Beautifully Shattered (The Beautifully Series Book 1) (59 page)

A lifetime passes in
minutes before I ask, “This is it? There’s nothing I can do to
change your mind?” I’m desperate for a sign that we can be more.

“Be with Kohen,”
Jax whispers.

I can’t even manage
to nod. Tears run down my face and I make no move to stop them. I let
them fall. I feel them slide from my cheeks onto Jax’s chest. Jax
shifts and gently lifts my chin with his thumb and presses his mouth
to mine.

I know this is it. This
is our last kiss. This is goodbye. After this, we will be over. No
more pretending that I’m moving on from him while secretly hoping
that we will work it out in the near future. No, none of that. This
is it. After tonight, I’ll be moving on. Eventually I’ll be
happy. Eventually I will be able to be his friend again.

Slowly I kiss him back.
Memorizing every second. The way his tongue feels gliding over mine.
The small moan that escapes my lips that he breathes in. It’s a
slow kiss that will forever be etched into my soul.

Jax rolls on top of me.
He stares into my eyes as he brushes hair out of my face. I watch him
memorize my face, knowing he is saying goodbye too, and that he wants
to remember everything about right now just as desperately as I do.

I need to see him.
“Wait.” I break away from our kiss to turn on my lamp.

“Much better.” Jax
drags me back to him and lays over me again.

I smile up at him with
tears in my eyes. I would give anything to be with him. To be enough
for him. To be the one that will make him truly see what a wonderful
person he is, inside and out.

Jax bends and follows
the trail of each tear with the whisper of a kiss. He barely presses
his warm lips to my skin, and I feel each and every kiss all the way
to my toes.

I want to confess my
love for him. I want to tell him that I don’t want to love anyone
else, that I can’t love anyone else. I want to hear him tell me
everything is going to be okay as long as we have each other. I want
the big gesture. A piece of me shatters knowing that will never
happen. Eventually Kohen will give me the big gesture and someday
maybe I’ll love him back.

Another piece of me
breaks away.

Forcing all thoughts of
tomorrow away, I focus on the man I love hovering over me with love
in his eyes. This is how I want to remember us. Together, in love.
Nothing else matters. All of the petty fights that led us to this
moment don’t exist. Nothing but Jax exists in this moment.

I trace every line of
his face with my fingertips, never taking my eyes off his. Jax does
the same and bends every few seconds to peppers my face with soft
kisses. Intertwining our hands, Jax leans down for the last time and
presses his warm lips to mine. He traces my lips with his tongue.
Ever so slowly, he really kisses me. The second his tongue touches
mine the tears are back again.

I’ll never experience
this again. Nobody kisses me like he does. Nobody can make my body
feel alive and cherished at the same time like him. There is only one
Jax. There is only one true love for everyone and he is mine. Jax
squeezes my hand and I squeeze his back. He doesn’t speed up the
kiss and neither do I. He kisses me slowly, tenderly.

A little piece of me
shatters even more.

No matter how much time
passes, I know I will never stop loving Jaxon Chandler. He’s my
first love. My one great love. The kind of love they write stories
about. And I never had a chance.

I wish that I could
keep kissing him for forever. Wishes don’t come true. Time moves
too fast. The kiss is over before I want it to be. It was a perfect
kiss. A perfect kiss to end our shattered love.

Nine years ago, I
kissed the love of my life on my fourteenth birthday. Tonight, we’re
ending a long, broken love story with the same perfect kiss. This is
the end of us.

Yawning, I snuggle
closer into the warm chest behind me. I moan contently when Jax’s
strong arms tighten around me and he kisses the back of my neck. I
turn into him so that my face is pressed against his chest, head
resting on his arm. As I press my lips to his chest, I wish that time
would stop. I want to be forever held in this man’s arm. Just like
this, in love. Too bad that time doesn’t stand still and that our
reality can’t let us be together.

Closing my eyes, I
breathe him in, loving the way my face breaks into a huge smile just
by being near him. He reminds me of home, of hope. I’ll miss his
touch. I’ll miss everything about him.

Wiping a tear from my
cheek he whispers, “None of that.”

I nod, but the tears
keep flowing.

“What’s wrong?”
he asks into my hair.

I swallow the lump in
my throat. “I don’t know how to say goodbye.” I start to weep
silently.

