30. Sadie
Chapter 30
Sadie
T he LA concerts dissolve into a blur, and under the sweltering stage lights with the swell of music in our ears, my mind flickers to a different heat. A different feeling. A different tune.
Silk sheets tangled over sweaty bodies. Breathless sighs and moans. The feel of him stretching me between my thighs. I can’t get enough of him.
It takes a moment, or several, to remember that the stand partner I once loathed is now the one I can’t keep my hands off of over the past week.
I glance to my right. Jaxon’s polished up in his signature black suit. His scent of cedar wood and mint mixing with the rosin of our bows and the rose of my perfume. I wonder, is it him on me I smell, or me on him?
We stand to bow toward the audience, the roar of their applause filling the auditorium, but it’s as if the world is on mute. All I sense is the thrum of energy between us—like a held note waiting for the downbeat to signal its end. It’s only minutes before we can get back to our hotel room. Minutes too long.
For now, we’ve kept things a secret, keeping a mutual distance from each other to stave off whispers. I’d like to think that as adults gossip doesn’t travel like in college, but if it’s anything like it was back then, well… we’d be in trouble. Tensions arise when people date within the stands. A known fact I ignored in college when I was busy being young and having fun.
It’s different now, though.
Jaxon’s different.
When we play Beethoven’s Romanze or a love ballad, flashes of us surface in my mind. Jet black hair mussed and disheveled against a white pillowcase. A needy groan escaping from his mouth when my lips run down his throat. The lick of his tongue down my center, between my breasts, between my thighs, suckling on every soft and aching part of me that craves, that wants, that needs him .
From the man I never wanted to see again after he left me six years ago to the man I realize I never want to be apart from six years later.
He told me he wished he had never left me on that porch and I wonder what it would’ve been like.
Would it sound as soft and tender as the sweet whispers of perfect he presses into my skin? Would it feel like the explosion of fireworks when we crest, a New Year’s Day every day? Would it be as wild and enamored as the look he gives when I scream his name?
Every night, he sinks into me like notes of a piece I’ve memorized, lyrics of a song playing like canon in my head. I dream of him even when I’m not sleeping. I hear him through the silence, the music, and everyday noise. I watch the way his fingers artfully run over his violin strings, the same fingers that make me fall apart in our hotel bed, gripping the headboard as he fucks me into oblivion.
When we make it back to our hotel, our clothes are being ripped off as soon as we walk through the door. There’s something I want to tell him on the edge of my lips, but we’re consumed by the thrill, all heady breaths, hot skin, and aching pleasure.
But the words are on the tip of my tongue with a need to escape before we continue. Jaxon’s shirtless, my fingers tucked in the waistband of his pants while my dress hangs loose but still covering my body. Begrudgingly, I pull away and look at him in the dim glow of the kitchen light. His brow furrows in silent question at the sudden retreat.
“I want to tell you something,” I whisper. His eyes soften as he nods. His Adam’s apple bobs anxiously, but he trails his fingers up my forearm like he can’t be around me and not touch me.
“You can tell me anything,” he whispers. The words crack at the ache in my chest .
“I know,” I say and when his palm cups my cheek, I lean into it, letting my eyes flutter close. Suddenly it feels as if I might cry and my throat constricts from the sudden emotion.
Tell him , a small part of my brain urges. I try to push the message out from my lips, but it stalls.
“Sadie,” he murmurs. “What do you want to tell me?”
My eyes flit open to meet his and my expression must look stricken. Jaxon’s grip on me loosens and my heart fractures when he starts to pull away, sensing a change in me. But it’s not that I don’t want him, it’s that I want him so much he deserves to know. He deserves the truth of what happened that night after he left.
“Jaxon,” I croak. My voice is all gravel and when I meet his inky dark eyes, they’re slightly tense with restraint. His knuckles on the counter that cage me between him are white and I know I have to save this before he thinks something else.
“I want…” I start, swallowing a lump that feels like barbed wire. “I want to tell you about what happened after that night.” His head tilts questioningly, but he doesn’t interrupt. “Six years ago.”
Jaxon’s face drops, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he anxiously swallows hard. His shoulders are so rigid I want to run my hands over them to relax them, but I want to let this secret out first.
“The night I left?” he asks quietly.
