Inside of You (Jessa & Paxton #2) Read online

  Emily comes back a minute later with a bag of chips that she is eating out of. She hands it to me and says, “Is this what we are going to do for the rest of the night… wait around for that girl to post pictures that are just gonna piss you off?”

  “Yes,” Nat and I say at the same time.

  Emily inhales a big breath and flops down on the couch next to me. “You guys want to play cards or something?”

  “No,” Nat and I say in unison again.

  “Fine.” She gives up, snatching the chips away from me. “Can I just remind both of you that Paxton is madly in love with Jessa and that they belong together? And that Stella is probably just posting these pictures in the hopes that Jessa might discover them and get pissed off at him about it?”

  “Oh my god, Emily. Like those are the thoughts running through her head right now. If you left Danny for a week and he called you like four times and some girl from his past was posting pictures of the two of them together with those stupid hash tags, you would be doing the same thing she is. Hash tag, Jessa needs to know what’s going on, hash tag, living in lies.”

  “You are terrible, you know that?” Emily says, throwing a pillow at Nat.

  “It’s the truth, babe. We all know it,” she says, throwing the pillow back at Em.

  I actually feel myself smiling. If I have to go through this I’m glad I’m doing it with Em and Nat. But then I hit the refresh button on my phone again and there are three new photos. All close-ups of Paxton which would hurt anyway because it’s been too long since I’ve seen his beautiful face. I open up the first one. His grey eyes are hard and focused. His fat lips are parted. His face is tense so his bone structure looks more perfect than usual. Game face Stella has captioned it.

  The next photo is his profile, he’s smiling but you can tell he’s trying not to. He’s not looking at her but the photo is so close, like she’s on his lap or kneeling between his legs. Happy.

  In the last one, he’s leaning into her. He’s smirking and his eyes are so intense they hurt. I love that look, but only when it’s directed at me because I know exactly what’s going through his head. Mine, she has written. All of them have her ridiculous hash tags attached to them. #stellandpax #babysarockstar #dontbejealous #livinginlove, the last one has an extra hash tag, #warminghimup.

  My phone is shaking in my hand. I hate it when I can feel them, when I feel like I’m there with them as the outsider. I hate that he has let her so fully and so blatantly back into his life. He made me promise him all kinds of bullshit but I only made him promise me one thing – stay away from her. But there she is, back stage with him, so close to him, being stared at by him.

  Nat pulls the phone out of my hand and gasps. “Oh my god. Sorry, Jessa, but holy shit, your man is sexy. Jesus, did he look this good when he was living here?”

  I let out a bitter laugh. My man.

  “Nat,” Emily scolds her before telling me, “Jessa, they’re just pictures.” Apparently she looked this time. I don’t know because my vision is obscured by my tears that I hate that I’m shedding for that asshole. “They don’t mean anything. You can’t make assumptions.”

  All I can do is shake my head. There are no assumptions to be made. She is there with him. “Shit,” I mutter, putting my head in my hands as reality starts to cover me. Nat tries to hand me back my phone but I tell her, “I don’t want to see anymore.”

  “I don’t like that you’re doing this, Jess. You don’t know anything. Call him. He’s about to perform a huge show, you are his girlfriend, you should be calling him. He wants to talk to you.”

  “I can’t, Em. I can’t hold it together with him right now. He’s got less than an hour before he gets on that stage, I’m not going to drop all this shit on him right now and I can’t hold it inside any longer.”

  “Call Violet then. Ask her what’s going on. Tell her to let Paxton know you’re thinking about him,” she says with concern.

  “Give me a minute. I can’t talk to any of them right now.”

  “Yeah… okay,” Em says.

  I lay back on the couch and wipe the tears away. Emily hands me my frothy, fruity beverage and I drink it back, getting a brain freeze. “Motherfucker,” I mutter. “I need something with less ice and more alcohol.”

