“She okay?” Jax asks. I’d forgotten he was even in the room.
"I heard my son today for the first time,” I rasp.
For a change, he looks solemn and respectful. “What did that feel like?”
“It made me feel… infinite,” I say.
Jax frowns, and I know immediately he doesn’t understand. Then again, before becoming a father, I wouldn’t have understood that statement either.
Wisely, he decides to leave that alone. “How’s Ariel? Is she okay?”
“No,” I reply honestly. “But she will be. We all will be.”
32
WILLOW
“Jax.”
“Eh?” he grunts. He’s been sitting to the side watching me train for an hour. He must be freezing, seeing as how he’s wearing just a t-shirt and thin sweatpants, but he shows no signs of discomfort. I still haven’t decided if that’s because he’s tough or because he’s dumb. Probably a little bit of both.
He also hasn’t offered to help me train again. He seemed so eager before, so enthusiastic. Now? Not so much.
“Come spar with me.”
“I think I’m good,” he grumbles.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
He bristles. “Do I look like I’m scared?”
He stands up, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d be the one who was scared. He’s a big man. Leo is big, too. But Jax looks like the poster boy for an ad campaign about steroid abuse.
“I can’t think of another reason why you wouldn’t train with me,” I say innocently.
“I can think of one really big reason.”
I roll my eyes. “So you are scared of something.”
He smiles and—I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this—blushes. “Okay, maybe I’m scared of one thing.”
I’m surprised he admitted it all. “You guys are supposed to be friends. Isn’t it weird having to take his orders?”
“You trying to drive a wedge between us, Willow?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Just curious.”
“That killed the cat, you know.”
“Might kill me, too, if Leo has anything to say about it. But you didn’t answer the question.”
He laughs and leans against one of the mossy boulders lining the edge of the training area. I walk over and hop up on the rock next to him.
“He is my friend always,” Jax explains quietly. “But he’s my don first.”
“Sounds confusing.”
“Not really. It’s the way it is.” He says it simply, in a matter-of-fact way that makes me wish I’d been born into this world. Try as I might, I still struggle to understand parts of it. This, for instance. How can someone so proud and defiant be so willing to follow another man’s orders? And not just follow them, but live by his every word. Go to war for him. Kill for him. Die for him.
That kind of loyalty just does not compute.
“I don’t think I could ever take orders from him,” I say honestly.
Jax smirks. “Shocking.”
I nudge him with my elbow. “I spent my early twenties with a man who controlled everything about my life. I’ve changed since then. I don’t think I can settle for another man who does the same thing.”
“He’s not trying to control you, you know—”
“Don’t say he’s trying to protect me. For God’s sake, say anything but that.”
“Well,” he shrugs innocently, “he is.”
“I cannot roll my eyes hard enough.”
Jax pivots to face me, suddenly serious. “Every choice you make can affect another person. Sometimes, it’s the difference between life and death. He’s just trying to minimize the casualties.”
“He treats me like I’m one of his men,” I snap. “Little toy soldier Willow, at your service.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know how not to be in charge,” Jax explains. “He had to become don suddenly. No preparation, no warning. He didn’t want the job, but he stepped up anyway. For his brother and his Bratva. Now, I think he feels like if he stops being in control, he’ll relapse back into the person he was before Pavel died.”
“And what kind of person was that?”
Jax smiles. “Fuck, if only you knew. We used to have fun.”
I wrinkle my nose. “That doesn’t tell me much.”
“Pavel would send us out on missions,” Jax reminisces fondly. “If there was a debt that needed to be paid or money that needed to be collected, the three of us would do it. And then afterwards, the celebrating was always the best part.” His eyes are hazy with memory as he looks a decade into the past and sees a man I never knew. “There was this one strip club down Main Street. It was called—shit, what the hell was it called?”