Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
JAXON/JAX
One Month From Now
Gorgeous Chaos & Freedom In The Wind
Love isn’t always whispered in candlelight. Sometimes it’s screamed into the sky with your arms wide open, daring the world to take it away.
Livianna and I are halfway up the Pacific Coast Highway when I glance over and realize she hasn’t said a word in ten minutes. For Livianna, that’s unusual. She’s practically allergic to silence.
“Are you okay?” I keep one hand on the wheel. “I’m not used to this kind of quiet from you.”
She blinks at the ocean view, something unreadable flickering behind her eyes. The golden-hour light catches the tangles of her hair, turning each strand into spun dark copper and fire.
There’s a restlessness in the way she shifts against the leather seat like she’s trying to contain something too big for her skin.
“Yeah.” She reaches for her seatbelt, and her fingers work the clasp with precision. “I just need a second.”
Before I can process what’s happening, she’s rising from her seat like a phoenix emerging from flame.
The wind immediately catches her long curls, whipping them into a wild halo around her face as she stretches her arms toward the sky.
Her dress flutters around her thighs, and for a heart-stopping moment, she looks like she’s about to take flight.
“Livianna, sit down!” My heart hammers against my rib cage as I grip the steering wheel tighter, the Aston Martin suddenly feeling like it’s careening toward the edge of the world. “You’re going to fall!”
In true Livianna form, she doesn’t listen. Instead, she throws her head back and laughs. The sound is pure and unrestrained. It’s carried away by the ocean breeze like a prayer to whatever gods watch over beautiful, defiant women.
Her face dips toward the setting sun. Her eyes are closed, and her arms are stretched wide like she’s embracing the entire Pacific coastline.
She’s magnificent. Terrifying. Completely unhinged. And I’ve never wanted anyone more in my life.
“This is what freedom feels like, Jax.” She opens her eyes and gazes down at me, wild and grinning with the kind of joy that could power cities. “Don’t take it from me, king.”
My chest cracks open at the raw vulnerability in her voice, the desperate plea hidden beneath the surface. She leaves me in awe.
How many people in her life have tried to contain her brightness? How many have told this wildfire of a woman to burn quieter, smaller, and safer?
I glance up at her, laughter bubbling out of me despite the terror clawing at my throat. She’s completely mad standing in a convertible doing seventy on a coastal highway, and somehow it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I see your crazy shining through, firecracker. And hey, I’m crazy too.” My voice cracks with something that might be panic or might be radical disbelief. “But sit down before I kill us both.”
The Aston Martin’s tires find gravel as I pull over. My pulse is still racing through my veins.
She drops back into her seat with fluid grace, but the wildness doesn’t leave her eyes. If anything, it burns brighter, like she’s tasted something addictive and already craves more.
“Jax, I always want to feel this way.”
Without thinking, I reach for her hand and press it flat against my chest, right over the heart that’s been beating her name since the moment she walked into my life in Paris. Her palm is warm through the cotton of my shirt.
“Then let’s never cage it, mon trésor.”
I’ve built my entire empire on control, on measured responses and calculated risks. But this woman makes me want to throw caution to the wind and see where it lands.
She stares at me with those impossible blue eyes, searching my face like she’s trying to decode some secret message written in the lines around my eyes and the tension in my jaw.
There’s something vulnerable in the way she’s staring at me. Like she’s testing whether I’m serious about what I just said or if I’m another person who will try to dim her light.
“Do you mean that?” Her voice is softer now, barely audible over the sound of waves crashing against the rocks below us.
“I do.” I lift our joined hands and brush my lips against her knuckles, tasting salt air and something uniquely her. “I mean every word.”
The silence that stretches between us feels different now, charged with possibilities and unspoken promises. The sun continues its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of coral and gold that seem explicitly designed to frame this moment.
She shifts in her seat, angling her body toward mine without pulling her hand away from me. “Tell me about this vineyard we’re supposed to be looking at.”
The vineyard. Right. The business meeting that feels increasingly irrelevant with each passing second.
I glance at the road and then back at her. “It’s in Paso Robles. It’s a small, family-owned operation for three generations. They’re looking for investment capital to expand their organic certification program.”
