Page 39 of Wasted Lust

I force my eyes to open to see if his expression matches the laughing tone of his voice. It does. His eyes are twinkling and his grin is wide. “Why am I fainting all of a sudden?”

His eyes narrow and his grin falls. “It’s too much, isn’t it?”

“What’s too much? Getting kicked out of grad school? An unexpected airplane trip with an FBI agent who says he’s stalking me? The revelation that I have a living relative? Talking about being shot by James and left behind by Nick? Which of these things are too much for one day?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, placing his other hand behind my shoulder to encourage me to sit up. “And you’re bleeding. You fell and hit your head on the asphalt. I caught you, but only by the arm. I’m sorry. I should’ve kept you from hitting your head.”

I sit up as he removes his palm from the back of my head and wraps me in his arms. He’s warm. And I’m cold, even in this fancy fur-lined coat. There’s a little bit of wind tonight and it chills me to the bone.

“Do you really want to go home? Because if that’s your decision, then we can go now. I’m not going to force this on you. Especially if it’s going to continue to bring on these panic attacks.”

“I don’t have panic attacks.”

“You don’t faint, either,” he chuckles. “You can call it whatever you want, but the fact is, you’re overwhelmed. So just say it again. Tell me to take you home and I will. No more questions.”

“But what about Nick?”

“I’ll find out what I need without you. It’s OK.”

“No, I mean, we had a deal.”

“We did.”

“And if I refuse to go with you to meet my aunt, then I don’t complete the date?”

He looks at me hard for a moment, studying my face. “If you need me to force you to go forward by holding that over you, I will. But you’re the one calling the shots here tonight, Sasha. And I think you’d start processing all the changes that are happening better if you take control and accept that you want to meet your aunt. You want to know the truth about your family and your place in it.”

I feel the lump in my throat forming, the one that signals the tears that will soon follow. Tears I refuse to show anyone, least of all this man. So I cover my face and start breathing in and out, over and over. Counting my breaths like they teach you in meditation. And when I have things under control again, I lower my hands.

Jax is waiting patiently.

“What can she possibly have to say? What excuse can she have for walking out of my life?”

“They think she’s dead, Sasha. She was only a half-sister to your mother. Your grandfather had an affair. Lots of Company men do this, thinking they can have secret children. Children who won’t have to live by Company rules. But there’s no such thing as secrets in the Company.”

“Not true. I was a secret.”

Jax smiles at me, and then he scoops me up in his arms and stands up like I weigh nothing. We start walking to the car. “You were a damn good secret too. We didn’t know about Ford Aston. He was a wild card. Of course looking back, it all makes sense. You’re connected to Ford through James Fenici, who did a job in Fort Collins where you finished growing up the year after you were supposed to have been killed out in that harbor. Someday you’ll have to tell me how Assassin Number Six managed to shoot you in the chest in front of a dozen people and you survived.”

“He really did shoot me.”

“I believe you. And your aunt believed all the reports of your death for weeks. She was so relieved when you turned up at that party.”

“I can’t think about that night right now. I really can’t. It was the worst night of my life. Even worse than losing my father. Because the night my dad died, I was sorta expecting it. He was acting so weird leading up to that job. But the night Nick Tate decided that working for a drug lord in Honduras was better than spending his life with me… well, nothing prepares a lovestruck thirteen-year-old for that kind of rejection.”

“For someone who can’t think about it, you sure did explain a lot about you in a few sentences.”

He’s right. So I shut up.

We reach the car where a man is holding the back door open. Jax sets me down on the gray leather seat and waits for me to get settled before closing the door and walking to the other side. He exchanges a few words with our driver, who gets in the front, and then Jax joins me in the back, his arms wrapping around me protectively, the same way he was holding me outside. The opaque black glass slides up, secluding us from the eyes and ears of whoever it is at the wheel.

Pressure on the back of my head makes me gasp.

“It’s a pretty good gash, but the blood is clotting well. You shouldn’t need stitches.” He pulls a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and applies it to the wound.

“I still feel dizzy.”

“Come here,” he says, pulling me into his lap and repositioning me so my head is cradled in the crook of his arm. “Put your feet up on the seat and just rest. It’s a good hour drive to where we’re going.”