Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Jaxon
Bang, bang, bang.
The sharp, relentless sound echoed through my house. Each strike came with increasing urgency, pulling me from my sleep.
“For fuck’s sake!” I groaned as I registered the sound of someone pounding the heck out of my front door.
Whoever it was could kindly get lost. I wasn’t ready to face the world, especially when I knew the reason I didn’t toss and turn all night had everything to do with the warm, petite body tucked like a little spoon against me.
Unfortunately, my sated bubble officially burst when I felt Lily’s body tense up as another round of vigorous banging started.
Throwing back the covers, I got out of bed, lifting her effortlessly as if she weighed nothing; a fragile silhouette now, too thin compared to the healthy, softly shaped girl I once knew.
When her toes brushed the floor, her eyes looked up at me, wide and brimming with fear.
The fire that had lit her stance last night was long gone, leaving behind only a shadow of that girl.
The realization landed heavy on my heart, stirring a deep need to shield her from whatever had caused the sudden shift in her demeanor from then to now.
Three more sharp knocks ricocheted down the hallway.
But first, I had to deal with an unwelcome visitor and since my keys for the handcuffs were in the kitchen, Lily had no choice but to follow.
We’d barely cleared the hallway, into the living room, when the sound of a key sliding into the lock of the front door caused her to yank my hand, still cuffed to hers, behind my back as she shielded herself and dug her fingers into my arm just as the front door swung open.
“What the hell, Ari? It’s not even eight a.m.”
“Don’t you dare, Jaxon. If you’d answer your damn phone, I wouldn’t have had to come over here at the butt crack of dawn.”
“It’s dead. My brother with you?”
“No.”
“Good.” The tension in my body shifted the second my reply left my lips when it hit me that Lily was still tucked behind me, frozen, when her best friend had just stormed into my house. “Lily?” I questioned after turning around to find her eyes scrunched tightly closed. “Lily-Bee?”
“Why are you handcuffed to each other?” Ari asked, rushing to her friend’s side. “Lils.” She’d softened her voice and pulled her into an embrace.
Lily opened her eyes, and I swear all the air from my lungs evaporated. I was no stranger to a vulnerable Lily, but this, this version of her was something entirely different. She stared at me as if she’d seen a ghost. I wasn’t even sure she knew I was the one standing in front of her.
Her eyes, which lacked vibrancy, were cold and haunted.
It was like staring at a stranger, a shattered version of the girl I once knew inside and out.
My heart broke into a million pieces as I stood helpless, watching her eyelids droop as if they had no fight left in them, while a lone tear ran down her cheek and landed on Ari’s sweater-covered shoulder.
I held my breath and struggled internally to process the vortex of emotions raging a war inside me, that I felt powerless to stop.
“Ari.” Lily’s voice cracked as color slowly crept back into her cheeks.
Relief slipped in where panic had been amid a haunting, unfiltered look into what Arizona had alluded to last night, or rather, this morning, about what Lily may have endured in her time away.
As a police officer, I wasn’t unfamiliar with trauma, but this felt different. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to notice the cracks, simply because I had always seen Lily through a lens of beauty and consummate strength.
Seeing her now, so broken, it crushed me with guilt and unearthed a fierce need to shield her from further pain. The idea of anyone hurting her was inconceivable to me. But now, seeing the truth so clearly in front of me—that she had been through something unimaginable—it shook me to the core.
“Jaxon, can you please take the cuffs off?” Ari’s question drew me back from the edge of a familiar spiral; a trip down memory lane, wishing I’d done more than lash out at the world in the days after her family’s disappearance.
“My keys are over here.”
Lily remained silent, her fragility almost palpable, as if the weight of whatever it was that spooked her rested solely on her delicate shoulders. I reached between us and grasped her chin between my thumb and forefinger, coaxing her gaze up to meet mine.
At that moment, my axis shifted. Her eyes, those beautiful blue irises I had always adored, locked on to mine, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I saw her.
I saw everything. The pain, the unspoken sorrow, but also the glimmer of something more, something deep and unbroken that remained unfinished between us.
