Page 40 of Badd B*tch

"Pretty much."

"Not sure I agree with your assessment that he wasn't a bad father. But I have no place judging him. I'm not a parent."

I felt a ghost of a touch on my shoulder, delicate and hesitant. "I'm not an easy person to get close to, Jax. Please know that it's not you, it's me."

I turned in place, capturing her hand in mind, my fingers enclosing hers like a hand caging in a moth. "Tea," I murmured. "I think there's a lot more going on here than just that."

"Is there?"

"I don't know," I said. "You tell me."

"Jax." Her hand clenched into a fist inside mine, then slowly unfurled until her fingers lengthened against mine, gradually slipping between mine. "This is me trying."

I held her eyes. "I see it."

Hers closed slowly, and I could see her trying to work up the courage to do or say something.

She did neither.

She just held my hand, fingers tangled, for a few more seconds, then pulled away and settled down near the fire in a way that definitively closed the conversation.

“We should get some rest," she muttered, eventually.

"Yeah, probably."

I lay down next to her but not touching her, even though some intrinsic part of me wanted so badly to have her in my arms again.

God, this sucks.

I lay awake long after Tea's breathing indicated she was asleep, my mind feeding me memory after brutal memory of all the times I'd shot my shot with Emerson and been rejected.

Thanks, brain! So fucking helpful.

I was almost asleep when Tea, in her restless sleep—and I was discovering that she was, as a rule, a restless sleeper—rolled into me, flung a thigh over mine, sleepily dug a hand up under my shirt to rest it between navel and diaphragm.

This woke me right back up.

I was dozing back off when she started twitching, head tossing this way and that.

"Luke," she whispered, her voice tortured even in sleep. "No. No. No! Luke, no. Luke!

There was more murmuring after that, but it was unintelligible.

I eventually fell asleep, but it was poor sleep, broken and restless and fitful.

Chapter 8

Tea

I woke up abruptly, almost startling awake. I wasn't sure why, at first. I took stock with my senses—I heard nothing unusual, only the pre-dawn symphony of birdsong; I smelled the faint odor of smoke from our fire, and Jax's and my combined body odor, which was pretty rank already.

When I opened my eyes and scanned, I saw nothing unusual, either, only the rock of the wall, the white trickle of smoke from the corpse of our campfire, the trees around.

So what woke me?

Tuning into my body can be… a process, one that requires conscious intent. I tend to dissociate from my body. It is, generally, little more than a vessel that carries my brain around. A tool to be used, a muscle to be worked. Especially since Luke's death.

So now I have to rejoin my body and discover why I've woken up so early—and it's early, even for me. The birds are barely awake, the sky still more dim, thick gray of night than the pale rush of dawn.