Reckless (Mason Family #3) - Adriana Locke Page 0,59
this.
“When you’re told that someone’s addiction, whether it be from alcohol, like Pete, or sex, like Shawn, is your fault because there’s something about you that causes them to need to act out like that—it’s a lot,” she says quietly. “It makes you want to protect anyone that you do like from yourself.”
She looks away, blinking back tears.
“Jaxi—”
I’m silenced by her hand going up in the air in a motion for me to stop.
“It’s really hard for me to tell you this,” she says. “This is not something I want to talk about, and I’m only telling you now because I feel like you deserve to know me.”
“I don’t know if I deserve that, Jaxi. But I want to know. I want to know you.”
A tear falls down her cheek.
“I was a child with Pete,” she says. “His problems couldn’t have been my fault. And Shawn—I tried my hardest to make him happy. I did it all. But my body’s failure to give him a child made him give up on me—made him seek happiness from someone who could give it to him in a way I couldn’t.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I reach for her, but she pulls away.
I have to remind myself to breathe, that I can’t go find her piece of shit stepfather or this Shawn fuck and drag them both back here by the hair of their fucking head and make them apologize to her.
“Let me tell you something,” I say, my voice a little harsher than I want it to be. “Those two don’t deserve the power to affect you like this.”
She wipes a stream of tears off her chin. “I know that. I do. But I can’t sit here and say those things don’t come into my mind when I see you playing with Rosie or flirting with me in the backyard or … holding us while we cry.”
She pulls her gaze to mine and lets me see all of the emotion buried in them. I didn’t cause this pain. I didn’t hurt her. But fuck it if it doesn’t feel like my responsibility to fix it—to show her, to prove to her, that none of that shit is her fault.
That she deserves love. That she deserves a love like my dad loves my mom, like Holt gives to Blaire.
Like I could give her.
I reach for her again, and this time, I don’t let her pull away.
I pull her into my chest and try to send the warmth of my soul into hers. I try to repair some of the damage to her heart with the beats of mine.
She balls my shirt up in her hands and lets me hold her. I rest my chin on top of her head and just let us be.
This is the feeling Holt was talking about when he went after Blaire. This is the reason Larissa cried so incessantly when she and Hollis split up. This is why Coy was freaking out when Bellamy told him goodbye.
They were all afraid they’d never have this again.
I get it now.
I lower my head to her ear. Before I go through with what I’m about to say, I close my eyes and hope for the best.
“Jaxi?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“I want to buy a dog.”
She pulls back and extricates herself from my arms. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I want to buy a dog, and that’s a commitment. They live a long time.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “Okay. Then go buy a dog, Boone.”
This is not how I thought this conversation would go, and I’m not sure why I led with buying a dog.
But here we are.
“I …” I regroup. “Forget the dog thing, okay?”
She looks confused, and I can’t blame her.
“What I’m trying to say is that I like you. I want you, Jaxi. If you’re scarred or bruised or scared—whatever it is, however it is, I’m in.”
A lump is evident in her throat as she looks around the room. At everything but me.
“Jaxi?”
“I couldn’t look at a week, a month, a year from now and know that I fell short in your eyes just like I did Pete’s and Shawn’s.”
“Fuck them both.”
“Yes, fuck them both. But that doesn’t change the way things work for me, Boone. You aren’t a Pete or a Shawn. You’re an amazing man who feels entirely out of my league.”
I laugh. “You have that backward.”
She looks unconvinced, so I dig in.
“Sweetheart, I could have cleaned out that workout room every day that you've been here, and I keep putting it off. Why?