Ruin Me (Nova 5)

Jax balls a fist over his mouth, his shoulders shaking as he fights to restrain his laughter.

"You can laugh. Now that it's all over, it's pretty funny. Although, if you'd asked me ten minutes ago when the crazy bird was in my room, and I'd have told you it was possessed." I tap my finger against my lip. "Hmmm... Maybe Mr. Garlifed was on to something. Maybe it was watching him in his sleep. Those beady eyes did look a bit shifty."

"Or maybe he's into voodoo," he jokes along with me. One of the things that drew me to Jax is his ability to not only tolerate my odd sense of humor but he can make jokes with me too.

My lips part in mock shock. "Oh, my God. I think you might be onto something. This entire time, all the logging he's been doing was actually to keep track of all the people he put curses on with his pet chickens."

"Roosters." He cranks the wheel and pulls the Jeep forward onto the road while giving me a wink. "Jesus Clara, get it right."

"I'm so sorry." I melodramatically press my hand to my chest, glad I didn't fight the ride. Like always, whenever I'm around Jax, I feel way more like my old self. The Clara who freely bounced through life, made jokes whenever she could, and didn't have to worry about the bills piling up on the kitchen counter. "But, to be fair, you did kind of make the incorrect reference first."

"I blame that on my nephew." He steers the car up the main street lined with quaint stores that sell items like beachwear, seashell wind chimes, and homemade baskets. "He's always confusing animals."

"How is Mason doing?" I prop my boots up on the dash and relax back in the seat.

"He's doing well. Getting bigger and smarter by the day," he says as he turns toward a small drive-thru coffee shop located about a mile from the college. "You should come over sometime and see him."

"Maybe one day." I force a stiff smile, feeling like an asshole for lying. The truth is, I'll never go over to Jax's house. He lives with his sister and nephew and going there means meeting his family. And meeting his family feels way too personal for friends who mess around on the weekends.

Jax knows me too well and sighs, reading through my bullshit. "So, do you work tonight?" he asks as he pulls up to the order menu.

"Not until Wednesday." I lean over the console to scan the list of beverages. This close to him, I catch a whiff of his cologne and a hint of cigarette smoke. "I thought you quit smoking."

"I did, but I messed up this morning."

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Just one of those days."

I'm about to press for more, worried something might be wrong, but he speaks first.

"I don't know why you look at the menu," he teases. "You always get the same thing."

"Hey, maybe I'm planning on mixing it up," I retort, swatting his arm. "Perhaps I've decided to become adventurous today and live life on the wild side."

He glances at me as the lady through the intercom asks what she can get him. We're so close our lips almost brush, but he doesn't lean away. He elevates his brows, challenging me. "Alright, Miss Adventurous, what'll you have?"

I think about kissing him, planting a big, wet kiss right on his mouth. Three years ago I would have. Three years ago I was Miss Adventurous.

But not anymore. I've become Miss Routine.

I end up ordering a Vanilla Cappuccino with an extra shot, just like I always do. When I lean back in my seat, Jax looks mildly disappointed, but doesn't comment. Instead, he traces a finger down the brim of my nose.

"So, what's on the agenda for this weekend?"

"Well, I can only go out for about two hours," I tell him as he pulls up to the window. "I have work and stuff."

He mulls something over as he hands the cashier a ten. "What other stuff?"

"Just stuff." Mom stuff, like doctor appointments and making sure she's taken care of.

"Could you maybe get some time off from work? I want to spend a little more time with you this weekend."

"More time to do what? I mean we only need like two hours for us to," I gesture between the two of us and shimmy my hips, "make bow-chicka-bow-wow."

He chuckles under his breath. "You know, the really amusing thing is that you make the joke and make yourself blush." He grazes his finger along the corner of my eye, causing me to shiver. "But I don't just want to make bow-chicka-bow-wow this weekend."

My brows knit. "What else would we do?" School's out, so studying isn't an option. Back in the day when we were just friends, we used to go to movies and dinner but now I worry it'd end up being a date.

"I was thinking we could take a road trip," he mutters then coughs into his hand.

"What?" I figure I heard him wrong. I had to have heard him wrong.

He clears his throat. "I want you to take a road trip with me."

"Now."

"Well, after your last class gets out today." He reaches out the window, takes the coffees from the cashier, and then he hands me the cup marked cappuccino.

"Jax, I can't do that." I swallow a drink of the coffee but instantly regret it as the steamy liquid scalds my tongue.

"You can't say no yet." He places his coffee into the cup holder. "Not when you haven't heard where we're going and why."

"I don't need to hear why. I can't go."

"Why not?"

"Work..." I start to list things off, but realize, with school ending, the only other responsibility I have is my mother. And while it's a huge responsibility, Jax doesn't know about it.

"You have a ton of vacation time, right?" He shoves the shifter into first gear and drives forward.