  Emily laughs and then stands, bringing my drink to the kitchen. I look over at Nat who was uncharacteristically quiet during Emily’s pro-Paxton speech. She’s got my phone in her hands and looks totally immersed. Fuck this. I’m an addict. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing bad, just pictures of Paxton and his band backstage. Last run through,” she says with mock cheer and her fingers formed into quotation marks.

  “Hash tag what?”

  “Obsessed with my baby. Need a life. Can’t stop stalking.”

  “Really.”

  “Nothing interesting. This girl needs some new catch phrases. Or what the hell do you even call this… tag lines?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “Okay… Jesus… come on now,” Nat says shaking her head.

  I don’t want to know but I ask anyway. “What?”

  “It’s a close up of his hand strumming his guitar. Caption – ‘Most talented hands in the world. I would know’,” Nat laughs and shakes her head.

  Emily comes walking in then with my whiskey. “What the hell are you doing, Nat? Are you still looking at those pictures? Jesus, you enabler. She said she was done.”

  Nat looks up at me then, startled, like she forgot for a minute that it’s my boyfriend Stella is talking about. “Oh my god, I’m awful,” she says, dropping the phone like its poison. “Jessa, I’m sorry. God, I have to stop being such a drama whore. This is not a tabloid. This is your life.” She’s in front of me now, between my legs hugging me around my waist. “Please forgive me. I’m a shitty friend.”

  I pat her head like she’s a dog. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “I would have looked eventually.”

  The three of us huddle on the couch. I voluntarily ask Nat for more details about her wedding just so someone fills the air with anything but silence. I put Emily in charge of the phone because my anger is now mingled with thoughts of this huge thing Paxton is about to do and I have to know how he’s doing so I’m waiting until I know they are onstage so I can call Vi.

  “Okay, you’re good,” Em tells me, handing me my phone. I look at the latest picture. Pax is walking onto the stage. His body silhouetted in the bright lights. She was with him right up until the last minute – just like I used to be. Just like she used to be too, I guess. I don’t even look at the caption or hashtags or likes or comments.

  I open up my phone and dial Violet’s number. I don’t know if she will answer. It’s a big night for Jimmy too and I doubt her phone is a priority right now, but she picks up right after the first ring. “Now, Jessa, you are calling now?” is how she greets me. “You couldn’t have called him before he had to go on that stage? What the hell is going on with you?”

  She’s angry at me. She knows what he has been doing, she knows Stella is there with him, but she’s angry at me. Because she is his friend. She loves him. She will always defend him.

  “I’m sorry, Vi,” I mutter.

  “You should be sorry. What the hell is going on? Why is it such an effort for you to pick up your damn phone?”

  “How is he doing? Was he okay before the show… I mean, is he feeling better. How was he?”

  “Not good, Jessa. You know that. I love you, but I don’t get this. Why are you treating him this way? You are really starting to piss me off.”

  Her words hurt, but I ignore them. “Is he high, Violet?” I ask her. Part of me wants her answer to be, yes, because it might be an excuse for why Stella is attached to his hip. But the bigger part of me wants her to say, no, because I don’t like thinking of him like that. I don’t know him that way and I don’t want him experiencing this night as anyone but himself.

  “No, Jess. He hasn’t touched anything but beer since he
came back home with me. Is that why you’re doing this to him? Because he started using again? Because he’s done now. He’s sorry and he’s done.”

  Jesus I am apparently the villain in this situation. The only thing that matters in that life in Chicago is him. None of those people give a shit about me if I’m not attached to him. “Just… don’t tell him I called. Just…take care of him,” I mutter through my tears.

  “You should be the one taking care of him. What time are you coming home on Sunday?”

  I guess I don’t have to keep lying to her. Paxton is safely on stage and I don’t think my staying away is going to have much effect on him. “I’m not coming back, Vi.”

  “What?” she screams.

  “I’m staying here for a while. I… I can’t go back there right now. I’ll come get my things when I have a chance. I’m sorry.”

