Chapter 6 #2
She draws a slow breath. “Thank you. For not making tonight harder than it already was.”
My heart aches for her. I want to hold her through whatever she’s going through. “You don’t thank someone for basic decency.”
“In my experience, you do.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s silly.”
“Nothing you say is silly.”
“All right, I’ll tell you. I need to tell someone before I meet up with my dinner date.” A crackle comes through the line right before she continues. “Please don’t tell Callum. He’ll lose his mind.”
All my muscles go stiff. “Why? What happened?”
“I was leaving, and the paparazzi were all over the place. They were shouting about bullshit that doesn’t matter.”
“Like what?” Heat rises in my chest. “What did they do to you, Livianna?”
“Nothing.” She sniffles. “They just don’t like me very much. They never have.”
“Did they touch you?” Adrenaline spikes up my spine. “Did they do anything physically to you?”
“No. They only push and shove.” Her exhale is short. “They just got in my face with their cameras. It was?—”
“Where was your car at the time?”
“Jaxon—”
“Where was your car, Livianna?”
“In the parking structure beneath the building.” A horn sounds faintly through the line. “I’m fine, Jaxon. I promise. Just a little rattled.”
I leave the kitchen and march into the main hallway. The space is too still and too quiet for what’s running through my blood right now.
“Livianna, you shouldn’t have been alone.”
“I walk to my car alone every day.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?” Her voice drops.
“Before the accident.” I stop at the end of the hall. “You’re still recovering, and you have people in this city who don’t have your best interests at heart. Walking through a parking structure alone at night isn’t something I’m comfortable with.”
“Jaxon, that’s not your call to make.”
“No.” I turn and retrace my steps back toward the kitchen. “It’s not. But I’m making it, anyway.”
“Jaxon.” A firm warning in two syllables. “I am not a woman who needs to be managed.”
“I’m well aware, Livianna.”
“Then act like it.”
I find the back of the chair at the kitchen island and grip it tightly around the top rail. “What did they say?”
She doesn’t answer immediately, and the quiet has weight. I’m pretty sure she’s measuring how much to give me and what she thinks I can handle, which means whatever it is sits worse than she’s letting on.
“It was about Callum.” She clears her throat. “Something about a woman he was with before we got back together.”
Every muscle across my shoulders pulls taut. “What woman?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” She must shift; the faint sound of her seat adjusting comes through. “That’s not how I handle the press, Jaxon. I don’t give them the reaction they’re after.”
“That’s not the part I’m concerned about.”
“Then what part are you concerned about?”
I release the chair and trek to the window. The neighborhood is dark and quiet outside, every house buttoned up for the night, and Livianna’s sitting alone in a moving car.
“I’m talking about before you got back together with Cash.” I steady my shaking hands with Zara on my mind. “Do you know which woman they were referring to?”
“No.” She pauses. “And I didn’t want to.”
“That was the right call.” My heart rate slows a tad.
“Was it? Standing there in that parking structure listening to them shout at me, all I could think was that I’m missing five years of context. Five years of things that happened that everyone around me already knows about.”
I believe she truly wants to know, and the honesty stirs the love in my heart that I’ve been careful not to recognize.
I don’t answer immediately. How can I? I’m standing here knowing things about her life that she doesn’t, and the heaviness of that is considerable.
“Livianna, you handled it the right way.” I turn and stride toward the living room. “Engaging the press when you don’t have all the information is never the correct move.”
“That sounds like business advice.”
“It applies to most situations.”
She makes a quiet sound, not quite a laugh but close to one. “You’re very good at staying composed, you know that?”
Yeah, until it comes to you.
“Livianna, I have a lot of practice.”
“Does it ever stop working?” It’s a genuine question, stripped of any edge. “Does the composure ever just...run out?”
I brace myself against the back of the couch. That question deserves a more honest answer than I’m going to give her right now, so I redirect. “Are you close to the restaurant?”
“I’m a few minutes out.” She takes a deep breath. “Jaxon, I need you to promise me something.”
“That depends on what it is.”
“Don’t call Callum tonight.” Her voice firms up. “Please don’t loop him in. He’ll panic, and then he’ll make it worse. He has a temper.”
I freeze. How bad is Cash’s temper?
That’s an issue to deal with at another time, so I oblige. “I’m not calling Cash.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not promising anything else.”
“Jaxon—”
“I believe you called me because you wanted someone safe on the other end of the line.” I push off the sofa and climb the stairs to my bedroom. “Let me be that person. But I won’t pretend the parking structure situation sits well with me, and I won’t tell you it does.”
A long moment of quiet stretches between us. Outside, crickets chirp like everything is perfect in the world, and I know that’s just a facade.
She sighs. “You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Jaxon, I’m pulling into a parking lot. I need to go.”
“Enjoy your dinner.” I stop at the base of my bed—the one I used to share with her. “And Livianna, please text me when you’re back in your car.”
“That’s unnecessary.”
“Do it anyway.”
The line stays quiet for a moment. Just the sound of her engine and the soft signal of a turn. I stand with the phone pressed to my ear, with nothing useful to do as the tension coils through my entire frame.
“Jaxon, stop hovering from miles away.” She has a playful tone in her voice.
I smile because she used to say things like this to me all the time. Sure, I’m controlling, but it’s just because I love her and I don’t want anything to hurt her. If only I could tell her.
I force out a heavy sigh. “I’m not hovering.”
“Jaxon.” She says it like she’s playing with me.
I reach for the playfulness we used to share. “How am I hovering when I’m standing in my bedroom doing nothing of consequence? That’s categorically different from hovering.”
She laughs, a real one this time, and it moves through the line in pure joy. My insides grow warm. I’ve been waiting a long time to hear her in this happiness. Her engine cuts.
“All right.” She releases a soft exhale. “I’ll text you when?—”
The knock is violent. Three hard pounds against something I believe is glass, rapid and aggressive, and close enough to the phone that it hits my ear like a weapon.
Livianna’s breath seizes. “What the?—”
The line goes dead.