Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ava
There’s a strange look on his face as he pulls away and sits back on his heels. And I’ll be honest, it takes me aback a little. Here I am offering myself to him, and he, what, doesn’t want me now? That stings more than it should.
He’s staring at me, his sharp green eyes fixed on my face, his chiseled jaw clenched tight. After about twenty seconds of that, I start to get really uncomfortable. Having a sexy-as-fuck guy staring at me is really unsettling.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I finally ask.
My voice pulls him out of his daze. He blinks, stands up, and places a plush white towel on the edge of the tub. “I should check in with the guys, make sure shit is being handled. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”
If I need anything? Is he my butler now? What the fuck?
Okay, for real, though, Jackson dismissing my blatant offer of sex hits my pride hard.
Much harder than I care to admit. It’s always been obvious he’s into me.
From the moment we started hooking up, he’s made that very, very clear.
But now that I’m giving him a free ticket to ride my carousel, he’s not interested?
Oh, fuck, no.
Water swooshes loudly as I haul myself up while grabbing the towel at the same time, so I can quickly wrap it around my body. He’d just turned toward the door, but he whips back around to face me when he hears me stand.
But I get up a little too fast, and I sway a little before catching myself on the tile wall behind me. Doesn’t matter. He’s already across the bathroom, hands cradling my waist to steady me.
“Careful,” he chides, his eyes locked on my breasts, which I purposely didn’t cover with the towel. Is that devious? Maybe. But he deserves to suffer.
He helps me out of the tub, and I sink against him, pulling in that scent that’s uniquely Jackson.
My God, it yanks me right back to being seventeen, when my whole world revolved around him and only him.
We were so wrapped up in each other that nothing else mattered.
It was wild and exciting. A brief moment in time when absolutely anything was possible.
Until it wasn’t.
I pull in a hit of that nostalgia and pause, like holding that smell in my lungs will transport me back to Missouri, three years ago, before everything got royally fucked.
“Let’s get you to bed,” he says, though I can see the tension in his jaw, the way he has to tear his gaze away from my breasts, like it pains him to do it. Good. Mission accomplished.
In the bedroom, I climb up onto the bed, while he disappears into his closet, reemerging with a navy blue ExU T-shirt. He tosses it onto the bed. “Get some rest.”
I lift a brow. “I’m not tired.”
Almost dying has a way of making things crystal clear, and pretending I don’t want him? Yeah, that’s not working. So maybe it’s time to stop fighting it.
I’m on the mattress, on my knees, the towel clutched in one fist, while I wait for him to either storm off in a moody huff or say “fuck it,” and strip his clothes off.
Instead, he just stands there, a noticeable bulge in his pants, hands clenched into fists, like it’s taking every last bit of strength to keep himself in place.
“You don’t want this, Ava. Trust me,” he says through gritted teeth.
Is he actually trying to talk me out of this? What the fuck? Is this a glitch in the matrix or something? Am I on the wrong timeline?
Confusion shifts to annoyance, then anger. It’s a whole emotional journey in the span of a split second.
“You know what, you’re right,” I say, reaching for a response I know will piss him off. “Maybe I should call Chase over for a quick fuck.”
The fury in his eyes is instantaneous, and my throat is in his hand before I can even blink. He squeezes—not enough to inflict pain, just enough to immobilize me. “I swear to God, Ava…”
He’s angry, but at least he’s reacting. It’s better than the stiff, impassive vibe he was giving off earlier. Whatever the fuck that was.
“What?” I ask, unblinking. “You swear what?”
Everyone is so afraid of Jackson, and for good reason.
He’s a wall of muscle, and violence is his therapy.
But I know he would never hurt me. I know it like I know the sun will rise tomorrow.
I wasn’t always so confident in his restraint, but there’s just something in the way he’s looking at me now, and I can’t shake the thought. He won’t hurt me.
He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me like he’s lost at sea, trying to find his way back to shore…
“Fuck, Ava,” he says finally, before releasing me and taking a measured step back.
“What the hell is going on with you?” I ask.
On the heels of a deep breath, his gaze catches mine. “I’ve spent so long trying to keep you safe,” he says, but the words are faint, like he can’t draw enough air into his lungs. “And today, you were attacked. In my own damn house.”
Wait, hold up.
“You’ve spent so long keeping me safe?” I shake my head. “What does that mean?”
Silence.