Lily was the only girl whose laughter echoed in my heart, and whose smile had once been my favorite sight in the entire world. She was the person my heart solely beat for, the only girl I’d ever loved. And to have her back in my life was equally overwhelming and bittersweet.
“I’ll give you two some privacy.” I kissed her forehead like it was second nature, without thinking, after removing the cuffs from our wrists and left the girls in the kitchen while I made my way down the hallway, into my bathroom, and straight into the shower.
Cold water blasted from the showerhead and ran down my back. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even stop to let the water warm up or take off my shirt and shorts.
And yet no part of me gave a fuck.
I was desperate for the truth about where Lily had been and what, or who, had deeply embedded that look of fear in her eyes.
I wanted to interrogate her until she caved and confessed.
Though I knew better, and shoved that thought away.
We were both trapped under layers of hurt, and I’d willfully brush mine aside because there wasn’t a single thing in this godforsaken world I wouldn’t do for her.
Still, I couldn’t ignore how having her near filled an emptiness within me. For so long, all I had was her memory, lingering at the edges of my mind like a constant presence I could never quite reach—especially at night, when my thoughts refused to let me rest.
The darkness wasn’t my friend. It was isolating, but last night, holding her close, feeling her warmth as she slept beside me in my clothes . . . it was surreal.
And the sight of her in my SRPD shirt, it was my undoing.
The memory of her swallowed up by my clothes—to describe the possessiveness and hunger that rocked me to the depths of my being would be like an ocean’s tide, relentlessly pulling me under, never giving me a chance to breathe.
She stole my literal breath.
Then and now.
I chastised myself for hardening beneath my shorts as the vision of her long blond hair hanging loose and reckless over her shoulders, her face bare, her skin pale and flawless, appeared behind my eyelids.
The longer I drank in her beauty, getting my fill, committing every delicate inch to memory, a soft warmth crept up her neck and flushed her cheeks, betraying her steeled stance.
The silence that separated us was louder than words until I saw the exact moment her indecision shifted, and her body tensed as though she was preparing to bolt.
I braced both hands on the tiled wall and hung my head.
The tension between us was tangible. I knew she felt trapped, and yet there was no other place for her to go. No other bed to hide in. When I reached out and wrapped my hand around her wrist, gently turning her to face me, she tried to mask the pain in her eyes, but it was impossible.
The war within her was obvious. She wanted to flee, to escape the heaviness between us, but at the same time, something held her back.
It was an inner battle I felt deep in my chest. Then the sheer mention of heading to Arizona’s place was laughable.
Her smart mouth fueled my need to keep her close, so when she asked for my handcuffs, every cell in my body lit up.
But I quickly pushed that desire down. Understanding her need to feel anchored and the comfort it would bring her acted as a lifeline, and I was all too happy to oblige.
Stripping out of my soggy clothes, I washed my hair and soaped up my body, all the while ignoring the release I desperately needed. While it wouldn’t have taken much effort, everything about it felt wrong. Plus, the urge to check on Lily grew more overwhelming with each passing second.
I turned off the shower, quickly dried myself, and brushed my teeth, then grabbed clean clothes from my closet. By the time I stepped into the kitchen, I found her in an embrace with Arizona near the front door. I didn’t want to intrude, but I also couldn’t find it in myself to move.
“I’ll check in with you later, and Jaxon,” Ari pinned me with a stern glance over Lily’s shoulder, “remember what I said last night.”
I nodded, understanding that patience was the only way forward, no matter how hard it would prove to be.
“What was that about?” Lily turned toward me once Ari left.
“Just bestowing some wisdom upon me.” I scrubbed my hand over my stubbled jaw. “Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Only if you have the ingredients for your famous omelets?”
“Famous, huh?”
My mom taught my brothers and me how to cook, and since Lily and I spent all our time together, I made her my guinea pig whenever I tried new recipes more often than not.
“From what I remember, anyway.”
“Well, you’re in luck then,” I said, pulling all the ingredients I needed from the refrigerator.
“Do you have any coffee?”
I stopped mid-motion and looked over my shoulder with eyes wide in surprise, recalling she had previously said she imagined it was what burnt dirt tasted like.
