Stay with Me (18 page)

Jax got in between the bar and me. “I don’t give two shits, Mack. Get the fuck out of here before I make you get the fuck out of here.”

Whoa.

Mack’s dark eyes turned into flints of obsidian. “I told you once and I’ll tell you twice, you don’t know who you’re fucking with.”

“I know exactly who I’m fucking with.” Jax leaned against the bar top, his voice low and dangerously calm, like an eye of a hurricane. “Nobody.”

Mack looked like he wanted to say something, but his buddy shifted and he moved, too, so that he could see around Jax’s tense frame. “Isaiah needs to talk to your mom. Like last week.”

Who the hell was Isaiah?

“That’s not her problem,” Jax replied.

“She’s her mom’s bitch, and since her mom ain’t around, it’s her job to make sure her mom talks to Isaiah,” Mack fired back.

Mom’s bitch? What the—

The cop table was starting to pay attention, and I doubted that if this Isaiah dude was looking for Mom, he was on the up-and-up. So that had to make Mack and his buddy pretty stupid to do this in front of a bunch of off-duty cops.

“She’s got a week,” Mack said, backing toward the door. “Before Isaiah gets impatient.”

Mack and his buddy were out the door before I could say a word. My heart was pounding as Jax turned to me, a muscle throbbing along his jaw. “Who’s Isaiah? Like some kind of Amish mafioso?”

Some of the tension eased in his face as his lips twitched. The look in his brown eyes softened a bit. “Not quite. But close.”

Oh no. I didn’t like the close part.

“What’s going on?” Reece was at the bar, his gaze steady on Jax.

“Isaiah is looking for Mona,” Jax replied.

I glanced at Roxy, kind of surprised that she hadn’t hurried off to pretend to be doing something. “I don’t know who Isaiah is and I don’t know where my mom is,” I said, feeling like I needed to throw that out there.

“I know.” Jax’s voice was level. “Reece knows that, too.”

His cop buddy looked over at me. “You sure you want to hang out here for a while?”

I started to open my mouth.

“It’s a done deal,” Jax answered for me. “She’s staying.”

My gaze swung toward him; I was surprised that he’d done that. On the plus side, I was glad I didn’t have to stumble through a non-embarrassing explanation for why. On the negative side . . . well, I wasn’t sure there was a negative side.

Reece blew out a breath as he focused on me again. “If you have any problem with that shithead or any of those shitheads, you let me know.”

I nodded.

“She’ll let me know first,” Jax said to me, and again, I all but gaped at him. “Then we’ll let you know.”

Reece arched a brow. “Man, I don’t know what you got going on
here
,” he said, and my spine stiffened. “But you need to stay out of any shit with Isaiah.”

“I’m already in shit with Isaiah, because of this place, and you know this.” Jax tilted his chin up. “And it’s not my shit I’m worried about.”

Oh wow.

“Okay. Who is Isaiah?” I asked, determining that was the most important thing. “And why is the word
shit
included with his name a lot?”

Reece’s lips formed a half smile. “He’s a bit of a problem around here. Usually runs in circles in Philly, but his stink has traveled far and wide.”

“Drugs,” Jax added, voice low.

I thought about the heroin. Oh shit.

“I’ll have some boys pay him a visit,” Reece said, turning his gaze to Jax. “Make sure he understands that Mona is not Calla’s problem.”

“I’d appreciate that,” he replied, relaxing a fraction of an inch.

So did I. “Thanks . . . I think.”

Reece chuckled.

Raising an arm, Jax rubbed his fingers through his messy hair. “Roxy, you good closing the bar down tonight?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

“I’m going to be here,” I tossed at him, but Jax shook his head. “What? I’ve got
hours
left on my shift.”

“Not anymore.” He took my hand and started walking, leaving me no option but to follow. On the way across the bar, he grabbed a bottle of brown liquor. “We’re going to scratch out one of those ‘never done before’ things tonight.”

“What?” I shrieked.

Roxy’s grin spread into a full smile. “Right on.”

O
ne would think that Isaiah, who may or may not be a drug kingpin, sending his minions to the bar would be the most pressing problem at hand, but because I specialized in dumb, it wasn’t.