When he doesn’t say anything, I slide off the bed and grab the T-shirt with my free hand. “See, that’s the thing with you, Jackson. You can never just tell me what’s going on. You’re always so damn secretive.”
“And you don’t have secrets?” he asks evenly—not quite a challenge, but his words still send a trickle of fear down my spine. Because, yeah, I do. And this is the second time he’s brought it up, so I can’t help but wonder if he knows something…
But even as the thought crosses my mind, I dismiss it. Jackson may have money and connections, but there’s some information that even he doesn’t have access to.
I grab the T-shirt and take it into the closet, pull it over my head, toss the damp towel into the hamper, then return to the bedroom. “All I want to know is what you meant by ‘keeping you safe for so long,’” I say flatly. “Safe from what? I deserve to know that much, don’t you think?”
Jackson is leaning against the bedpost, hands in his pockets, watching me. “Some things are better left in the shadows. Trust me.”
“And who gets to decide that for me? You?”
I can see indecision flicker across his face before he finally says, “Fine. What do you remember about that morning?”
I wave him off. “I’m not talking about that night. What’s done is done. Neither of us can take it back.”
He studies me for a moment. “You just said you wanted to know...”
I sigh, sinking onto the bed. “I don’t even know why I brought it up. But I guess we’ve never really talked about that morning.”
Jackson sits beside me, cautious. “So talk.”
“You already know what happened,” I mutter.
Maybe I’m a coward, but thinking about that night only reminds me of what I saw in Jackson, and what I saw terrified me.
It wasn’t human. If I believed in the supernatural, I’d say he’d transformed that night.
He shed the guy I knew and revealed something darker, something that doesn’t belong in this world.
“I want to hear it from you,” he says.
My fingers twist in the hem of my T-shirt, and I shrug. I’ve only ever told my dad what I saw that morning—once, right after it happened—and that was it. The police never questioned me, and by the next day, Senator Davis’s death had been ruled a suicide. Case closed.
And I ended things with Jackson before we ever really talked about it. All I told him was that I knew what he’d done…
“Honestly, that morning is mostly a blur,” I say quietly. “I just remember pieces. You were there. The rest…I try not to think about.”
I was downstairs, in the kitchen. It was early. Senator Davis walked, and…my mind deleted everything after that, even the fear. But logic filled in the rest. At some point, Jackson had clearly walked in, saw the Senator and me, and...did what he did…
He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “That’s for the best.”
That tone—flat, final—makes my chest tighten. “There’s just one thing I never understood,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“What were you doing downstairs so early in the morning?”
The house was huge, and Jackson’s bedroom was at the farthest point from the kitchen. I don’t remember screaming, but even if I had, there’s no way he would have heard it. How did he just happen to be there?
He twists his head to look at me, and his gaze flickers, but he recovers fast. “I was smoking out on the patio when I heard a commotion in the kitchen. I went in to check it out.”
I tilt my head to the side. No, that’s not right.
He smoked blunts in his room all the time.
His mom complained about it constantly, but it never stopped him.
That’s the thing about Jackson, he does whatever the fuck he wants, whenever he wants, and no one is going to tell him otherwise. Even back then.
“You never smoked on the patio,” I point out.
What isn’t he telling me?
He gives a faint shrug. “Guess I did that morning.”
It’s so casual it almost sounds believable. Almost.
I open my mouth to push, then stop myself. I’m so curious, but maybe it’s safer not to know.
He reaches out and brushes his thumb under my chin. “Let it go, Ava.”
Honestly, I wish I could.
His eyes meet mine, and there’s a softness there that absolutely guts me. “All you need to know is that I’d do anything to protect you, Ava. I’d claw out my own fucking heart if it spared you even a second of pain.”
Emotion lodges in my throat because I know, despite everything that’s happened, he truly believes that. Killing a man. Stalking Me. Kidnapping me. Forcing me to marry him. I’m sure, in his twisted mind, it was all for my benefit.
“I’ve felt more pain in the last three years than you’ll ever know,” I admit.
Not just for what happened, but for everything that came after—the secrets, the lies, the cover-ups. Mostly for the person I was forced to become.
“I know, baby.” The pad of his thumb brushes across my lips. “But everything is going to be okay. I promise you, I’m going to fix it.”
I want to believe him. But how do you fix a shattered heart? How do you undo three years of pain? I’m not sure it’s even possible. And yet, as I look into his eyes, I wish I were delusional enough to believe it was…