"I'm saving that up for a family vacation," I lie, feeling like a class A jerk. But telling Jax about my mother means letting him enter the madness of my world.

"To scatter your father's ashes with your mom? In the Teton's, right?" When I nod, a faint smile touches his lips. "Well, what if I said, during our road trip, we'd be right by the Tetons?"

I scrunch up my nose. Crap. Why did I ever give him that information about my father?

"Your mother could even come too if she wants," he says, though he sounds unenthusiastic about the idea.

"Why are you even going on a road trip right now?" I ask as I put the coffee between my legs and flip down the visor to block out the blinding sunlight.

His jaw tightens as he merges the car onto the road. "It's my mom."

"I thought you said she was okay?"

"No, I said everything was okay, meaning I have a plan."

"You omitted the truth." I rummage around in my bag for my sunglasses.

"I did it for a reason." The gears grind as he shifts into second gear.

"What reason?" I find my sunglasses and slip them on.

"Because I needed time to come up with a plan to convince you to come with me."

"On a two thousand mile road trip to Wyoming?" My eyes are wide and my jaw is hanging open. He has to be joking. Then again, I've been noticing lately that he's started seeking more in our relationship.

He cracks his knuckles against the steering wheel then grazes his thumb over a black and silver, diamond-studded ring he sometimes wears. "Look, I know what you're thinking, but before you start listing all the reasons why you can't go just hear me out." He pauses, giving me a chance to protest. Even though I want to, the plea in his tone keeps my lips fastened. "I need to go back and at least try to find my mom. The cops aren't going to do anything--no one will--and I really need you there with me. Just as friends. In case I lose my shit or something... because, being back there," he swallows hard, "it's going to be hard."

Jax has told me enough about his past that I understand. But going with him on this trip feels dangerously intimate.

"I get where you're coming from. I really do. I couldn't imagine not knowing where my mother was..." I bite on my fingernails. "But I don't think I should be the one to go with you. Avery would be a way better choice."

"Avery isn't ready to go back there." His grip tightens around the shifter, his knuckles whitening. "Honestly, I'm not sure I am, eith

er."

"Isn't there anyone else who can go check up on your mom? Like your aunt?"

"I called her the morning after I got the voicemail. She doesn't want anything to do with this." He slows down the Jeep to turn into the parking lot of the college, then parks near the front and pushes the shifter into neutral, leaving the engine idling. "I know this is a lot, but I wouldn't ask if I didn't need your help. And the Teton's are really close to my hometown. We could swing up there and scatter your father's ashes."

A lump wells in my throat at the idea of standing with Jax on the mountain as I say a final goodbye to my father. The real kicker is how easy I can envision him there with me. But then what? After it's all over, we'd return here, and I'd have to go back to my hectic life.

"Please don't ask me to do this," I whisper, grasping the door handle.

He swallows hard at the crack in my voice. "Okay, yeah. You're right. I shouldn't pressure you like this." His smile is fake and his eyes radiate pain.

I don't relax at all as I open the door and hop out of the car. I start to shut the door, but pause. "Are you still going?"

He sucks in a gradual breath while staring at the trees in front of the car. The sunlight reflects in his hazel eyes and highlights the pain in them. "I have to; otherwise, I'll never stop worrying about her."

"Are you leaving right now?"

He nods, his gaze gliding to mine. He looks so vulnerable that I just want to hug him. "I'm heading home to pack, and then I'm hitting the road."

"You're going to take someone else with you, though, right?" The idea of him doing this alone makes me want to cry.

"Sure." He's lying.

I want to help him, but instead I close the door and watch him drive away, picturing him all alone in that car heading to a place that's always caused him pain.

As the car vanishes out of sight, the image of him shifts to me at eighteen years old, handling funeral arrangements by myself. Taking my mother to doctor appointments. Handling the will. Bills. How my life crumbled. How I lost most of my friends. How my boyfriend broke up with me, said my life was too complicated for him.

"I don't think I can do this anymore, Clara," Mack told me two weeks after the funeral, right when bills and responsibilities had really started to pile up. "Our lives are too different now. You're always so busy and you have a ton of responsibilities."

"I'll make time for you." I felt like I was being strangled, as if the last piece of my world was about to be ripped out from underneath me.

He scratched uncomfortably at the back of his neck. "I don't know. I just don't see this working out. All those plans that we had to travel are gone. Well, for you anyway... I can still go."

Looking back at that moment, I'd felt such hatred for him. But at the time, I couldn't process my feelings because I was too terrified of being alone. I had just lost my father. My mother was only mentally half there. My sister had bailed out. I had no one.

"But I thought you loved me?" It was what he told me when I lost my virginity to him: 'Clara, I love you, so, so much.' Maybe I'd been naive to believe him.

"I'm sorry," he said with a shrug.