“Yes,” I whisper, and as I bring my heart to open, I feel myself crumble. I don’t take back wanting to tell him, but the wound itself is reopening, stitches coming undone, and I feel on the verge of falling apart. The tones in my mind no longer harmonize. All I feel and hear is dissonance.
“Tell me, Sadie. I’ve got you,” Jaxon whispers back and his voice grounds me back to him. My arms wind around his waist like that first night he protected me in Chicago and I didn’t know what else to do but cling to him for comfort.
Because that’s what he is and has been for me, my healing comfort.
I let myself dive into the memory while Jaxon rubs his hand comfortingly over my back. For a moment, I think that perhaps maybe he might already know but it’s squashed immediately by the knowledge that when I woke up from that night, I woke up alone, in a bed that wasn’t mine, sheets that smelled like sweat and weed and all my sense of comfort was out the window. As were my skirt and panties.
The night after I told Sloane what happened, she sobbed so hard I had to cajole her that it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t there. In a way, it was my way of telling myself it wasn’t mine too, because neither of us knew what to do after. Neither of us knew who it was who violated me.
The memory plays as Jaxon’s hand moves to cup my cheek. My red hair falls over his tan skin and I urge my trembling lips to form words. “After you left… I was confused. I felt heartbroken, which didn’t make sense because we weren’t even together. All we did was kiss and yet—” my breath hitches, he kisses my forehead softly, encouraging me to keep going. “I felt hurt watching you walk away and not turn back.”
Jaxon lets out a ragged breath, pressing his forehead against mine. Even with the flash of hurt across his eyes, I know I need to keep going. He bore his secret to me and I want to bear my secret to him.
“I started drinking. More than I usually would. I lost track of where Sloane was and the evening was so late already. When I passed out, I thought I’d wake up in my college dorm to her making me some pancakes or hangover juice or something, but?—”
I sniff. My throat dries the further into the story I go but even though I’m rambling Jaxon doesn’t seem bothered by it.
It’s the first time I’ve uttered these words since the day I told Sloane. Since the day after it happened.
“I didn’t wake up the next morning in my dorm. I woke up somewhere in the middle of the night in the frat house, naked from the waist down and in someone else’s bed.”
Jaxon pales, his expression pained. When a tear slips down my cheek, he catches it with his thumb, then winds his hand into my hair to press me into his chest as I go on.
My voice trembles, but I focus on the beating of Jaxon’s heart against my ear and how I want him to know my secret. “We couldn’t report the rape. I didn’t know who it was and… I didn’t really know if I wanted to fight. Sexual assault cases can take years to solve and truthfully, I just wanted to move on.”
A sob breaks from my lips as my shoulders begin to shudder. Jaxon crushes me further into his chest as we sway there in the kitchen. He holds me like I imagined he would that night if he were there. He holds me like he never wants to let go and I don’t want to either.
After a few moments, he pulls back. His eyes warring between heartbreak and fury, crossed between wanting to punch someone and wanting to break down.
“I should’ve stayed.” His voice cracks at the last word. I pull back to cup his face and tilt it to meet mine.
“It’s not your fault,” I repeat the same words to him I said to Sloane. To myself. Because it isn’t. They weren’t the ones who took advantage of me. It’s not my fault for what happened to me. “Don’t do that. Don’t take blame. It’s not why I told you.” Jaxon’s eyes soften even as they blur from the tears forming again in my eyes. “I know I slept around a lot in college, especially in the orchestra, but I wanted you to know that I don’t do this—” I wave at our near naked bodies in the moonlight, “lightly anymore. I don’t just go out and have sex all the time. I’m not that college girl anymore. All I want is you . Only you. ”
It feels selfish to want him in this way, but I’m not denying the truth that over the past six years I could never be in a serious relationship because my heart had belonged to him since.
“Why?” he asks. His eyes are wide, as if incredulous that I’d still be choosing him after all these years. After what happened.
I have no doubt in my mind that I do choose him. Want him. Love him.
I smile softly. “Because it’s always been you. I’ve always wanted you .”
His hands grip at my shoulders tightly, his face scrunching with anger or pain when he says, “God, I was an idiot.”
I shake my head. “We were young.”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of being in love with you.” He pulls back to look me in the eye. My heart thumps loudly as he wraps me in his arms, my hair tangling in his fingers, and I sink into his cedar wood scent that’s starting to feel like home.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, enclosing me in his chest.