  “What are you talking about, Jessa? This doesn’t make any…”

  “I’m sorry, Vi,” I say, cutting her off. “I have to go,” I mutter, ending the call.

  #

  I didn’t sleep last night. I’m never going to sleep because every time I close my eyes all I can see is the look in Paxton’s eyes. The look that was not directed at me, but at Stella. All I can see is the shit eating grin on his face in the last picture she posted of Paxton walking out a door, his hand raised as he says goodbye. Outta here. #goodnightbitces #itsbeenreal #babysarockstar #timeforbed.

  I don’t want to go home necessarily, but I do want to crawl under my covers and never get out of bed. Maybe I’ll never leave this town again. Maybe I’ll never talk to Pax again. Never see him again. Oh god, those thoughts, piled on top of each other are almost more than I can handle. I can already feel myself falling apart but I manage to get my mom’s minivan safely back into the garage. I take a couple of deep breaths, preparing to put my ‘life is dandy’ face on in order to fit into the fake bullshit inside that house.

  Being back here just fortifies all of the reasons why I never wanted to fall in love. How could I have forgotten what love did to my mom? How could I have forgotten the way I almost let myself get screwed over here myself? How could I have let myself believe that Paxton was different than every other guy in the world? I drop my head and push my palms into my eyes and laugh. I’m such an idiot.

  I get out of the car, thinking I should have changed out of my PJ’s. I can just imagine the judgmental look I’m going to get from Dean when I roll in there in my skimpy tank top and shorts, my makeup from the night before on my face, hair completely untamed.

  I walk into the mudroom and kick off my Vans. I put my game face on and hope that I can breeze right past them and up to my room. I step into the kitchen telling them, “Good morning,” with a smile on my face. I have my hand raised to say, ‘hi’, and my body already positioned to make the turn into the hallway when I notice the third person at the kitchen table… when I realize Paxton is at my kitchen table with Lydia and Dean. “What the fuck?” I mutter, stopping dead in my tracks.

  “Jessa,” my mother gasps. I can’t take my eyes off Pax, but I know both of her hands are protecting her heart from my harsh words.

  Paxton pushes back from the table and stands like he’s coming toward me and my heart starts racing. My mind is fuzzy. What the hell is he doing here? “Jessa,” he says, like he’s the one that’s surprised to see me here and not the other way around.

  “What are you doing here?” I manage to whisper.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here?”

  “You left with… you were with… what the hell?”

  His head retracts and he gives me a crooked smile, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, beso,” he says under his breath. He’s just inches from me now and his presence is making my skin crawl and my fingers twitch, my insides ache. His presence is making me remember him. Us. And letting me forget the monumental asshole he’s been all week.

  Dean clears his throat loudly and the clatter of his chair sounds across the floor. “Jessa, why don’t you go put some clothes on,” he suggests.

  “Yeah,” I manage to mutter through my confusion. I turn away from Paxton and head out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my bedroom. I can hear someone following me and I can only assume it’s Paxton because my mom and Dean are both big proponents of avoiding conflict. Having Paxton in my room is not a good idea right now. I know that. Yet, I don’t close the door behind me when I enter my room like I should.

  I head into my bathroom and start taking my eye makeup off like he’s not there with me. Like there aren’t a million problems between us. I don’t look at his reflection in the mirror, but I can feel him. I can feel him in the room with me and I feel hot. And bothered. But I stay focused on what I’m doing.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on or are you just gonna keep ignoring me?”

  “I’m surprised Paxton, that you’re here. Did you make the six hour drive for me?” I ask him, reaching into the shower and turning on the water.

  He steps towards me and I try my best to ignore him, but when his hands wrap tightly around my waist I let out a gasp at the pleasure his hands on the exposed skin of my midriff causes. My bones feel weak, but I manage to push at his chest, trying to get him off me. I can’t look at his eyes so I’m staring at his body. His strong, lean, long, perfect body. His white t-shirt that is caught up on the buckle that is securing his faded jeans to his hips. The buckle that I want to tear open. “I need to shower,” I manage to tell him. “You’re going to have to leave.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he asks, releasing his grasp on me. “I don’t need to leave ‘cause you’re getting in the shower. Fuck, beso, who the hell are you?”