Tears had stung in my eyes and I loathed myself for being so weak. After just watching my dad die, the pain of a breakup should have seemed insignificant. But all I kept thinking was: alone, alone, alone. "I know I've been kind of distant lately, but I just need some time to get stuff together."

"Clara, this isn't a problem that's just going to go away." He looked at me with pity. "If I stayed with you, it'd mostly be because I felt sorry for you. We'd eventually end up ruining each other."

"Please, don't leave me... If you love me you'll stay," I pathetically begged, clutching onto him.

He gave me a kiss on the cheek and his lips achingly burned my skin. "I'll see you around okay." Then he walked away, leaving me alone with responsibilities I wasn't ready for, but had to deal with.

I didn't have time to fall apart, to mend a broken heart, so I vowed to go on alone. Vowed to never trust anyone that much again.

Even though my legs desperately beg to chase after Jax, I listen to my heart and walk away.

Chapter Four

Clara

Jax haunts my thoughts all through the final exam. I think about him when I'm gathering my stuff and heading off campus. On the bus ride home. By the time I walk into the living room of my apartment, I have a Jax worry-induced headache.

I decide to send him a text to check up on him, hoping it might alleviate some of my anxiety.

Me: U doing okay?

Jax: Yeah.

Me: U hit the road yet?

Jax: Heading out of the driveway now. C u in a week :)

I feel even worse and the smiley face at the end of his message makes me feel like a gigantic asshole.

After I put my phone away, I drop my bag onto the sofa. My mother and Nelli are in the kitchen baking brownies. Or Nelli is baking and my mother is licking the batter off the spoon.

"How was your day?" Nelli asks as I trudge into the small, narrow kitchen.

"Fine." I open the fridge and grab a can of soda.

"Oh no. That doesn't sound good," she replies as she butters the pan.

"What do you mean?" I pop the tab on the can. "I said it was fine."

"In the most depressing tone I've ever heard." She picks up the bowl to dump the batter into the pan.

"What's wrong?" my mother asks, for a fleeting moment appearing like her old, concerned self. But then she drops the spoon onto the floor and doesn't bother picking it up as she hoists herself onto the countertop.

"It's nothing." When Nelli shoots me a stern look, I sigh. "One of my friends wants me to go on a road trip with him to his hometown in Wyoming so he can check up on his mother. She has a lot of problems with drugs and has gone missing. He wants me to come with him and I feel really bad because I can't."

Nelli scrapes the batter from the side of the bowl. "Why can't you go?"

I give a discreet glance in my mother's direction. "Because I have other responsibilities."

Nelli sets the bowl down, picks the baking pan up, and opens the oven. "I can watch her for you, Clara Bear." She slides the pan into the stove, closes the door, and then sets the timer. "That's what I'm here for."

"That's not your responsibility."

"It's as much mine as it is yours."

"No, it's not. I'm her daughter."

She wipes off her hands with a dishtowel. "Honey, why do you think I'm here all the time?"

I shrug. "Because you're my mom's sister."

"That's true, but that's not the only reason I come over." She glances at my mother then leans in and lowers her voice a notch. "Before any of this happened, I made a promise to your parents that, if anything happened to them, I'd take care of you."

I vaguely recollect reading in the will that Nelli had guardianship if something happened to my parents before my sister and I turned eighteen.

"But I'm not a kid anymore," I utter quietly. "I don't need to be taken care of."

"Yes, you do." She pinches my cheek like she did when I was a child. "You're only twenty-one. You're life's just getting started."

"This is my responsibility. I've been doing it for three years... Dad asked me to."

"Honey, we've been over this a thousand times. Your father may have asked you to take care of your mom, but it doesn't mean he wanted you to sacrifice your happiness to do it."

"I'm happy."

"No you're not."

Deep down, I know she's right. But it's difficult to admit aloud.

"I'm not telling you that you have to stop taking care of your mother," Nelli says. "You can still keep doing it when you get back, but you also need to take a break sometimes. Get out and live a little." When I remain reluctant, she adds, "Unless that's not the only reason you don't want to go."

"I have work too," I feed her a lame excuse.

She never buys my bullshit. "I'm sure you have vacation days saved up since you

never take time off."

I have every intention of lying to her. But she gives me a similar look to the one my mother used to give me whenever I was lying, and I end up caving.

"The person who asked me to go on the road trip is a guy I have a very complicated relationship with."

Her brows elevate as she opens a cupboard to put the sugar away. "How complicated?"

My Aunt Nelli may be cool, but I'm not about to tell her about Jax and me being fuck buddies. "Just normal complicated."

She acutely eyes me over. "All relationships are. That's just part of life."

I restlessly tap my foot against the floor. "I'm not ready to get close to someone. And, even if I wanted to, I don't have the time. Being in a car with him for that long... something will happen between us. I know it will."