“It’s okay. It toughened me up. I was never in prison like your friends said, but I did do a stint in juvie when I was younger.” I laugh and add, “I was a fucked up little bastard.”
“I think you grew up to be a pretty good guy.”
“Oh, yeah. What else do you think?”
“Fishing much?” she says, and we both laugh, as she lightened things up.
“You can tell me later how great I am.”
“And big?” she teases.
“Well, yeah, of course.” I nudge her. “Right now, let’s go get that ice cream?”
We turn and I come face to face with someone I was once very close to.
Jessica’s eyes grow wide when she sees me, and not in a happy sort of way. “Jaxon, long time no see.” Her steely gaze goes from me to Rachel. “Have you heard from Sarah lately?”
As I look at Sarah’s best friend—the girl who stood for us at our wedding—and now blames me for Sarah’s drug use, I say, “Can’t say as I have.”
“Who’s this?” she asks and looks Rachel over.
“This is Rachel.”
“Freshman?” she asks, the disgust behind her words apparent.
“She’s my next door neighbor.”
Jessica angles her head, a smirk on her face when she asks, “You two look like you just finished a sex marathon. So, I don’t think that’s all she is to you.”
I clench down hard enough to break bone. “What she is, Jessica, is none of your business.”
“Maybe not, but it’s definitely Sarah’s business, and we both know why.”
9
Rachel
I sit on my bed, my hands on my laptop keyboard, but the words just aren’t coming. My mind drifts back to this afternoon, from the conversation about Sarah, to the weird meeting with Jessica at the farm market. I have no idea why she seemed so pleased with herself. And really, is it Sarah’s business that I’m with Jaxon? Well, I’m not with him with him. I’m just having a brief affair and she’s the one who’s run off with her dealer. Then again, if I’m going to be around her daughter, it does become her business, right? No matter what the circumstances might be, Sarah is still the mother of the child. Jaxon had made that perfectly clear.
It’s also perfectly clear that while they might be over, he’s never gotten over her. But that’s not my burden to bear, really. We both agreed on a brief affair, for our own personal reasons, and neither one of us is looking for anything more.
A bang in the driveway outside reaches my ears. I slip off my bed and walk to my window. A huge floodlight lights up the area between houses and I glance at Jaxon, who’s working on my car. Beside him, he has a baby monitor, likely to hear Cassie if she wakes up and needs him. My heart warms at that. Jaxon might be a lot of things, might have had a misguided youth, but he’s a great father. I push the window up.
“Can you keep it down, some of us are trying to concentrate.”
My legs go weak when he grins at me, and showcases that sexy dimple that makes me want to remove my panties and throw myself at him.
“How’s it going anyway?” he asks.
I groan, and glance at my laptop. “It’s not.”
He wipes his hands with a rag and leans against my car, crossing his ankles. Could the man have picked a sexier pose. God, now I’m never going to get that out of my head.
“What’s the problem?” he calls up to me.
“I can’t seem to focus.” Dammit, when I moved here I swore I was going to keep my head down and concentrate only on school. Why, oh why, did I have to get involved with my neighbor?
Oh, because he’s hot and you needed to get laid.
I only hope that after time in his bed, I’ll be sexed out, and can refocus on my studies.
“Distracting you, am I?” His sexy grin curls my toes.
I fold my arms and cock my head. “Ego much?”
He laughs, a rich baritone that prowls through my bloodstream and wakes my body. “How about a little incentive?” he asks, a hint of humor in his voice
Dressed in my yoga pants and t-shirt, I lean out a little more. Goosebumps break out on my flesh as I breathe in the cooler night air. “What do you have in mind?”
“How many pages do you have to write?”
“It’s a five-hundred-word essay.”
“Okay, after every one hundred words, text me to let me know you’re done.”
I crinkle my nose, having no idea where he’s going with this. “How is that incentive?”
He wags his eyebrow. “You’ll see.”
“I don’t know, Jaxon,” I say cautiously. What the heck is he up to? I’m not sure, but from the way he’s looking at me, I’d hazard a guess that it’s sexual. Why does that thrill me so much? Jeez, I’m turning into a regular nymphomaniac, like a few of my roommates.
“Tell me what you’re up to first.”
“Nope. But if I were you, I’d start writing, because you’re going to like it.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, and I laugh.
“It better be good,” I say as I close the window.
I hurry back to my bed, and place my phone beside me. I do a quick search on some information that I want to verify, then get to work on the first one hundred words. The sound of Jaxon tinkering outside actually brings me a measure of comfort. I like him close, and that’s well…probably not a good thing.
As I listen to him work, I begin my paper, and before I know it, I have the first one hundred words written. I’m on a bit of a roll, and could keep going but I’m too anxious to see what Jaxon is up to.
I’m done, I text.
I wait for his response, my heart pounding as three little ellipses flash on my screen. Then his text comes in, a link to something.
I frown, a bit confused, and slip from the bed and walk to my