  Every muscle in my body flexes with anger but I manage to ignore him, stripping my clothes off of my body, listening to his stifled, “fuck,” and stepping into the shower.

  I turn my face to the water, trying to accept the fact that Paxton is here with me and not in bed with Stella. What does that mean? It means he didn’t go home with her. It means he would have gotten into his car within a couple of hours after the show in order to be in River Bluff right now. It means he thinks I’m going to forgive him for what he did to me. It means he thinks the fact that I left him is a good enough excuse for what he did to me and I’m just gonna forget about everything simply because he’s here. Fuck that.

  And then I feel his hands wrapped around my stomach, his cock pressed up against my lower back, his mouth on my neck. It feels euphoric for about a second. Until it hurts. Until it pisses me off. I thrust myself out of his arms and turn before backing into the wall. His hands are back on me again, his body inches from mine, his face as intense as I’ve ever seen it. “Get out of here, Paxton.”

  His hand grabs a hold of my chin and his fingers clamp down. “What?” he seethes.

  “I said, get the fuck out of here.”

  “Why would I get the fuck out of here?” he says, before ducking down and taking my bottom lip in his teeth. He releases it and then moves his mouth to my ear. “You are mine. I am yours. Why would you want me to get the fuck out of here?”

  My body is trembling with desire, but my head is still clear and I know this game he’s playing. He knows how badly I need him. How much I want him. How hard it is to resist his hands and mouth on me. It’s so fucking hard. His cock is teasing my stomach and despite my rational mind I want it in me so badly. My insides hurt where he should be. I’m so tempted to forget about all of this shit, just for a little while, just long enough to feel him inside of me.

  He pushes closer to me, his hands grab a hold of mine, raising them and pinning them against the shower wall. “I love you, beso. I need you. I need inside of you,” he growls.

  My eyes, against my will, meet his and the hunger there, the pure desire, has me ready to start begging him. “Fuck me if you need to Pax, but it won’t mean anything.”

  He pushes his body into mine, nailing me against the wall. “Me… inside of you… w
on’t mean anything,” he seethes.

  “No, Pax, it won’t.”

  He releases my wrists so he can cup my ass and drag my body up the wet wall. He presses the tip of his cock into my opening and I can’t stop the groan of release that comes out of my mouth. He pushes his tip inside of me and I feel my eyes rolling. He lets go of my ass so that I sink down onto him. But then he pulls out of me and backs away. “Nothing. Fucking nothing. Really?” he asks, laughing like a lunatic. “You are really trying to fuck me up, huh kid? You are one fucking sadistic head case,” he says, backing out of the shower. I’m slowly sinking down the shower wall, trying to get a hold of the desire running through my body and the emotions assaulting me, making it hard to breathe, as I watch him back away from me and out of my vision.

  When I hear the bathroom door close, I force myself to stand back up, fighting the urge to go running after him. I’m terrified that he is leaving, but I shouldn’t be. If that was his attempt at explaining things, at making things right – sticking his dick in me – then I shouldn’t care if he stays or goes.

  I wash my hair and my body while reminding myself of all the reasons that this isn’t going to work with him – the calls he didn’t make, the bed he didn’t sleep in, the coke he couldn’t stop using, the manipulative words he used to deflect his issues, the past relationship he was not honest about, the fact that Stella is such a big part of his life. All of it adds up to one thing. He doesn’t really love me. Not like he says he does. And I will never let another man screw me over. It’s the only thing I know.

  I get out of the shower, wrapping myself in a towel, before heading into my bedroom. Paxton is on my bed, hands behind his head, face tense, eyes focused on me. My heart is beating with relief, but I turn my eyes from him like I don’t care. I can feel his eyes on me as I step into my bra and underwear. I don’t turn back to him until I have my jeans and tank top on.