“And you did?”
“No. But it’s my responsibility. I agreed to take it on.”
I furrow my brow. “I did too, Jaxi. I signed up too. No one put a gun to my head. And, quite frankly, I think I’m doing a damn good job. If I do say so myself.”
She laughs softly and shifts her weight on the bed.
“I have this way of failing people, Boone. I don’t do it intentionally. And I don’t even know if it’s failing people or if it’s just that there’s something about me that makes things fall apart.”
“I have a hard time believing that.”
She shrugs. “Then don’t believe it, but it’s true.”
I move on the bed, turning so that I can see her straight on. She’s watching me with a wariness—a wariness about my reaction to the fact she thinks she’s tainted or some shit—that hurts my heart.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“I know my stepfather’s alcoholism was not my fault. I know that. But along with the scars that were inflicted on my body—the one on the top of my head or this one,” she says, touching a faint line on her thigh, “there are other bruises that you can’t see with your naked eye.”
The feistiness that I usually see in her hazel eyes is gone, and I hate what’s taken up shop in its place. It’s a nasty uncertainty that I want to obliterate along with whomever hurt her like this.
“When you’re told that someone’s addiction, whether it be from alcohol, like Pete, or sex, like Shawn, is your fault because there’s something about you that causes them to need to act out like that—it’s a lot,” she says quietly. “It makes you want to protect anyone that you do like from yourself.”
She looks away, blinking back tears.
“Jaxi—”
I’m silenced by her hand going up in the air in a motion for me to stop.
“It’s really hard for me to tell you this,” she says. “This is not something I want to talk about, and I’m only telling you now because I feel like you deserve to know me.”
“I don’t know if I deserve that, Jaxi. But I want to know. I want to know you.”
A tear falls down her cheek.
“I was a child with Pete,” she says. “His problems couldn’t have been my fault. And Shawn—I tried my hardest to make him happy. I did it all. But my body’s failure to give him a child made him give up on me—made him seek happiness from someone who could give it to him in a way I couldn’t.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I reach for her, but she pulls away.
I have to remind myself to breathe, that I can’t go find her piece of shit stepfather or this Shawn fuck and drag them both back here by the hair of their fucking head and make them apologize to her.
“Let me tell you something,” I say, my voice a little harsher than I want it to be. “Those two don’t deserve the power to affect you like this.”
She wipes a stream of tears off her chin. “I know that. I do. But I can’t sit here and say those things don’t come into my mind when I see you playing with Rosie or flirting with me in the backyard or … holding us while we cry.”
She pulls her gaze to mine and lets me see all of the emotion buried in them. I didn’t cause this pain. I didn’t hurt her. But fuck it if it doesn’t feel like my responsibility to fix it—to show her, to prove to her, that none of that shit is her fault.
That she deserves love. That she deserves a love like my dad loves my mom, like Holt gives to Blaire.
Like I could give her.
I reach for her again, and this time, I don’t let her pull away.
I pull her into my chest and try to send the warmth of my soul into hers. I try to repair some of the damage to her heart with the beats of mine.
She balls my shirt up in her hands and lets me hold her. I rest my chin on top of her head and just let us be.
This is the feeling Holt was talking about when he went after Blaire. This is the reason Larissa cried so incessantly when she and Hollis split up. This is why Coy was freaking out when Bellamy told him goodbye.
They were all afraid they’d never have this again.
I get it now.
I lower my head to her ear. Before I go through with what I’m about to say, I close my eyes and hope for the best.
“Jaxi?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“I want to buy a dog.”
She pulls back and extricates herself from my arms. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I want to buy a dog, and that’s a commitment. They live a long time.”