No wonder the voice sounded familiar to me.

Aimee? Beautiful ex-pageant queen with perfect teeth Aimee, whom he had a history with and who gave him free breast exams at the bar? Maybe a not-too-distant history with?

I think I needed to sit down.

“Is that a purse?” Aimee demanded. “What the fuck, Jax? You do have someone here. Where is she? And does she know that the last time I was in town, we were together? Which, by the way, wasn’t like a month ago?”

My stomach dropped to my toes. A month ago? I did a quick calculation of the time from when I came home and now, and really, that didn’t add up in a way that made my stomach get back where it belonged.

“Shit, Aimee, it was more than a month ago,” Jax said, his voice louder, too. “Look, you know I care about you—”

“Do you?” she fired back.

You know I care about you.

I squeezed my eyes shut. A couple of hours ago, we were in bed, and he’d held me and told me I was beautiful, and a few hours before that he’d told me he really liked me, and we were making plans for when I went back to Shepherd, but now Aimee with two e’s was in his house and they’d been together a month ago, and he cared about her. I opened my eyes. They didn’t feel dry. The front door was still open.

This was happening. This was really happening.

Something in my chest hurt, like physically hurt, and I let go of the banister and pressed the heel of my palm between my breasts.

Then Aimee was at the bottom of the stairs.

“Holy . . .” She trailed off as her eyes widened. “No. This is not happening.”

Well, Aimee and I were on the same page for once, because I was thinking the exact same thing.

“You’re with her?” Her voice pitched as her head swiveled in the other direction, and I wondered if it could spin right around like the chick from The Exorcist. “Seriously? Calla Fritz?”

I flinched.

Son of a bitch, I actually flinched.

Because I could totally get the WTF expression she was wearing and the surprise in her tone. I got it. Jax was gorgeous in a way that was almost unreal. He could get girls dropping their panties just by giving them a half smile and a crook of his finger. I had a giant scar down my face and then some. And my mother was a well-known crackhead. I wasn’t exactly someone the vast majority of people would picture Jax with. I seriously did get that, because it was human nature to want to pair flawless people with other flawless people.

Jax appeared in my line of vision. Shirtless. All those muscles on display. For some reason that struck me harder. That he was half undressed with Aimee in his house, that there was a level of intimacy between them. Which was a big fucking duh, because they’d been banging each other like a cheap screen door at some point that wasn’t too long ago.