26. Jaxon #3
“Were things ever good with your ex?”
“No,” her reply is instant.
“Can I ask why you agreed to marry him?”
“I don’t really want to get into it right now, but it comes down to the fact that I killed my mother.”
I wasn’t aware that a jaw could open so wide and so fast that it could fall out of a bed and onto the floor next to it, but mine just did.
What the fuck does she mean? Killed her mother?
“I’m sorry, you can’t drop that line and not get into it.”
“I didn’t physically take her life, but my actions did. I got myself into a situation, and she was coming to get me. She ended up being carjacked a block from where I was, and the person hit her on the head. It ended up killing her.”
I knew her mom died, but that’s not a standard death; that’s a trauma I can’t even wrap my head around. She’s talking about it so matter-of-factly, but I still see the wetness spring in her eyes.
“I’m sure there’s more to the story than that, but what does that have to do with Tripp?” I ask, still not connecting the dots. I hate talking about the ex when we’re lying here together.
“My father disowned me… and that would have been okay. I mean, it wouldn’t have, but I would have understood why.
Then one day out of the blue, he came to me and suggested that maybe Tripp and I should get together.
My dad and Tripp’s dad were friends. He said that the Worthingtons were looking for a wife for Tripp…
that things could be mutually beneficial because I could get them to help save my father’s failing business.
He said it would go a long way in making things better between us. ”
There’s so much I want to address with that… that I should address… but I can’t stop the first thing that still comes out of my mouth. “But you didn’t love him?”
“I wanted to,” she answers.
“But you didn’t,” I reply. She scoots closer to my body and shakes her head against my chest, but won’t bring her blue eyes to look at me again.
“No. I knew he wasn’t good for me from the beginning, but it was the only time my father would talk to me.
The union with Tripp was going to be the penance I accepted for my mother.
Because after she died, my father spiraled in a way I never could have predicted.
And when he came to me with the Tripp idea, he had life in his eyes again.
Hope. Something I had taken away eighteen months prior.
I had already lost my mother and had a taste of what losing my father would be like.
I didn’t want to lose him forever, too.”
“Oh my God, Della,” I say, wrapping her as tightly as I can. “I’m so sorry.” How does one even respond to that? Whatever is transpiring between us can’t fully be classified as a rebound because she had never been into him. And part of me isn’t mad at that.
“It’s fine,” she starts, “I mean, it’s not. But it is what it is. I guess that’s why I’m okay walking away so quickly. I know it makes me look like a bit of a hoe…”
I cut her off. “If Tripp was the love of your life and you ended up on my ranch, you could still do whatever you wanted to do. I’d still want you… and I still wouldn’t judge you. Have you talked to either of them since you’ve been here?”
“I talked to my father briefly, but not Tripp. I think I had like two hundred and fifty missed calls the day of the wedding from a number of different people. I blocked Tripp and co, but I can’t bring myself to block my dad, even though the conversation was only focused on why I wasn’t going through with the wedding.
When he didn’t have any concern for me, we didn’t end the conversation on a good note.
I know it’s fucked up, but in some weird way, seeing him call makes me feel like he still cares.
Because for those eighteen months, he didn’t call, and that hurt worse. ”
“Del, I don’t know how to respond to that. It’s so fucked up. I’m so sorry.” The words seem cheap, but I genuinely don’t know what to say to her. The hurt has to be so bone-deep. It makes me admire her even more that she is staying so strong in the face of it all.
“What’s your story, Jax? Why aren’t you dating or married?”
I decide to go along with the subject change because the other stuff can’t be easy for her to talk about.
“It sounds cliché, but I still haven’t found someone.
I’ve had a couple of serious relationships, but nothing I was ever willing to take to the next level.
There’s no big secret or big trouble; I just haven’t found it. ”
“Your standards must be impossibly high. I just can’t believe someone like you is still single.”
“By choice,” I laugh, “but not anymore. I am in an exclusive and committed sexing situation.”
Because of the timestamp, calling whatever is happening between us sexing feels safer than I have more chemistry with you than I’ve ever had with anybody. And it scares me that I’ve never felt like this before.
“Anyway, since we’re laying cards on the table, what else is on this list? I need to know what stretches I should be doing.”