“Huh?”
“Your phone,” I snapped, flinging my hand towards the rumpled jeans and switching the topic. “It keeps on ringing. It’s been buzzing all night, all day. Clearly, someone is trying to get a hold of you.” I shrugged one stiff shoulder. “Maybe it’s the woman you said you didn’t have; the one you were telling Bruce about.”
Jaxson stiffened before me and I folded my arms. I was all up in my damn feelings, but so what? I’d been languishing in them all day. All because now they were on the polar end of the spectrum, it didn’t make them any less valid.
I glared at him, all of a sudden regretting everything that had happened between us. I should never have let him stay in that hospital room. I should never have let him come to the hotel, and I definitely should never have let him put his thick… hard… beautiful… dick inside of me.
I tried to settle my spiraling emotions and regain control. There was no need to make a big deal of this. Just like we’d met, we could un-meet. It was just a fling anyway, nothing serious. I just needed to be resolute and firm when I told him to stay the hell away from me.
“I don’t have a woman,” he managed to say, even though his teeth were clamped. “I told you that.”
“Then why won’t you answer your phone?” I threw at him, dropping my arms to my sides. “If it’s not your woman – which I’m not sure I believe, maybe it’s your mama, or your business partner. Either way, it could be important, and the fact that you refuse to address it means you have something to hide.”
Jaxson sighed and reached out for me, but I slipped out of his way and stalked towards the desk.
“Simmy,” he called my name, exasperated. “You’re overreacting. Please, just come back to bed. Whatever you need to know, I promise I’ll tell you. Just… don’t walk away from me.”
“No, Jaxson,” I denied him, “anything you have to tell me can be said while I’m here and you’re over there.” I pointed in the space between us. “And to be clear, I don’t want you to think that I’m… angry if there is another woman you’re dealing with,” I lied. “I just need you to know that I’m not that kinda’ girl. I don’t mind a one-night stand between two consenting adults – because that’s what this is, and that’s what we are.”
“We’re more than that,” he muttered, raking his hand through his hair. “I wanna’ be more than that – ”
“But what I’m not down for, is being with a man who’s already taken,” I cut him off, ignoring his profession.
“And I’m not taken,” he bit out. “The only person I’m worried about is you, Simone Storm,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t give a shit who’s calling my phone. I’m here with you and nobody else matters.”
I rolled my eyes at his response, barely impressed. Yesterday, his words would have done more damage. Hell, in the early-morning hours, they would have had me saddling his dick; but now the only thing they did was piss me all the way off.
“I told you before, the role play is done,” I reminded him. “You’re not Evan Hanson and I’m not one of the bimbos in my books. You don’t have to do the sweet talk thing anymore, and you definitely have no need to lie.”
He shook his head, perplexed. “Are you serious?” he asked me in a tight whisper. “You really think I’m talking bullshit? Do you really think it’s possible for last night and this morning to happen and me not feel something? I felt something before that! I’ve felt something for so long, I…” He snapped his mouth closed. “Nothing that I say to you is a line, Simmy,” he insisted, eyes hard. His tone lowered. “It’s more than a line. Everything I say to you, I fucking mean it.”
I shrugged, trying to minimize the intensity of his confession, especially because it made no sense.
“Wow,” he breathed in disbelief. “It looks as if Evan Hanson finally met his fucking match.”
“What are you talking about?”
He stomped closer. “If I was Evan, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now because you’d have given in to me a long time ago,” he shot back at me, heated. “If I was Evan, you’d know how much I want you, because I told you that I loved you.”
I scoffed. “You told the character that you loved her. Don’t get it twisted.”
He bent his neck forward. “And which character were you?”
My breath caught, but I found words to deliver a stubborn counter. “If you were Evan, there’d be another woman in the wings that you hadn’t told me about, because that’s exactly the kind of thing Evan would do,” I threw at him, cocking my eyebrow.
Jaxson’s jaw jerked and his neck went back. “Fine,” he whispered. He spun around and started snatching his clothes off the floor. The way his legs flexed with muscle as he stepped into his boxer briefs and jeans had my mouth filling up. When he ripped his t-shirt over his head, I turned away, eyes stinging.
“You want me to leave, so I will.”
Silence.
The sound of him shrugging into his blazer boomed in my ears.
“You know, if this is this your way of injecting conflict into our storyline to make it more interesting, you can stop.”
“We don’t have a storyline, Jaxson. We’re pretending. We don’t even know each other.”
“Speak for your-fucking-self,” he muttered.
I drew in a sharp breath and spun around to glare at him. Now, he was fully dressed and the only thing I could think about was undressing him. God, I didn’t really want him to leave, but what the hell was I supposed to do? I was a busy woman. I had things to do, stories to write, scenes to develop.
And he wasn’t being straight with me. He was hiding something; I could feel it. There was something about Jaxson that had my mind completely boggled. If he couldn’t come clean, I didn’t need to deal with him. I didn’t have time to get tangled up with a man who wasn’t being one hundred. I’d managed to accumulate two years’ worth of amazing memories. There was no way I’d let Jaxson smear them with a bad experience.
But was it really a bad experience, or was I overreacting? And if I was, why?
Jaxson snatched his keys and cell phone off the dresser and stomped to the door but paused before pulling it open. “I am Evan,” he muttered, back still facing me, “but I’m not the Evan you think you know. The sooner you realize that, the faster we’ll be able to finish your story.”
My mouth trembled.
What did he say?
Jaxson waited for a second longer, but a deafening silence prevailed. I was supposed to fill in the blank, but my jaw was locked. I didn’t know what to say or even if I should say anything. Maybe I should let him go. Maybe I should chalk this up to an amazing experience and forget all about him. Maybe I should…
I was still sorting through the woulda’, coulda, shoulda’s when the door slamming made me jump.
Forever Yours
Evan
~Chapter Five~