Standing in the kitchen of the house, my gaze shifted from the bottle of José and the two shot glasses Jax had also taken from the bar, to the current huge pain in my ass.

Half of his full lips were tilted up in a lazy grin that matched the lazy look to his brown eyes. He was leaning against the counter, well-defined arms folded across his chest.

An attractive pain in my ass, but still, a pain in my ass.

“No.” I said again, for probably the tenth time. We’d been back at the house for about forty minutes, and every minute had been spent with him telling me to take a shot and me telling him various reasons as to why I couldn’t.

Not once did he lose his patience.

Not once did he get angry.

Not once did he make fun of me for not wanting to drink.

Not once did I not have to stop myself from telling him the truth to why I didn’t drink.

I was running out of excuses, and my gaze shifted back to the full shot glasses. I swallowed, frustrated and . . . just really
frustrated
. It wasn’t like I never wanted to drink. I wanted to. I wanted to experience what everyone and their mother apparently liked to indulge in. Being drunk was a great unknown to me.

A lot of things were the great unknown to me.

I wanted to throw myself on the floor and roll around like a toddler, like my brother used—I cut that thought off, shaking my head.

“Hon, you’ve got to try it. Just one shot.”

My gaze flickered to his. I liked it when he called me hon or honey, which was the stupid icing on the dumb tier cake. Our eyes collided, and those thick lashes, those eyes, those eyebrows, and that face.

Fuck
.

If being distracted by a hot guy with a beautiful face made me one-dimensional, then at least I recognized that about myself.

“Is it because of Mona?” he asked.

Whoa. The force of him hitting it right on the nail caused me to take a step back. I hit the chair at the table, and its legs rattled against the floor. “What?” I whispered.

He pushed off the counter, arms going to his side. “Is it because of your mom? Because of how she is?”

Holy holes in the moon, my feet were rooted to the floor as I stared up at Jax. I hadn’t known him for more than a week and some-odd days, and he seriously got it. Just like that. Might have something to do with the fact that he knew my mom when no one—not Teresa or Avery—had ever laid eyes on her or had a chance to experience the wonder of Mona.

It was because of my mom. That wasn’t a surprise to me, but to hear him hit it like that floored me.

I’d seen my mom
do
terrible, stupid things when she was drunk or high. I’d seen horrific and humiliating things
done
to her when she was drunk or high. She never had any control when she was like that. Hell, she never had any control before then, but it was worse when she was drinking or popping pills. She was the reason I didn’t do a lot of things and I wanted complete control, because I . . .

I never wanted to be her.

I wasn’t her.

I would never be her.

My feet moved before my brain caught up to what I was doing. Walking toward the counter, I brushed past Jax and I felt him turn as I reached for the shot. My fingers trembled as they closed around the cool glass.

I turned to where Jax stood, my hand steadying. “I’m not my mom.”

And then I tipped the glass to my lips.

Just one shot. Ha! Famous last words.

Four shots later, I was lying on the floor, on my side, cuddling the half-empty bottle of liquor to my chest. My eyes were closed. There was a warm, electric blanket coiled up in my belly and a pleasant buzz trilled through my veins. I’d long since kicked off my shoes and was currently deciding on if I wanted to take my shirt off or not. I had a tank top on underneath, but sitting up, raising my arms, seemed like it required too much effort.

A soft caress, a feather-light touch, traveled over my forehead, causing the electric blanket in my belly to heat and the trilling in my blood to hum louder. “Tequila . . . Jax, tequila is . . .” I ran out of words, because . . . well, words were so hard to think up and string together.

“Awesome?” he drawled, pulling his hand back.

I opened my eyes and grinned. He was sitting next to me, his long legs stretched out in front of him with his back pressed to the couch. We were only a couple of inches apart, and I didn’t remember how I ended up lying on the floor, but I do know that he’d gotten down there with me immediately.

“Calla?”

“Hmm?” My eyes had closed on their own, so I opened them again. He reached over, tapping my knee with his fingers, and I giggled. “I’m a lightweight, aren’t I?”

His smile spread. “Since this is the first time you’ve ever been drunk, I’m gonna say four shots is pretty damn good.”

