And that just pissed me off even more.

“If you don’t let me go, I swear to God, Jax,” I warned, squeezing his arms with my hands.

He dipped his chin into my shoulder and said, “Is it wrong that I find that hot, too, because I really kind of do.”

I lost it and shouted loud enough to wake up the neighbors, “Let me the fuck go!”

Jax’s arms dropped like I was a hot potato, and I spun on him, breathing heavy. Our gazes locked, and the amusement in his voice was completely gone from his expression. He stared at me. I stared back. In those moments, I heard what I had when I stood upstairs all over again. I felt what I did when I saw Aimee’s expression when she’d seen me standing at the top of the stairs.

Tension formed around his mouth. “Calla . . .”

My feet moved backward. I needed space. I needed time to think about everything that had just happened.

He took a step forward, and I kept moving until my leg bumped into the arm of the couch. He stopped a few feet from me. “I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, but I’m going to wage a guess here, and say what happened is not what you’re thinking.”

In my chest, my heart threw itself against my ribs. “It’s not?”

“I had no idea she was going to show up tonight. She hasn’t been to my house in—”

“A month?” I finished for him. “A whole month?”

The tension around his mouth increased. “It’s been more than a month, Calla. I don’t know the exact time frame, but she hasn’t been here since you came here. You have to believe that. I’ve practically spent every night with you since you’ve been here.”

“Not every night.”

“Every night since she got back into town,” he said, and I had to admit, that was true. “You and I aren’t together every waking minute, but give me a break on that. It’s not like I have all the time in the world to be hooking up with her.”

Another good point. “But you were hooking up with her a little over a month ago.”

“Before you came here, Calla.”

Did that matter? I knew it shouldn’t. I wasn’t even in town and I couldn’t be mad over who he hooked up with before we met, but damnit, I was. I was thoroughly pissed and I was jealous. I was woman enough to admit to my irrational anger over that, but there was more.

“For someone you aren’t seeing, she was awful angry over the fact that a girl was here, Jax. She showed up in the middle of the night like she had a right to be here.”

“Calla—”

“And every night she’s been in the bar, hanging all over you and you let her.” My hands curled into fists again. “The first time my friends met you she was feeling you up.”