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“Umm…” I mumble because I don’t know if I want to talk right now but I’m also so disrupted by the way he looks like a bad-boy god right now. “We don’t really have to-”
“I need to apologize. Can I please come in?” He’s looking at me with…are those puppy eyes?
Not more than a few days ago, he was calling me a bitch and now he’s pleading with his impossibly ocean-blue eyes. How does he do that? Both of those things have irrevocably turned me on in ways that aren’t normal and I swear he does it on purpose.
I think about it for a minute, but before I have more than a second's worth of time, a loud alarm behind me starts blaring in my house.
“What the fuck?” I turn my head to see smoke billowing out from the kitchen. “Shit!” I add on as I abandon the front door and book it back inside.
“Hollis, wait!” I hear my screen door open and slam as footsteps follow frantically behind me.
There’s a fire.
A small one, but I panic. What the hell happened?
I stop at the foot of the entry unsure of what to do. The fire seems to be coming from the microwave—the fucking popcorn—and if I don’t stop it, this could be super fucking serious.
I feel Jax’s hand slide up on my back, from the middle of my spine and up to my shoulder. Almost comforting as the rest of me loses all sense of thought.
“Fire extinguisher?” he asks in a rather calm manner. How the fuck does he do that? There are literal flames breaking loose right now and I can’t even think straight.
“Under the sink.” I point after trying to regain focus, and Jax doesn’t hesitate but to move swiftly across the kitchen tiles, black wings of smoke seem to feather in slow motion waves through the room.
I start coughing as I try to wave the smoke out of my face and next thing I know, Jax is spraying the fire with the extinguisher, putting it out completely.
“This is not fucking happening.” Is all I can manage to say as I rush over to meet him.
He tosses the extinguisher in the sink and takes a rag to wave out the rest of the smoke from the ceiling, the fire alarms barely quieting down to a stop. Once the air is cleared, I can see that the damage isn’t as bad as it looks.
I dig my palms into my eye sockets to stop them from burning when I hear Jax.
“Hollis, please don’t tell me…” he trails off. I finally get my eyes cleared up in time to look at him as he pulls the charred substance from the microwave with a dish rag.
Now, I know that the only thing that could have caused this fire was the popcorn, but what I don’t expect to see is that the bag of popcorn is still wrapped in its plastic outer layer.
“You really tossed this in here without unwrapping it?” he asks, before running it under cold water to cool it down, then tossing it in the trash can–not that there was much left other than ashes but he did what he could.
I stare dumbfounded. “I’ve never done that before,” I say in a shocked tone. “My mind must have been somewhere else,” I admit next. This could have been really serious if Jaxon weren’t here. But then again, I might have been paying more attention if Jaxon weren't on my damn mind.
“What do I do?” I ask, not knowing if I need to call the fire department, or my parents.
“Thankfully, it only looks like flames caused damage to the microwave.” We both look up to inspect the ceiling, thankfully there aren’t any smoke or burn marks. Nothing seems to be affected other than the microwave which isn’t even entirely that bad looking, but I know I won’t be able to use it again.
“My mom is going to lose her shit.” I pull my hands through my hair and my heart still thuds rapidly in its chamber.
Jax comes over toward me and places his hands on my shoulder, his touch doing something that acts as a sedative. I feel my heartbeat come down from the clouds and level out at a steadythump, thump.But I’m angry that he’s touching me because he doesn’t have the fucking right. But it calms me down from the thoughts racing around the track that is my mind.
He’s a fucking contradiction.
“I’ll help you clean up, and you can search for a new microwave. You only have to tell your mom what you want to.” He hands me his phone and opens up theAmazonappbefore handing it to me and nodding his head in the direction of the dining room.
This.
This is familiar. His protectiveness. How he used to always have my back. The way he looked at me and made me feel; I was safe around him.
I don’t argue, taking his phone to look for the closest resembling microwave to the one I burnt to crisp I can find, click checkout and order it.
But I’m too coated in shock to realize that he paid for it from his own account. So, I go back to his orders and cancel it almost as quickly and then hand him back his phone.