He has a sad smile as
he caresses my face. “This isn’t goodbye, Adalynn. I’ll aways
be here. I’ll never leave you. Whenever you need, me I’m here.”
He places his hand over my heart.

I cover his hand and
mumble, “I know . . . it doesn’t make this any easier.” He
sucks in a ragged breath. “I know this is what we both need . . .
so you have to understand that I’m going to need distance. Jax . .
. I can’t be around you for awhile. I need space . . . Or I won’t—”

“I know,” he says,
regret clear in his voice.

The urge to kiss him is
so strong that I force myself away from the warmth of his body and
out of my bed. My body hates the distance that I’m putting between
us.
It’s for the best.
Knowing that doesn’t make this any easier.

“Breakfast?” I ask,
needing to do something, anything instead of being in the arms of the
man I love, knowing that I can never have him.

After Jax nods, I flee
to my bathroom to brush my teeth, but mainly needing a minute alone.
Not a second after I flush the toilet, Jax walks in.

My face turns beet red.
“Ever heard of a thing called privacy?”

Jax ignores me and
grabs his toothbrush that I haven’t gotten around to throwing away.
Once his toothbrush is in his mouth, he snags mine, squirts
toothpaste on it, and hands it to me.

“Thanks.”

“Relax. You’ve
thrown up on me. I’ve seen you pee before. At least this time you
were sober.” Toothpaste drips down his chin. Without thinking I
reach up and wipe it away with my thumb.

“You’ve never seen
me pee and you didn’t now. I was already pulling my panties up,”
I say once I’m finished brushing my teeth.

“Freshman year.”

My eyes are trained to
his toothbrush. It doesn’t belong next to mine. It never did.
Forcing the tears away, I snatch it and toss it into the trash. Jax
nods as if he knows that it doesn’t belong here either.

It’s maddening that
until yesterday, I haven’t cried in six years and now throwing out
a pointless toothbrush makes the tears threaten to spill over.
Because in some way you’re
throwing out Jax.
That little voice in my head reminds me
bitterly as if I had a choice in the matter.

When I’m not on the
verge of crying any longer, I murmur, “I’m confused.”

“I know.”

Following him out of my
bathroom to my kitchen, I think back to freshman year of high school.
That feels like a lifetime ago, which it is. So much has happened
since then. I’m still coming up with a blank, though. I wasn’t
the type of girl to party in high school. Even if I wanted to, nobody
gave me alcohol because they were afraid of Logan or Jax beating them
up. Those two were beyond annoyingly protective in high school. I can
only remember two times in high school when I got drunk. Once
freshman year and the other was the day before junior year.

“You’re such a
liar. I only got drunk—”

“Twice,” Jax says
while opening the fridge.

“How do you—”

“I was there for the
first one. Heard about the second.”

“What are you talking
about?” I ask after I set a pan on the stove and turn on the flame.

Jax backs our from the
fridge, grabbing everything we will need to make breakfast, with a
smile on his face. When he sees that I honestly have no idea what
he’s talking about, his grin turns smug. “Oh, so you don’t
remember I take it?”

“Cut the crap,
Chandler.”

“Say please and I
might tell you, Maxwell.”

I roll my eyes as I
mumble, “Please.”

He lays pieces of bacon
onto the hot pan. “Who was the tiny person with the brown hair on
your team? Super loud, super—”

“Lexi,” I say, all
traces of humor gone.

“That’s the one!
Remember that ‘little’ sleepover you went to at her house and it
turned into a party?”

Remembering it all too
well, I bite out, “Yes.”

“Well, you may not
have noticed, but Connor and I actually turned up at the party that
night.”

“I know. I remember.”

“Huh? Oh well, I
didn’t think you noticed since you were pretty hammered by the time
we showed up. I let you finish—”

“You let me?” I
ask, enraged.

“As I was saying . .
.” He points the spatula at me with a grin that drops the second
his eyes land on my not-so-amused face. “What’s wrong?” he
asks, full of concern.

“Nothing,” I mumble
underneath my breath.

God, I’m being
ridiculous. This was high school. I have no idea why I’m letting
something that happened over nine years ago still affect me.

“Ads.”

“I’m being stupid.
Tell me the rest of the story since most of the night is a blur.”

