Drops of water pooling on the table, tangled hair, wet and wild, rioting down creamy skin. A perfectly round ass, reddened from the slap of wood. I blinked but the weird vision tingled down my spine in an odd way, making my dick stir.

I glanced out the windows and almost expected to see rain pummeling the ground, but the morning was just as clear and bright as it’d been when they released me from the hospital an hour ago. With a shake of my head, I lowered into a chair, being careful not to knock my sling into the table, and smoothed my palm across the course red oak surface, hoping to bring back that niggle of…something.

Jax pulled two beers from the fridge, popped the caps off both, and slid one over to me.

“Isn’t it a little early for that?” I asked, gesturing toward the dark ale. It was barely 10 a.m.

“For this conversation?” He raised a brow. “Doubt it.” He turned the chair around and straddled it, and again I willed my mind to reach out and catch a memory.

“Did something happen here?” I gestured to the table spanning the distance between us.

“Lots of stuff happened here.” His mouth quirked into a half smile, half smirk as he tipped the bottle back and took a swig. He set the beer back on the table with a loud clunk. “Look, I said we’d talk once you got out. I know you have questions, so let’s get to it. What do you wanna know?”

That was a fucking loaded question. “Let’s start with why I was locked up.”

“The sheriff didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head, remembering how he’d questioned me in the hospital, as if I were guilty of shooting myself or something. Lyle Lewis hadn’t changed a bit, from what I could tell. His contemptuous attitude really dug under my skin. Fucking ridiculous that the town bully would become sheriff. “He didn’t tell me shit, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass about finding the fucker who shot me either.”

“I’m not surprised. Nikki told me about the uproar he’s stirred in town. He’s the reason half of Dante’s Pass hates your guts, man.” Jax winced. “Sorry, probably too brutal. Never been good with tact.”

“When did you talk to Nik? Do you guys know each other?”

He took a long drink of his beer before answering. “We talked at the hospital.”

The idea of Jax getting close to her bothered me, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe because I still thought of her as mine, even though Lyle the-fucking-sheriff Lewis had made it a point to tell me they were engaged to be married in a few weeks.

“What’d you talk about?”

“You, mostly. She was pissed you wouldn’t see her.”