Maybe that was part of the reason I’d been so speechless once I’d entered his bedroom. Yeah, I’d seen him in a pair of swim trunks, and I’d hyperventilated over his perfect body then, too.
I wasn’t sure exactly what was different about those boxer briefs. I suspected it was the way they hugged his body more intimately than any swimsuit ever would.
My fingers twitched to reach out and trace every one of those six pack abs, but I didn’t. Jax was suddenly less approachable than he’d ever been, and I didn’t know how to fix that.
His forearm was resting over his eyes, so I had no clue how he was feeling, or if his expression was still grim.
I need to tell him everything. It doesn’t matter whether it’s painful for me or not. Jax deserves to know why I had a meltdown on him.
I cleared my throat nervously before I spoke. “I know I told you that I was engaged once. I didn’t really want to talk about that because I thought I’d left all that baggage behind me. For the most part, I have, but I think I reacted out of some old insecurities, so I want to tell you about it.”
“Tell me,” he answered tightly. “I’m listening.”
I took a deep breath. “I met Lance in Austin after I got out of the Air Force. I relocated there to do my graduate studies, and I was able to find a good weather analysis job there. He was five years older than me, and was already a practicing architect at a firm in Austin. We’d been dating for eight months when he proposed, and because neither of us were in a big hurry to get married, we decided to just move in together. In hindsight, I probably should have seen the signs that he wasn’t faithful, but I think I was too busy with work and school to notice. We’d been together for two years when I came home unexpectedly and caught him in our bed with another woman.”
“Jesus, Harlow, it wasn’t your—”
“Just let me finish,” I interrupted, eager to get through the whole story. “The reason I’d gone home early that night was to tell Lance that I was pregnant. Finding him with another woman turned my whole world upside down. We had a huge argument, and he told me that night that he didn’t want me or the baby. He blamed me for everything. He said I didn’t do anything to turn him on, and our sex life was boring, which was why he had to cheat. What’s really sad is that I probably believed some of what he said was true back then. I was chronically tired because I never got much sleep between work and school. I actually convinced myself that I should have put more effort into the relationship, even when I’d given him all I had to give. Being offered an internship at Montgomery seemed like a good chance for me to start over, so I accepted it. All I wanted was to get the hell out of Austin.”
I swiped the tears from my face, angry that even after so many years had passed, that relationship was still such a painful lesson.
I have to keep going. I’m almost done.
“Maybe it was a blessing that I miscarried when I was eight weeks pregnant. It happened right before I moved to San Diego. I don’t think my resulting sorrow over it had anything to do with Lance. I fell out of love with him the day I knew he betrayed me, but I felt lost after I miscarried for a long time. I guess I felt like I lost a small piece of myself, even though I’d never planned on getting pregnant,” I finished shakily.
Jax hadn’t moved, but his muscles were coiled tightly, and the one in his jaw was ticking.
I cleared my throat before I confessed, “After my internship, I dated, but they were nothing more than casual dates. Maybe that’s all I really wanted because my ability to trust another man was still shaky.” I took a deep breath before I finished, “I haven’t been intimate with another guy since Lance. The desire and the attraction just wasn’t there for me. Mark and I were still trying to figure things out, so we never slept together, and he didn’t push for that. I guess when I made my move earlier, all of those old insecurities about not being good enough came flooding back.