“You’re amazing.”

Those two words were so simple and sweet that it broke through something deep and muddy in me. It was like the sun breaking through after a month of nothing but dreary rain. But it was more than those two words.

Lifting my head, I let go of the counter and placed my hands on his shoulders. I pushed him back, and he went, only because he seemed caught off guard. I slipped off the counter, feeling my dress settle around my thighs.

It was so much more than those three words.

It was the weeks spent getting to know him. It was the things I shared with him and he shared with me. It was the fact that he saw me, all of me, and beyond the skin, and he knew what existed on me and inside me, and not just the physical.

“Calla?” He tilted his head to the side as he said my name softly.

God, his lips were glistening with me, and that was like taking a hit to the chest in the best way. Getting involved with anyone right now with everything so up in the air and just plain crazy wasn’t smart. It was dumb.

But it was the right kind of dumb.

As I stared into brown eyes that melted me from the inside out, I tossed my Three F’s out of the window as I reached up, caught the edges of the shrug I wore, and slipped it off my shoulders and down my arms. I let it fall to the floor.

His gaze tracked the shrug and then his stare flew back to my face.

I tossed the self-consciousness away as I reached to my side and tugged the zipper of my dress down, and I didn’t stop the dress as it loosened all around my body.

A look appeared on his striking face, a tautness that tugged at my heart. “Calla . . .” The way he said my name was different now.

And I let myself admit that I didn’t just like him as I caught the thin straps and slid them down my arms. I told myself as the dress gathered around my hips and then with a little shimmy, fell to the floor, that I had fallen for him.

Then I was standing in front of him, in the kitchen, the bright light, in nothing more than my heels, and dear God, I was scared. Fucking terrified out of my mind, and my skin felt numb when I realized that it wasn’t because I was practically naked for the first time in my life in front of anyone, but because I was in love with him.

I was in love with Jax.

Twenty-three

I was trembling as I stood in front of Jax. Even my fingers were twitching at my sides. I loved him. I was in love with him. I had no idea when it happened, but it did, and it was an amazing and terrifying feeling, but damn, it was also so hopeful, because even though I liked guys in the past, even lusted after a few, I had never been in love with one and I hadn’t really thought I’d get to know a guy enough to fall in love with him.