“Don’t apologize,” I say firmly. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not yours either.”
“I know that now,” I whisper softly. “My therapist made sure I got that hint.”
He chuckles softly, walking us backward until my hips are at the edge of the kitchen counter .
“I did think, though, when you left that night, that you hated me.”
His lips drag to my ear. “I never hated you. I admired you. I wanted to be like you.”
Jaxon’s lips drag at my jaw now and with each word, he punctuates with a kiss. “Fearless. Confident.” He kisses me deeper now and I melt into his touch. When he rests his forehead on mine, he sighs, “Pain-free.”
I know how much this means to him. I’ve seen his expression when the pain gets too much and my heart crumbles for him that he has to fight between doing what he loves and doing what’s best for his body.
“But even before the pain, Sadie.” He pulls back to look at me deeply, eyes molten and inky dark. He speaks as if directly into my soul, “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. All this time. Only you.”
It’s all it takes to release my restraint, to have my arms around his neck pull him into a rough, needy kiss. I kiss like there’s no tomorrow, and he kisses me back with the same energy. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want Jaxon. My body sings and heats with every touch of his skin against mine, his lips to my ear.
When in between breaths, he murmurs to me, “It’s always been you, Sadie.”
I turn feverish. My hands are at his pants again, pulling at his belt buckle to slide the leather from the loops and unbutton them.
His hands catch mine just as I’m about to shove them down and he pauses, gently whispering, “Do you want this?”
Despite everything I’ve been through and held onto all these years, I do want this. I want him. I like the way he makes me feel whole and loved and safe . So I whisper without hesitation, “Yes.”
His lips catch mine again, then he flips me as his pants fall to the floor. “You want me to touch you?” he asks, his fingers unzipping the rest of my dress.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“You want me to taste you?” The dress falls open and he trails a finger down my spine to the tip of my black lacy thong.
I groan. “Yes.”
“You want me ?” He accentuates me with a press of his hips and I can feel his hard cock against me.
“Yes, Jax.” My dress falls to my ankles, his boxer briefs follow it and even though he smothers me quickly with his warm body, it isn’t enough to keep the shiver that rolls through me at the feeling of our skin pressed against each other. I tilt forward over the counter, my nipples hitting the cold granite surface just as Jaxon reaches over my hip to press his hand right over my aching need.
But not before he says into my ear, “Tell me to stop at any time. I’m not going to hurt you, Sadie. I’ll do whatever you say. You run the show. You tell me how you want it. I’m all yours.”
“I’m all yours too, Jaxon. ”
“Tell me what you want,” he rasps.
“You. Inside me. Please ,” I pant, and with that, Jaxon pushes into me slowly and when he reaches the hilt, he pauses as I shudder over him. Even without movement or friction, it feels like color splattered onto a blank canvas. He checks in with sweet kisses, soft touches, peppers of praise and when he finally moves, the color smears until it all blends into a rainbow smattering of color.
A clock in the background ticks a metronome beat we don’t follow. Our tempo rises, then slows. Short allegro beats to long legato notes. Jaxon rolls in me the way his bow glides over his strings—artfully, mesmerizing, breathtaking—our voices hush whispers turning into cries that fill the kitchen and living room in a symphonic melody of more, yes, harder.
My knees are on the verge of buckling as the pressure in me builds. His fingers score into my hip as my hands slide on the slick granite top, too sweaty to get a grip.
“ Jaxon, ” I moan, my breath sounding desperate.
“I’ve got you, Sadie. Come for me.”
He thrusts and my vision splinters into a million fractured mirror pieces that glisten sharp and bright. He sails his fingers up my back to fist into my hair as I unravel all over him and his rhythm stutters. Jaxon thrusts deeper, as I clench over his cock, crying out his name in the night, and it’s all it takes to tip him over the edge and bite my shoulder as he groans and shudders deep into me.
I never thought it would ever feel this way—that sex could feel more than just pleasure. That it could transform like a melody played slow and soft instead of fast and frenzied.
Jaxon kisses me softly, then surprises me by lifting me up, wrapping my arms around his neck as he carries us toward the shower.
“What are you doing?” I ask, still coming down from the high.
“Taking care of you.” He turns the water on, the cold shocking me for a moment until it heats and warm water floods over my skin and hair, then Jaxon dips between my thighs and looks up at me.
“Sing for me, Sadie.”