The next morning the light was so bright coming through the windows. I felt his warm body pressed up against mine, and the realization of what had happened yesterday hit me. I had lost Jaxon forever. He hated me. I couldn’t blame anyone for this. It was all my fault.
The thought of laying there with Cade was literally making me nauseous. I needed to get out of this room and get back to Emma. I needed to call the kids and I really needed to talk to Jaxon. First things first, I had to get away from Cade.
I tried to pull out from under his big, muscular arm, but the more I tried to wiggle out from under it, the closer Cade pulled me back.
“Where ya tryin’ to rush off to, hon?” Cade whispered in my ear.
“I need to get back to my room. Emma will be worried sick, and I have to call and check up on my kids.”
“Kids? As in ‘more than one’?”
“Yes, Cade, I have nine year old twins.”
Cade looked like I had surprised the hell out of him. “But you’re too young to have kids that old, aren’t ya?”
“Obviously, I’m not that young, because I do have kids that old. I’m twenty-six.”
“Started young, huh?” he laughed as he kissed my shoulder.
There was no way I was going to go into the details of my life with this man. I didn’t plan on ever seeing him again, of course I didn’t plan on last night either.
I sat up and decided it was time to be honest with Cade. “This can never happen again, Cade. I am only in town one more day and then I will be heading back home to my kids and….” Cade interrupted me, “Asshat?”
Then it hit me - Jaxon, what I was going to do about Jaxon? He hated me now, we both said some horrible things yesterday and then I did the one thing that I knew would break his heart - again.
How could I sleep with Cade again? What had come over me? I knew that he was sexy and he made me feel like a completely different person, but how could I want to be with him? I didn’t understand why I wanted him, when I was in love with Jaxon. But was I in love with Jaxon? Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I just thought it was love. Right now all I could think about was my need to get home. I needed to figure out what was going to happen with Jaxon. But most of all I just needed to get the hell away from Cade.
Chapter 8
Jaxon – 17 years old
“Son, its time for you to make some difficult life choices. You’ve been in front of me on more than a couple occasions. I’ve watched you get a little more lost each time you’re brought in. I know you haven’t had the best lot in life, but when a boy gets to a certain age he has to decide what kind of man he wants to be, and son, you need to be making that decision soon.”
I knew Judge Powell was right. If I didn’t make some changes I was going to end up in prison or in the ground. This was a fact - true history - as my mom would call it, but I just couldn’t get my life straightened out. I didn’t care what happened to me. I never had really.
I grew up in Richmond, California. My mom, Sue, tried to raise me right, but my dad left when I was a baby so everything was much harder for her. My mom was born and raised in a small town in Missouri. She met my dad, Jack, when she visited Camp Pendelton for a cousin’s bootcamp graduation ceremony. He was a contractor who worked on the base there. They had a whirlwind week long romance.
When she got back to Missouri and found out she was pregnant, she contacted my dad. He apparently wasn’t real excited about being a dad, but he told her if she would move to Richmond with him he would marry her and raise me. That marriage lasted until I was two months old. Then he took off and that was that.
Life was hard for my mom and me. After my dad left, mom had to work three jobs just to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. I loved