The Dangerous Curves Series

Chapter 65

An hour later, Jax came back inside. Mac and King saw him, and they blocked his way.

“You OK?” King said, eyeing his bloody, bruised hand.

“Yeah.”

“You want me to take a look at that?” Mac said. “It may be broken.”

“It’s not broken,” Jax said. “Trust me, I know.”

They looked at him, silent and worried. He walked around them, ignoring the questions in their eyes, and sat down next to Noah.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked.

“Fine.” Noah looked at him. “You want to see my new baseball cards from King?”

“Yeah. That sounds good.”

Noah paused and looked at Jax, and for a half-dozen heartbeats, they stared at each other. Jax was amazed to see that Noah was totally present in those few seconds, Noah really saw him and connected with him, and the warmth and compassion in those familiar blue eyes took Jax aback.

“Love Sarah,” Noah said quietly.

“I know you do, man.”

“No,” Noah corrected. “You love Sarah.”

“Yeah.” Jax felt something stinging his eyes, and he was horrified to find that they were tears. “Yeah. I do.”

****

The next week passed more slowly than Jax ever thought was possible. The swelling in Sarah’s brain went down, thank God, but it didn’t go down enough. She was still trapped in some nightmare half-world between being awake and asleep; between living and dying; between coming back to him or leaving him forever.

Jax spent as much time as he could at the hospital, and it was time spent sitting in her room, holding her hand, staring at her unmoving face, and waiting. Waiting for her to squeeze his fingers, to flutter an eyelid, to move her head. Anything, anything to show him that she was still in there somewhere, and fighting to get out.

At Mac’s suggestion, Jax talked to Sarah. Whenever Annie or Ellen or one of the guys came to see Sarah, they found Jax sitting there, holding her hand and telling her something about his life, his husky voice almost hoarse from talking unceasingly.

Sometimes he read to her, which he actually really liked, and twice a day, he brushed her hair, which he really loved. He turned her to prevent her from developing bed sores, and he did exercises twice a day to slow atrophy in her muscles. He kissed her before leaving her every night; his last thought before finally falling into a restless sleep was a fervent hope that she’d wake up the next day.

Jax basically handed things at Curves over to Aidan, and he just didn’t give a f**k about any of it beyond that. If the place burned down, he wouldn’t care in the slightest. He ate when he remembered to, he slept when his body was at the point of sheer collapse. He planned all the things he was going to say to Sarah when she finally woke up… beginning with the fact that he loved her. He kept believing, he kept the faith, though it got harder and harder with each passing hour of Sarah’s dreamless sleep.

So he dug in deep, and waited for the miracle that seemed determined not to come.

Not yet. It just hasn’t come yet.

****

Jax arrived at the hospital a bit later than usual. He’d had to drop by his accountant’s office and sign several documents, and as always, it had taken far too long. But this time it wasn’t the accountant’s complicated explanations that had held things up: Jax had simply been unable to focus for longer than one minute at a time.

Annie looked up as Jax walked towards her. Noah grinned at him.

“Jax, Jax, Jax!”

“Hey, Noah.” Jax touched his shoulder gently, and Noah accepted that from him, no problem at all. Since their moment of connection the week before, Jax had become the third person in the world to be able to make physical contact with Noah without a lot of warning and heads-up preparation. “How you doing?”

“Good.” Noah shuffled his baseball cards. “New cards today. From Doctor Mac.”

“Cool, man. You’ll show me later?”

Noah nodded, then repeated under his breath, “Cool, man.”

Annie stood up. “Can I buy you a coffee from the machine?”

Jax paused. That was their code for ‘I have something important to tell you’, and he felt his whole body tighten up. He glanced at Noah, then nodded.

“Yeah, a coffee sounds good. Thanks, Annie.”

They walked down the hall to the coffee machine, and Annie dug some change out of her waitress uniform pocket. They stared as the murky brown liquid poured into the flimsy white cup, not speaking yet. Jax wondered how many cups of this sludge he’d had in the past week, and how many more he was going to drink.

Christ Almighty, for the whole rest of my life, coffee that tastes like Styrofoam and burnt grounds is going to bring me right back here, to this time and place. After this, I never drink coin machine coffee. Ever. Again.