“Sounds boring.” Her smile is wicked. “Are you sure that’s why we’re really driving up the coast?”
“What other reason would there be?” I trace lazy circles on the back of her hand with my thumb, marveling at the softness of her skin.
“Maybe you wanted an excuse to spend the day with me.” She leans closer, close enough that I can smell her new perfume mixed with ocean air and that indefinable scent that’s purely Livianna. “Maybe you’re tired of pretending this is just business.”
I smirk because she’s right. The vineyard meeting could have been handled over the phone and with some financial statements.
But the thought of spending an entire day in the car with her and witnessing the way the light plays across her face and the way she laughs at her own jokes… That was worth rearranging my schedule.
“Maybe I am.” The admission is like stepping off a cliff. “Maybe I’ve been pretending about a lot of things.”
Her eyes widen slightly, surprise flickering across her features before something deeper takes its place. Want. Need. The same desperate hunger that’s been eating me alive from the inside out.
“Jax… I…” She shakes her head as she seems to stop herself from saying something. “We should probably get back on the road before it gets dark.”
But neither of us moves. We sit there on the side of the highway, hands intertwined, with the sun sinking lower toward the ocean while cars streak past us in blurs of metal and speed.
The moment suspends as if we’re existing in a bubble outside of time where consequences don’t exist and wanting someone is reason enough to have them.
“In a minute.” I bring our hands to my lips again, pressing a kiss to her knuckles this time. “Let me stare at you for a while.”
So I do. I memorize the way the fading light turns her hair into liquid chocolate.
The tiny constellation of freckles across her nose that she tries to hide with makeup. There is a small scar on her chin from some accident she’s never told me about. The way her lips part slightly when she’s thinking about something she’s afraid to say out loud.
She’s beautiful, yes. But it’s more than that. She’s alive in a way that makes everyone around her seem like mannequins, like pale imitations of what a person could be if they were brave enough to burn as bright as she does.
She’s not chaos. She’s clarity. And God help me, I want every part of her, even if it’s the worst thing I could ever want.
The Malibu house feels too quiet when I enter through the front door, my body rigid with the weight of boardroom politics and international acquisitions that I can’t discuss with anyone.
Seven days of back-to-back meetings in cities I’m not allowed to name, dealing with people whose existence requires security clearances higher than most government officials possess.
“Jax?” Livianna’s voice drifts from the kitchen—warm and familiar—immediately unknotting the tension between my shoulder blades.
“I’m back.” I drop my travel bag by the door and follow the sound of her laughter.
She’s leaning against the quartz countertop with a cup of coffee in her hands. Her hair is piled in a messy bun. My fingers itch to pull it loose.
When she peeks up at me, that smile breaks across her face like sunrise, and every mile I’ve traveled this week suddenly feels worth it.
“You look like hell.” She sets down her drink and crosses to me, those knowing blue eyes cataloging the exhaustion I’m trying to hide behind expensive suits and practiced composure.
“Thanks for the warm welcome.” I reach for her automatically, hands finding the curve of her waist like they belong there.
“I’m serious.” She traces the lines around my eyes that weren’t there a week ago. “When’s the last time you slept more than three hours?”
The honest answer is Tuesday, but exposing that means admitting how the deals I negotiate exist in tunnels deeper than she can imagine. Instead, I kiss her forehead and breathe in the scent of her shampoo.
“Let’s have a date night.” She pulls back to study my face, determination replacing concern. “You’re wound tighter than a spring and need a release.”
Heat flares low in my gut at the way she says “release” and how her voice drops to that husky register that makes rational thought impossible.
I tighten my grip on her waist and pull her closer until there’s no space left between us.
“What did you have in mind, firecracker?”
Before she can answer, my phone erupts with that specific ringtone that makes her entire body tense against mine—the encrypted satellite line that connects me to people who don’t exist on any public record.
Her eyes narrow as she steps back with a flash of hurt as she tries to hide behind casual indifference. “Let me guess.”
“I have to take this.”
“I know. You always have to take that call.” Her suspicion can’t be denied.