Too bad I already had a
play-by-play from my “dearest” friend Lexi the next day.

“Okay . . . Well
since you were already smashed, I let you finish the drink you were
working on, then Connor and I took turns switching your red solo cups
with cups of water,” he says with a grin. “You never noticed.”

Bitterly I ask, “When
does the peeing part come in?” I’m ready for this conversation to
be over.

“I’ll tell you if
you tell me what’s gotten your panties in a twist.” Jax holds his
pinky finger up to me.

Knowing that he won’t
stop until he gets his way, I pinky promise him. He returns to
cooking breakfast.

“Excellent.” He
smiles in victory. “Where was I?”

“You were just
explaining that you and Connor liked to ruin my fun even back then.”

“Ah, that’s right.
So eventually you tried to leave the party. So of course I followed
you. You got to the mailbox before you fell on your face. You
‘tripped,’ your words not mine.” He turns his head towards me
to give me a wink. “After helping you sit up, you grabbed your
stomach and said you had to pee. By the looks of it, I knew you
wouldn’t make it back to the house so I started to help you walk
over to the bushes on the side of her yard . . .”

No! I thought that was
a terrible nightmare, especially when Lexi told me what her and Jax
did all night long.

“So you helped me pee
in her bush?” I ask, mortified that I forgot. Apparently my mind
knew how traumatizing that was so I repressed it.

“Not exactly . . .”
Jax says with a chuckle, making me nervous.

“Jax!” I warn.

“After a few steps I
knew we would never reach the bushes with you falling over yourself
so I picked you up. I thought we would get there faster. I thought
you could hold it. I was wrong . . .”

Jax laughs loudly it’s
hard to process what he’s saying. Staring at him, I try to piece
the puzzle back together. I don’t remember much after the mailbox.
I remember a bush and my dress being held up by strong hands . . .
Jax’s hands.

“Oh God! You held my
dress up while I peed!”

“After . . .yes,
though I didn’t think it mattered at that point.”

“What are you—”

Oh fuck. Please no!

“We didn’t make it
to the bushes. You peed on me about three steps away from it. You
managed to hold the rest in so I could help you pull your panties
down and lift your dress up while you finished.”

“OH . . . MY . . .
GOD . . .” I say through my hands. I refuse to lower my hands and
look at him.

“Yup. So you can
imagine why seeing you pee on a toilet doesn’t bother me . . . So
I’ve had you pee on me and puke on me . . . Let’s not go for
round . . .” his voice trails off.

There won’t be a
round two, or three. After today we won’t hang out like we used to.
After he leaves, the spell will be broken and reality will hit. We
won’t have any more secret kisses, any inside jokes, he will be
Logan’s friend. Once he leaves, I lose the love of my life.

Trying to lighten the
suddenly dark mood, he nudges me with his shoulder. I force the
morbid thoughts away and concentrate on that night nine years ago.
Sitting on my stool, hands covering my face, I try to picture the
scene Jax describes, but I come up with a blank.

“It doesn’t make
sense,” I say quietly.

“What doesn’t?”
Jax asks as he sets a plate down in front of me.

Still talking through
my hands I ask, “Why were you with me? You were with Lexi all
night.”

Before I know whats
happening, he’s pulling my unwilling hands off my face. “What are
you talking about?”

Forgetting my
humiliation, I admit to him that I know he slept with her. “Lexi .
. .That brunette who is super loud, the chick you fucked that night.”

This time his laughter
isn’t forced. Awesome. All of anger I felt all those years ago,
when Lexi woke me up bragging that she slept with Jax, bubbles to the
surface. I knew then what I know now, Jax wasn’t mine and will
never be mine.

“It’s not funny!”
I snap.

“So that’s why you
refused to talk to me for two weeks . . .” Jax chuckles as he tries
to fight the smile on his lips. “Even when I came over at night you
just handed me the first aid kit and went to bed. All because of
that?”

All traces of humor are
gone. I wish I was able to block out those two weeks, but I can’t.
Those were the worst two weeks of my life, being pissed at Jax and
then being pissed at myself for being mad at him. He could sleep with
whoever he wanted, I had to remind my fourteen-year-old self. I want
to lie to him, but he’ll see through me. I nod.