Jus Accardo - Ruined

I pushed the terrifying thought aside and forced my eyes open. “I was driving.” If he wouldn’t come clean about his innocence, then I would. They’d been telling me to take the car in for service for months now. As with everything else, I kept putting it off.

When my vision cleared, Kelly stood at the foot of the bed, arms folded with a typical scowl firmly in place.

To the right of the bed, in the chair by the door, Chase sat with a coffee cup. He’d changed at some point. The jeans were gone, replaced by worn sweats and a white T-shirt. It was the most disheveled I’d seen him look since the morning he was caught sneaking off Kiki Muller’s porch after prom night.

“You’re nineteen, Sammy. I don’t think you owe her an explanation,” Jax said. He slouched in the corner, as far away from Chase as the room would allow, and when my eyes met his, those last moments in the car came flooding back with a vengeance. There was a flush of embarrassment and a rush of heat.

I’d kissed him. Granted, I’d been sure we were about to die, sentenced to a watery grave, but still… How was I going to live this down?

Wait…

How was I able to live it down? Everything was so fuzzy. “The car was under water,” I said, eyeing Jax. “The doors were stuck. How did we get out?”

He returned my glare, eyes narrowing so that only the slightest hint of gray was visible. I knew that look. A challenge. “Does it matter? Maybe I should put you back in? It’d give you an excuse to grope me again.”

Aunt Kelly choked and Chase was instantly alert. “She groped you?”

“Hell, yeah, she did.” Jax tapped his lips, then puckered up, blowing a kiss in my direction. “Laid one right on me.”

I swallowed. “That’s not—”

Chase balked. “How was it?”

Seriously?

Jax shrugged. “Eh. Definitely inexperienced.”

This is not happening.

“Is this true?” Aunt Kelly snapped. Her face was pale and she looked ready to drop.

I glared at Jax. “Chase didn’t seem to have a problem with my kissing expertise.”

My aunt went from livid to over the moon. “You kissed Chase?”

“Annnnd getting back on track.” Chase grinned. He was watching Jax, who was positively seething on the other side of the room. Served him right.

Jax seemed to pull it together and flashed a tight-lipped smile. “Consider the source, Sammy. Do you have any idea where those lips have been? They should come with a hazmat sticker”

“Her name,” Aunt Kelly spat with a dramatic flip of her hair, “is Samantha. Sammy is something you’d name a puppy. Or—or a tool.”

Jax nodded to his lap. “Of course it is. That’s what I named my tool.”

“If you two keep going at it, I’m ringing the nurse to load me up with the biggest sedative they’ve got,” I said, pushing myself up into a sitting position.

“So what happened?” Chase asked, pulling his chair next to the bed. He was every bit the troublemaker Jax was, but knew enough to filter his behavior, where his brother didn’t care what anyone thought. Because of that, he’d been dubbed the golden boy and Jax the bad seed.

Aunt Kelly came behind him and clutched his shoulder as a justified smile creased her lips. I was so tempted to say something that ensured her hand’s removal—something shocking and unladylike—but settled for the simple truth. Verbal sparring with my aunt, while awesome, took more energy than I had at the moment.

“I think my brakes must have failed.” The memory of fruitlessly pumping the pedal as the car sped toward the river at breakneck speed sent an icy tremor up my spine. I was never driving that road again, even if it meant going an hour out of the way. Hell. I might never drive again. Period.

But Aunt Kelly couldn’t know I was rattled. She’d insist on them keeping me here. Squaring my shoulders, I plastered on my game face and said, “Assuming they’re not going to keep me here for swallowing half the river, can we get the fuck out of Dodge? I’m beat.”

“Samantha!” My aunt paled and clutched her chest. Cursing was something ladies didn’t do—especially in front of gentlemen. In that moment, I wanted to find an excuse to say “cock knocker” in front of the flawless Chase Flynn. That would really get her going.

“Relax,” I said, throwing the covers aside. The room spun a little, but otherwise everything seemed fine. The sooner I got out of this sterile, bleach-scented environment and back to my nice cluttered apartment where coffee lived, the better. Hospitals gave me the creeps. Sliding from the bed, I planted both feet on the ground and felt a subtle updraft.

“Cover yourself up!” Spreading her arms wide to shield me, Aunt Kelly whirled on Jax, who politely averted his gaze and turned to the door. His brother, on the other hand, made no attempt to hide his stare—which of course went unnoticed.

I sighed and tugged the impractical hospital gown closed at the back.

Jax stood. “I’ll find the doctor. See if we can’t get things moving along.”

As Chase busied himself with trying to calm Aunt Kelly down, Jax turned. Our eyes met and the bottom dropped out from my belly. Whoosh . I was at the top of a roller coaster, just before the car plummeted over the edge. Excitement and fear so tightly wound together that they were one and the same. It was a dizzying rush that warmed my skin and made my head swim—in a good way—while wreaking havoc on my heartbeat. The missing spark in my life, the one I’d been chasing since the night he’d left…

With the slightest nod of his head, he disappeared around the corner and my heartbeat evened. Not good…

I wasn’t over Jax Flynn.

Jax

My bedroom was exactly the same as I’d left it three years ago. Hard-rock posters lined the walls, and the dartboard Rick had gotten me on my fourteenth birthday still hung above the bed, the last dart I’d ever thrown, a bull’s-eye, poking out from the center.

I’d been at the window watching Sam pace the length of her old bedroom next door for the last hour. Instead of going home to her apartment, she let her aunt talk her into staying at the house for the night.

She’d always hated the silence. The television was on in the background, a repeat of the press conference the police chief had given earlier about a series of murders by someone the press dubbed the Gentleman Stalker. A handful of girls had gone missing from Harlow and the surrounding towns recently and authorities were stumped. I’d heard about it, but hadn’t really followed the story.

Sam ignored the news and stalked the floor of her old room. It was easy to see she didn’t want to be there. Every once in a while she would slide the fingers of her hand through her long brown hair, tug at the sides, then tilt her head back and sigh. Tufts of gray fear trailed behind as her heart hammered an erratic rhythm. Twice she’d reached for the phone. I’d listened as she dialed the first five digits of Rick’s number before slamming it back to the dresser and cursing softly.

Another person would be curled in a ball, rocking themselves to sleep after what just happened. Not Sam. Even though she was shaken to the core, she put up a brave front. Alone in her room and away from prying eyes, she continued the ruse like there was no other choice. Like showing even the smallest hint of weakness would send reality crumbling down around her. She was the savior and never the victim.

There was space between us—wood, plaster, and glass—but I heard every sound as clearly as if she were standing next to me. Every movement, the smell of the lake still on her skin, the subtle rub of her clothing as she moved across the room, everything was razor-edged and on the verge of driving me mad. I knew I should leave, but the only thing I wanted to do was hold her. Be there so she could let it out.