert her to my presence, and she spins, surprise on her face before it morphs into a sweet, soft smile. I have to take a deep breath just at the fucking sight of it. The girl still makes it hard for me to breathe, even all these years later.
“Only good ones,” she replies, walking up to one of the mares in the barn and rubbing her hand over her head. “I thought about getting a horse in LA.”
“Yeah?” I ask, tucking my thumbs into the front pocket of my jeans and leaning against a stall a few feet from her.
She smiles at me and nods. “Yeah. I finally had the money, you know?” A little shrug lifts her shoulders. “But I was limited on time, and I didn’t want to buy a horse only for it to not even know who I was. To have other people watch after it to the point where there was no bond.”
I frown in thought. “How come you had no time?”
A sigh that weighs a million pounds escapes her lips, and I feel the strongest urge to walk over to her and wrap my arms around her, to let her put whatever burden she has on me so I can help shoulder it.
“Every minute of my life for the last, oh, I don’t know, nine years or so, has been scheduled.
Down to bedtime and rise time. Down to how long I have in the morning to get a cup of coffee, to shower, to get ready, to eat all of my meals, to use the bathroom. It was all scheduled.”
“Sounds horrible,” I admit, not realizing that’s how it’s been for her.
“It is.” Her voice is soft and her gaze, which now looks glossy, stares back at the horse. Her sadness is palpable, and I have to get out of here.
I have to leave her before I do something that I’ll regret.
Something that will break my heart all over again.
Before I can, she turns to me and takes a step in my direction, clearing away the expression she was wearing to ask me, “So, what about you?”
I tighten my muscles and tell myself not to be an asshole. Because turning away from her right now, even though my eyes keep tracing back down to her lips with a need to kiss her has me losing my damn mind, would be rude as hell. “It’s not quite as rigorous of a life as yours.”
She smiles and shakes her head. “No? You look like you travel a lot. All over the country. You’re so good at what you do.”
I frown and tilt my head at her. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”
Something flutters across her face, worry, concern, embarrassment. Something. And she says, “Of course. I always have. I follow you, you know.”
I nearly blanch at the thought of her following me. I had no idea she did. The account I made for my rodeo business was a brand-new one, and after a viral video, I gained a huge influx of followers.
I never once thought to see who they were.
“You do?” I ask, a hoarseness to my voice.
“I know. It’s taboo to follow your ex online,” she says, her cheeks burning. “But I couldn’t help it. I saw the video of you nearly getting impaled like everyone else and avoiding it.” She chuckles softly. “You’re amazing.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Shaking my head, I look back at her and sigh. “I’ve got to get home.”
Fuck.
The look in her eyes, the disappointment, nearly guts me.
But if I stay here for another minute longer, if I let her in, I will never get her back out.
She was still in, asshole. She never left.
Ignoring my inner thoughts, I give her a smile, also avoiding looking at the extreme look of sadness that crosses her face before she wipes it away with a fake smile and nods.
“Okay.” Her soft, almost husky voice that she sings with pulls me toward her like a fucking siren, and I take a step toward her.
What the fuck was I doing?
I have no idea. But I keep stepping toward her until I can wrap my arms around her, until I feel her small but strong arms wrap back around me.
For a minute, neither of us moves, but our hearts pound in a rhythm, as if they’ve finally found each other again, and both of us tighten our hold on one another.
I feel like fucking breaking down, like begging her for another shot at us, like taking her back to my place and showing her just how great we were together.
Then, I remember that day. When the fucking rain was pouring down all around us, and I showed up at her parents’ house to see her standing there, waiting for a cab, bags packed.
I jerk away, turning my face away from hers because I can’t fucking look at her and not remember her breaking my heart, leaving me here on my own.
I take a minute, getting a breath. She sighs, clearly feeling the same emotions I am, and says, “Bye, Jax.”
I nod my head, looking back to her again despite telling myself not to, and say, “Bye, Felicity.”
Then, I march my ass out of that barn and away from the only person in my life that I have both loved and loathed at the same time.
As much as I would love to say fuck it, as much as I crave her, want her, fucking need her, I can’t let myself go through heartbreak.
Because she will leave again. It’s only a matter of time.