“Night shifts made me cave.” She shrugged.
I placed everything I needed to make breakfast on the counter before grabbing two mugs from the cupboard. I lifted the lever on the Keurig, popped in a K-Cup, forcing it to hum to life as the water heated and hissed for a beat before brewing the first drip of coffee.
“How do you take it? I don’t have any cream.” Since I drank mine black.
“Milk?”
“That I do have.” I turned toward the fridge again.
“Amazing, thank you.”
I set the milk carton and freshly brewed cup of coffee on the counter for her, then popped another K-cup into the machine for my own mug.
“Would you believe when I first started drinking coffee, the only way I could get it down was with four creams, four sugars.”
“Jesus, girl, that’s a damn donut in a cup.” I laughed.
“Desperate times, desperate measures, I tell ya, but yes, it wasn’t exactly healthy. I’m proud to say I’m down to only two creams now.”
“Attagirl!” I beamed. “Still, I never thought I’d see the day.”
Heck, I never thought there’d ever be a day when she was in my kitchen. So close and tangible.
“You and me both,” she echoed, but I wasn’t sure if she was talking about her finally drinking coffee or sharing one with me.
I got to work cracking and beating the eggs; most of the vegetables were pre-chopped and in containers, as I tried to partially meal-prep to make things faster for me when I got home from a shift.
“So back to this lack of furniture thing you’ve got going on.”
It hadn’t been an issue for me until now, and while it was less than ideal when it came to having a guest, it also gave me another excuse to put my hands on her.
Grabbing a dishcloth off the counter, I wiped my hands before I stepped away from the island, picked her up by her hips, and deposited her on the counter.
Her breath hitched, eliciting a smirk to pull at the corners of my lips as I loved the look of her perched on my kitchen counter way too fucking much.
“Sorry about the lack of seating,” I said, leaning my hands on the quartz on either side of her legs.
Her gorgeous, bare legs.
“Jaxon, I—”
“Nuh-uh. Lils, I can practically see your mind retreating. Hell, I can feel it.”
Her hands timidly covered mine. “This is . . .” I stayed silent, giving her the time she needed to gather her courage. “It’s a lot. I never thought I’d—”
I nodded because I felt the same.
“I don’t want you to feel any pressure here, Lily.
I don’t know why you left the way you did.
Just like I don’t know where you’ve been these last ten years, but as I stand here today, with a second chance to have you in my life that I never in my wildest dreams thought possible, I can tell you with absolute certainty I will do anything within my power and then some to stay in it.
I know you need a friend right now, someone you can always trust to have your back and protect you, no matter the cost. That’s me, Lily. Let me be that person.”
“Jaxon, I can’t.”
“You can, Lily. I promise I’ll stand beside you forever if you’ll let me.”
She looked crestfallen, almost defeated, as she cast her eyes downward.
“Why don’t you hate me?” she asked with a soft exhale.
I dropped my head, leaning it against her forehead.
“I won’t lie to you, not now, not ever. You broke me when you disappeared.
I was out of my mind with anger, hurt, and sadness, but over the years, that resentment turned into grief and yearning.
” I moved my hands to frame her cheeks and coax her eyes to meet mine.
“But I could never hate you, not when I—”
“No. Don’t say it, Jaxon, please don’t.”
“Okay, I won’t . . . Just know I never stopped, and if that means nothing more comes of this, there still isn’t anything in the world I won’t do for you. Please tell me you understand that.”
She nodded, tucking her lips between her teeth.
“I’d really like to hear your words, Lils.”
“I understand.” Her voice hovered like a tender whisper on my lips, and I wanted to memorize her every breath.
“Good.” I stepped back from between her legs, which pained me to do so, but I needed to lighten up the mood. “Now, what toppings do you want in your omelet? I’ve got mushrooms, spinach, red pepper, green onions, and tomato.”
All her favorites, I realized as I listed them out loud, almost like subconsciously I always kept those ingredients on hand to incorporate into my meals without even thinking about it.
“All the above but—”
“Tomatoes on the top as a garnish.” I hadn’t forgotten.