Kind of hot.An image of Jax in a dr

Kind of hot.
An image of Jax in a dress uniform, the kind I’d seen in my uncle’s closet when I was little, formed in my head.
Okay. Lots of hot.
“I enlisted for five years, hit active war duty two years in, spent almost three over in the desert,” he explained, and I swallowed hard. Active war duty was no joke. “When my term was up, I wasn’t sure I wanted to reenlist. And when I got back home, I couldn’t sleep. Didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. There wasn’t shit back home and being over there wasn’t actually the best thing in the world, you know? It’s a different life over there, and it changes you. The things you have to do. The things you end up seeing. Some nights I could only sleep for a few hours. Some nights I didn’t sleep at all. My head wouldn’t shut down, so I had a lot of restless nights.”
I wanted to roll over and look at him, but I couldn’t move. “Do you . . . regret enlisting?”
“Hell no.” His reply was quick and firm. “Felt good doing something for the country and all that shit.”
Something warm invaded my chest, and I really wanted to see him, but that required effort and courage. So, I went with words because that was all I had to offer, and I wanted to give him something. “I think that’s amazing.”
“What?”
Heat crept across my face. “Enlisting in the marines and fighting. It’s brave and honorable and amazing.” Three things I wasn’t, and three things I honestly couldn’t say about a lot of people I knew, including the Hot Guy Brigade. Well, with the exception of Brandon. He’d been overseas, too.
Jax didn’t respond to that, and silence stretched out between us, and I squeezed my fingers together. “How long . . . have you been out?” I asked.
“Hmm, it’ll be two years next spring.” His voice sounded closer.
I quickly did a bang-up math job in my head, finally finding an answer to one of my questions. “So you’re . . . twenty-four?”
“Yep, and you’re really twenty-one, even though you look like seventeen.”
My lips twitched. “I don’t look seventeen.”
“Whatever,” he murmured. “When’s your birthday?”
“It’s in April—the fifteenth.”
“No shit?” A deep laugh came from him, causing the twitch in my lips to spread. “My birthday is April the seventeenth.”
I grinned. “April’s a cool month.”
“That it is.”
As I grew accustomed to his closeness, my body relaxed. “How did you end up here?”
“You met Anders, right? At the bar?”
“Anders?” I frowned.
“You probably know him as Reece.”
Oh. “The young cop guy?”
“He’s actually a deputy in Philadelphia County. Met him when I was enlisted. He got out a year before me, but we kept in touch,” he explained. “He knew I hated being back home. Offered a place for me to crash. Took him up on the offer and headed up here. At first, I was kind of all over the place.”
Nibbling on my lip, I stared into the dark. “How so?”
“Just all over,” he responded without really answering. “Went to Mona’s one night, ended up with a job, finally got my own place, and here I am, lying in bed with Mona’s pretty daughter. Life is fucking strange like that.”
I sucked in a soft breath. Pretty daughter? “You’re . . . you say nice things.” It was a stupid thing to say, but now I was tired and my brain wasn’t functioning properly.
“I speak the truth.”
A moment passed. “Do you still have problems with sleeping?”
There was no response to that, and as more silence drifted out, I dropped it and whispered a concern. “Do you think someone will come looking for those drugs?”
He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know, Calla.”
I didn’t believe him. Probably had to do with the doubt he expressed earlier about Greasy Guy being the owner of the crap ton of heroin, and honestly, the guy didn’t look like he had the means to have that amount of drugs. “Mom . . . she’s in a lot of trouble, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, she is.”
My heart turned over heavily.
“It’s not the kind of trouble you need to get involved in,” Jax added quietly, firmly. “And this is the kind of trouble you’re not going to be able to fix this time.”
God, that sucked, because I knew that was true, but I didn’t know how he realized that over the years, I’d spent a lot of time fixing Mom’s problems. It was like an after-school job.
“Okay,” I whispered, because I didn’t know what else to say.
As I lay there, trying to swallow a loud, obnoxious yawn, I remembered something he’d said when we first met, about life being too short. I imagined he had firsthand experience with shortened lives while he was serving. That mentality came from experience. I got that now. Could even understand it, but there was something I didn’t understand.
“Why?” I asked.
There was a beat. “Why what?”
Jax sounded tired, and I should shut up or point out that I was now tired and could sleep, so he could leave. But I didn’t. “Why are you here? You don’t know me and . . .” I trailed off, because there really wasn’t anything left to say.
A minute went by, and he hadn’t answered my question, and then I think another minute ticked on, and I was okay with him not answering because maybe he didn’t even know. Or maybe he was just bored and that was why he was here.
But then he moved.
Jax pressed against my back, and the next breath I took got stuck in my throat. My eyes shot open. The sheet and blanket were between us, but they felt like nothing.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting comfortable.” He dropped an arm over my waist, and my entire body jerked against his. “It’s time to sleep I think.”
“But—”
“You can’t sleep when you talk,” he remarked.
“You don’t need to be all up on me,” I pointed out.
His answering chuckle stirred the hair along the back of my neck. “Honey, I’m not all up on you.”
I freaking begged to differ on that point. I started to wiggle away, but the arm around my waist tightened, holding me in place.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he announced casually, as if he wasn’t holding me prisoner in the bed.
Okay. The whole prisoner thing might be melodramatic, but he wasn’t letting me up. Not when he was getting all kinds of comfy behind me.
Oh my God, this was spooning. Total spooning. I was spooning with an honorary member of the Hot Guy Brigade. Did I wake up in a parallel universe?
“Sleep,” he demanded, as if the one word carried that much power. “Go to sleep, Calla.” This time his voice was softer, quieter.
“Yeah, it doesn’t work that way, Jax. You have a nice voice, but it doesn’t hold the power to make me sleep on your command.”
He chuckled.
I rolled my eyes, but the most ridiculous thing ever was the fact that after a couple of minutes, my eyes stayed shut. I . . . I actually settled in against him. With his front pressed to my back, his long legs cradling mine, and his arm snug around my waist, I actually did feel safe. More than that, I felt something else—something I hadn’t felt in years.
I felt cared for . . . cherished.
Which was the epitome of dumb, because I barely knew him, but feeling that, recognizing what the warm, buzzing feeling was, I fell right asleep.