Prologue #2
A sliver of annoyance passed through me. Yeah? And who had the freedom of choice? But that wasn’t fair. Jaxon had to walk a thin line. “We’ll talk all the time, Jax,” I said.
He looked at me over his shoulder. His eyes glimmered, and he dragged the corners of his lips into a smile. “You bet your ass we will,” he said, his voice a little rough.
“I’ll bet my life,” I assured him.
Jaxon swallowed and balled his fists, turning to me. “And we’ll do another trip together,” he said, repeating the things we had already talked about in the last few weeks in the face of the looming departures. “Like we did in July.”
I nodded. We had gone to Still Water Cove at the start of July, just the two of us.
It was a graduation gift from Jaxon’s parents.
Not that they had just decided to send their son with a charity case to a lovely retreat.
They had offered Jaxon a monthlong trip to Italy, but he picked Still Water Cove under the condition I could come with him.
It was still way cheaper—not something the Mercers needed to think about the way I did—so they caved in.
We’d spent ten days in a log cabin, talking late into the night, swimming at the crack of dawn, competing mercilessly in who could stay underwater longer or whose nosedive was better.
I hadn’t gotten many chances to go on a carefree break in my life, so those ten days felt like being close to Heaven.
Jaxon had loved every minute of it. I had never seen him so happy.
The last couple of years had been rough, and Jaxon depended on me more than ever.
It was almost a full-time job to keep Jaxon distracted from the relentless wave of destruction his brother’s fall from grace had unleashed.
But he seemed to have forgotten all about it in Still Water Cove.
Jaxon shoved his hand into his pocket. “This is stupid and sentimental and dramatic, but I got you something.” He stomped over and thrust his fist at me. When he opened it, two bracelets of braided brown leather sat on his palm in a tangle, each with a little metal plate and an engravement. “Here.”
“There are two,” I said.
“One’s for me,” Jaxon said, rolling his eyes and probably regretting opening his fist. I had learned this a long time ago.
Jaxon didn’t put himself in situations where someone could say no to him.
He didn’t ask people for things, and he didn’t offer things that might be rejected.
If he invited you to the movies and you said you couldn’t come, he would blush furiously and stammer that it was just a dumb idea and that it didn’t matter.
I took one bracelet and examined the engraving on the plate. “Are these coordinates?”
“Still Water Cove,” Jaxon said. He lifted his chin a little and pressed his lips into a tight line, anticipating my reaction. “I got them that day when you were too hungover to get out of bed until the afternoon.”
I knew the day. It was the only day I was hungover. We’d had a few beers by the firepit the night before, but they didn’t sit well with me. I’d woken up with a pounding headache and a rotten mood. It might have been the third or fourth day, and it was the only time we drank in Still Water Cove.
“Jax, this is…” I couldn’t find the right words.
“Silly,” Jaxon supplied. “I know. You don’t have to wear it.”
I snorted. “Stop downplaying it, dumbass. I love it.”
He was stunned for a moment. “You do?”
“Of course,” I said. “That was the best trip ever. And this…it’s so thoughtful. Help me put it on.” I handed him the bracelet and pulled the sleeve of my hoodie up to bare my wrist.
Jaxon’s fingers trembled slightly as he brought his hands to my bare wrist, tying the leather strings into a moving knot that secured the bracelet just right.
“Now me,” he said, thrusting his hand out.
He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt, and his arms were mostly bare and defined.
He already had a golden bracelet his parents had gotten him for his eighteenth birthday, but he didn’t see an issue with combining the two, so I tied the bracelet around his wrist and smiled.
“I didn’t get you anything,” I said.
“Oh.”
“What?” I asked. “I didn’t know we were doing gifts.”
Jaxon looked me up and down before his eyebrows shot up. “Give me your hoodie.”
“What?”
“I know you’re wearing a T-shirt underneath, El,” Jaxon said. “Even though it’s a million degrees out there.”
“What are you gonna do with my hoodie?” I asked.
“I’m not small,” Jaxon said, pretending to be offended. “Besides, that’s the one I wore all of last winter when I kicked your ass in Seeds of Soulless.”
“I won it back,” I reminded him, but I realized that this wasn’t a battle I particularly wanted to win.
