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I sighed. "We're quite a pair, huh?"

She let out a few soft snorts of laughter. "Yeah, we are." A long silence. "Jax?"

"Mmmm-hmmm?"

"You are a badass. But that's not why I'm in love with you."

The grit and the burn behind my eyes had turned into lead weight pulling them closed, exhaustion enveloping me.

I was nearly asleep, so I almost missed the last thing she mumbled. Thank god I heard it before I toppled into unconsciousness:

"You feel like home."

Chapter 16

Tea

To say I was overwhelmed would be the understatement of the millennium.

I'm not good with chaos. And the Badd family seemed to be one giant, complicated storm of chaos. Don’t get me wrong, it was amazing to watch, to be a part of it all. There was so much love and so much humor that I was uncomfortable with it all. Which is a me-problem, I recognize. But it was also just so noisy.

It was a full week after the rescue. Still no word from our eccentric billionaire boss about the fact that we'd crashed his helicopter. The number I had went right to a generic voicemail box that was full, and texts were green and undeliverable. Had something happened to him? You'd think we'd have heard, if so.

Over the past week, I'd slept beside Jax every night. I'd snuggled in his strong arms and found a kind of peace I didn't know existed. I still had nightmares, because PTSD doesn't just go away, but waking up to Jax soothing me and letting me cry was a game-changer in the healing department

I hated crying, always have and probably always would, but I think some part of me needed to. Regardless of how I felt about it, it was happening. I'd have a horrible nightmare about the usual stuff; before Jax, I'd wake up hyperventilating and alone and go into a panic attack spiral that would take me hours to come down from and usually a day or two to recover from emotionally, but of course I'd then have another bad night and the process would start all over again and…

Wheee! What fun, right?

But now, instead of waking up alone and fighting the sorrow and grief and guilt and floodtide of tears, I…don't fight it. I give in. I fucking sob. I scream into pillows—or, usually, Jax's bare, warm, strong chest. I clench my arms around his neck and lay fully on top of him and bury my face in his throat and let myself feel small and weak and sad and angry and guilty and fucked up and resentful and confused.

I feel guilty for using Jax like that. I feel guilty that I climb into bed with him clad in a T-shirt and panties and nothing else, teasing him with my body so close to his, yet unable to bring myself to engage in anything physical. I'm too emotionally mixed up. And we were in his parents' house, and he was healing well but still moving slowly, and he also had his own shit he was dealing with from the whole experience.

It's all so fucking much.

Right now, we're at his Uncle Bast and Aunt Dru's house for what he calls "a little informal get together."

Little.

Informal.

Get together.

If I didn't know he wasn’t taking any painkillers and only smoking pot at the end of the day so he could fall asleep, I'd think he was on drugs.

Because there must be a hundred fucking people here.

It's EVERYONE. His whole family.

All the cousins.

All the aunts and uncles.

There are a couple kids as young as toddlers still in pull-ups running around, although I think those are third-gen Badds, but I don't know.

Child-watching seems to be a communal affair.

For example, I've seen the same little girl everyone calls Harry, for reasons I'm still unclear on, toddle up to literally anyone over four feet tall and reach up for "uppies." And…it works? The person—adult, teenager, grandparent/uncle—picks her up, gives her kisses, makes her laugh, and finds her a snack. So I keep thinking, "no, that’s her mom/dad," and it never is. Maybe. I don't know.