“Tequila is like a long-lost, not so annoying friend.” I squeezed the bottle in my arms, pressing it against my chest. “I really like tequila.”

“We’ll see how you feel in the morning. Why don’t you hand over the bottle?”

A frown pulled at my mouth. “But I like it. You can’t take that from me.”

Jax leaned forward, chuckling. “I’m not going to hurt the bottle, Calla.”

“Maybe I want another shot.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I tried to pull off a pissy look, but I think all I ended up doing was crossing my eyes. Sighing loudly, I eased up on my bottle death hold.

He gently pried the bottle out of my grasp and placed it on the coffee table, just out of my reach. I immediately missed the golden bottle of happiness, and I thought I should sit up and retrieve it, but again,
effort
. When his gaze settled back on me, his grin made me feel funny in my chest and in my tummy.

And in lots of other places that made me giggle.

“So back to the things you haven’t done.” He leaned back against the couch, obviously not feeling as good as I was. We’d gone over most of what I hadn’t done in my twenty-one years of life, a staggering list of embarrassing material, but I didn’t care. I liked how he grinned each time I’d told him what I hadn’t done and how this look would creep into his striking face, like he was coming up with something clever. “Never felt sand on your toes?” he added.

I shook my head. I thought I did. “I have plans. My plans don’t involve those things.”

“What are your plans?”

“They’re the Three F’s.”

His brows rose. “Three F’s?”

“Yep!” I shouted and then I said much lower and in a much more serious voice. “Finish college. Find a career in the nursing field. Aaannnd finally reap the benefits of following through on something.” I paused, curling my upper lip. “Though I’m not sure on the following through part. I kind of follow through on most things, but there’s not a lot of things that start with the letter
F
that would involve planning, so . . .”

He grinned. “So that’s it? Your big plans are basically finish college and find a job?”

“Yeppers peppers and pandas!”

He shook his head at me. “Honey, that’s not much.”

I started to tell him that was
everything,
but then I thought about it, and it must’ve been the tequila, because I thought he was right.

And then I said, “You were my first kiss.”

“We need to get—
wait
.” The easy, lazy grin slipped right off his face. “
What?
”

At first I didn’t realize what I said to him, so I had no idea why he was staring at me like I’d said something crazy. Then I realized what I had admitted and . . . yeah, I didn’t care that I’d blurted out that little humiliating factoid.

Tequila was awesome.

“I’d never been kissed before,” I told him.

One dark brown eyebrow rose. “At all?”

I shook my head. Or I kind of wiggled on the floor.

His brown eyes widened. “You’re twenty-one and you’ve never . . .” The look on his face got even better as his gaze flitted to the ceiling, as if he were praying to the heavens.

Feeling a little weird lying down now, I forced myself to sit up. The room spun for a second and my stomach dipped precariously. I did not like that feeling—the spinning—but it settled quickly and then I was staring at Jax.

Gosh, he was so . . . so good-looking. The longer I stared at him I realized it wasn’t so much a conventional hotness. Some might think his lips were too full or his brows too thick, but he did it for me. He made me wish I was . . .

I really needed to stop thinking about his hotness, because low in my belly, my muscles were tightening and my breasts felt heavy.

Jax tilted his head toward me, his expression odd. “Damn, honey, that wasn’t even a real kiss.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

Oh
.

Dipping my chin, I let that settle in, and though it didn’t make it very far through the tequila haze, there was still a pinching deep in my chest, a feeling of things settling into place where they should be. Of course.

“What?” Jax asked.

I’d said that out loud. Lifting my gaze, I focused on his shoulder. I felt a little stupid for thinking that it had been a real kiss. I mean, he barely knew me now, but then, he’d only known me for a few days. And boys like him—guys who looked like him and talked like him and walked like him . . . and breathed like him, didn’t kiss girls like me. Not girls who looked like me, and who grew up pulling the white in white trash.

“Calla? You feeling okay?”

The concern in his voice tugged at the pinch in my chest. “I . . . I still like tequila.”

There was a pause and Jax burst into laughter. “Wait until you try vodka.”

“Mmm. Russians.”

Jax grinned. “And you can’t forget about the whiskey.”