“Alright, fine.” I grabbed the edge of the black hoodie with a red and white paint splatter design and lifted it over my head.
My T-shirt dragged with it until I was almost shirtless, but I got a hand free from the sleeve and separated the two garments, pulling the T-shirt down and taking the hoodie off. “There you go.”
“Still warm,” Jaxon teased, holding it to his face.
I snorted and shook my head. “Don’t be creepy.”
“Why? You scared?” He waved the hoodie at me like a weapon. “Scared of me, El?” He tossed the hoodie at me, snapping it back again. My teammates had danced that dance with wet towels too many times to count. I was practiced in the art of snatching such things from my opponents’ hands.
I grabbed the sleeve of the hoodie on Jaxon’s next attempt, wrapping it around my hand in one smooth move and yanking the hoodie and Jaxon toward me.
My other hand grabbed his wrist, the left hand letting go of the sleeve and finding Jaxon’s forearm, trapping him inches away from me. “Who’s scared now?”
He let out a soft chuckle and stopped struggling. Instead, he looked up—how he must have hated having to look up—and held his breath. “I’m gonna miss you, El.”
I held him close for a few moments longer, looking into his eyes.
His pupils were so big that I thought he must have taken something from someone at the party.
But that wasn’t like Jaxon. He saw what that crap did to your life firsthand.
Still, he looked high as hell. “Me, too,” I said, letting go of his arms.
He dropped them to the sides, then moved them to the front, holding my hoodie with both hands. “It’s just that we should have had more time,” Jaxon said. “You know?”
I nodded. In the distance, beyond the door of his room, the music shifted from upbeat dance tunes to a slow and rising swell of the cover of “Stand By Me” by Florence + the Machine.
“You do know,” Jaxon said softly, almost like it was a regret.
This thick tension had no right to be here, filling the space between us.
Not when we had so little time left. But there it was, making me jittery and anxious.
“You probably always knew,” Jaxon said, trying for a conversational tone.
“And I’m the coward, El. Hell, I never wanted to ask you for anything if I didn’t think you’d absolutely do it.
So I didn’t. But now…fuck, it’s a mess, El. ”
I was about to open my mouth and tell him he was rambling, but Jaxon tossed the hoodie to his bed and took a swift step toward me.
“I can’t always be the coward, El,” he whispered.
“Um…no?” I cocked my head, eyebrows rising in confusion. He was very close now, breathing through his mouth, his chest rising and falling steeply, his face a little red. Was he actually high?
“’Cause maybe there’s stuff that I didn’t think was possible, but I have to try. Right?” He was pleading now, almost like he needed to hear the affirmative answer in order to survive.
I nodded, my frown deepening. He was scared of going to New Haven, where he didn’t know anyone. Hell, I was scared, too. “It’s okay, Jax,” I said.
Something in his face opened up. The broody, terrified darkness lifted, and he opened his eyes a little wider.
I could see the intense pulse in Jaxon’s neck, the vein throbbing so hard that it looked like his heart worked overtime.
Fists still closed tightly, Jaxon stepped closer, his body pressing against mine.
What the hell?
I grabbed his right shoulder and his left wrist, gearing up to wrestle him like we sometimes did.
We’d wrestled so much on the soft, lakeside grass in Still Water Cove.
But what the hell was wrong with him? Now wasn’t the right time.
However, as these thoughts swirled through my mind, the first second ticked away, and the next one followed.
Jaxon rose to his toes. My back slammed against the door. My head thumped against it, and the heat of Jaxon’s lips seared me when he pressed them against mine. His breathing was crazy now, hot air washing over my face furiously as he dragged his mouth over mine.
Staring at him in white terror, I froze. I gripped him still, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t push him or throw him off. My knees buckled, and I was absurdly grateful for his body pinning me to the door. I would have folded on the floor otherwise.
A small moan burst from Jaxon’s mouth, his lips parted over my mouth, and the warmth and wetness of his tongue brushing over my lips sent chills down my spine, settling right in my groin.
As if fanned by some gigantic bellows, embers of something I hadn’t known had burned within me glowed to life.
The flames were soon ever-reaching, and heat rose into my swirling head, ready to boil my brain.