Reckless (The Mason Family Series Book 3) by Adriana Locke (online e reader .txt) 📗

I pause and take in the sight and realize how amazing my mother really is. She raised five boys, yet she knew exactly what this little girl needed. She didn’t miss a single thing. It was as if Rosie was hers, and she went above and beyond to make her comfortable.

There’s a message in that, I’m sure. It’s Mom’s style. I’m just not quite sure what it is yet.

Mom is getting an extra hug the next time I see her.

Gently, I place Rosie in her bed and cover her up. I find her Glo Worm buried under a stack of books and tuck it in next to her.

“Night,” I whisper as I back out of the room. I close the door softly.

My body is on alert as if there’s more to do. I just don’t know what it is.

I turn around, and my gaze is snatched up by Jaxi. She’s standing in the middle of my bedroom with an unreadable look on her pretty face.

“Hey,” I say, walking across the hall and into my room too. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a hesitation in her eyes that sits just behind a partially constructed wall that I’m sure was built to keep me out.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I just …” She presses her thumb into her elbow. “We are a lot to deal with, aren’t we?”

“That’s subjective.”

She sighs. “Boone, I’m going to be honest with you.”

“I hope you would.”

She forces a swallow. “I want you to know that it takes everything inside me to have the guts to do this.”

A bolt of uncertainty crashes through me. I have no idea where this is going.

I take her hand and lead her to the bed. We sit next to each other on the mattress.

My heart races as I watch her war over what to say.

She lifts her chin and looks me in the eye. The confidence that I was first so attracted to settles on her face. It’s a façade, though, because I know her enough now to see the fear that is bleeding just behind it.

“I like you,” she says.

“I think it’s obvious that I like you too.”

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

“I’m trying to balance all of this in a way that is healthy for everyone involved. I respect you and appreciate you so much. But I also …” She looks down, as her cheeks pink. “I also fight my attraction to you every day. And when you touch me and let me cry against you, I feel … I feel something between us that scares the crap out of me.”

I lift her chin with the tip of my finger. “Why do you fight it?”

“Because all of this is a … it’s a lot. And you didn’t ask for any of it.”

“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