Jax extended his hand for me to get off the motorcycle, but I just looked at him with wide, terrified eyes.

I saw a sad smile come to his face. "Don’t be scared," he said, his voice gentler than I expected. "This is where I grew up."

I gasped. Was he joking? "Really?"

"Yeah."

The look of shame on Jax’s face made me feel guilty that I’d ever doubted him. I got off the bike and tried to act normal as I walked across the lawn. "It looks, um . . . cozy."

He raised an eyebrow. "You don’t have to sugarcoat it," he said. "It looks like a pile of f**king trash. And it always has."

There was nothing I could say to that. I studied his face, waiting for him to say more. I watched as his face shifted, almost imperceptibly, and realized that he’d started to shake. Fury, pain, grief, shame—I didn’t know which one he was feeling, or if all of them had mixed together, but he was quaking with it, his breaths hard and steady.

"I don’t know who lives here now, but my dad used to live here—before he went to prison. He was always into something or other," he said, each word halting. "He lived here with me and he never . . . ever . . . let me forget how angry he was at me."

I approached closer. We were in the place Jax had run away from, the place where his nightmares had started. But what had happened in those walls?

"Why was he so angry at you?" I asked.

"It started when . . ." he trailed off. Suddenly, his face became a mask with a thousand-yard stare. "Look, I thought I knew, once. But after a while, I stopped asking. He didn’t have to have a reason. I think he was just . . . like that."

"God, Jax," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. "I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I pushed you."

"You didn’t know. You were trying to do the right thing. I’m just too f**ked up to talk about it. That’s what this house did to me, Riley."

I shuddered. My parents had always been there for me, helping me when my life became chaotic, supporting me when I went to therapy to get over Connor. I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to have grown up in a house like Jax’s.

"So you just stayed here until you could run away."

"Yeah," he said, his eyes haunted as they roamed over the connected trailers. "It was my own personal hell."

"And I forced you back here," I said, wincing with a sudden rush of shame as I said the words. I’d thought Jax’s problems were on the same level as mine—a bad ex, or a stupid mistake when he was young.

He turned around, looking at the neighborhood. "I never wanted to come here again," he said, his voice threatening to crack. "All I ever wanted to do was forget. Start over, you know? But the closer we got to Los Angeles, the harder it was. Every venue, every mile driven, it all brought us closer to right here. To where it all started."

I stayed silent, waiting for him to finish. His piercing eyes studied the mishmash of trailers intensely.

"This morning," he said, his jaw working, "I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw—I saw his face and I—I had to go for a ride, clear my mind. I knew I could have told you or maybe Sky or Chewie but I just—I couldn't"

I put a hand on his back. Even through his clothing, I could tell that his muscles were tense.

"And that thing yesterday with Kev was," he started, but then took a deep breath and shook his head, "it was stupid. Just stupid bullshit. It had nothing to do with him."

I nodded softly. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been, or how pushy I must have seemed to Jax. "I should have listened to you more. I’m sorry."

He turned back to me and stepped close, until we were almost toe to toe. Looking into my eyes, he said, "I know you wanted to help. You thought you could help me move on if I faced the past. You thought you could help me make sense of it." He wrapped me in his arms, and I buried my face in his chest. "And I know you meant well, but . . . I don’t want that. What happened to me didn’t make sense, and it never will. I buried my past because I wanted it to stay dead."

His words tore at my heart. I stepped back to look at him. "Do you just want to bury it forever?"

Jax looked away. "I knew it would happen. As soon as I told you, it’d be alive again. All of it, my whole past—"

"No!" I said vehemently. "I won’t bring it up. I won’t even mention it, not ever, not if you don’t want me to. I promise."

He touched my cheek and his face was so sad that it made me feel like crumpling to the street. "It doesn’t make any difference," he said, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. "Even if you never talked to me about it, I’d see it in your eyes. In the way you look at me."

The words hurt, but his face made it clear that he truly believed it wouldn’t be the same after this. I wasn’t sure if he was wrong.

"Jax, I—"

He lifted my chin until our eyes were inches apart. "So I couldn’t—I couldn’t tell you before and still look in your eyes. But I had to make a choice. It was either my past or you. And I chose you."

My eyes filled with tears. "That means a lot. It means everything."

His dark features hardened. "If you’d asked me before the tour started whether I could look someone in the face who knew where I came from, who I was before . . . I’d have said no. But that was then."

I realized that I was holding my breath in.

"Now . . ." He pondered for a moment. "Now I couldn’t stand to lose you."

The humid night air felt still and quiet around us. Only reedy cricket chirps and distant motorcycle engine rumblings disturbed the silence as we looked into each other’s eyes.

"I won’t keep asking about the past anymore," I said. "I promise."

A half-smile moved across his face. "You can ask whatever you need to. You just need to understand if I don’t always want to answer."

I looked up and moved my lips closer to his, hearing the distant rumbling of motorcycle engines. "It’s a deal."

His mouth felt like being reborn. Jax’s lips were urgent, eager, fierce—I wanted his kiss desperately, but it was clear he needed mine. We lost ourselves in each other, right there on the lawn in front of Jax’s old house, ignoring the revving engines and the insect buzz.

He wrapped me in his arms, kissing me with the intensity and joy I’d been missing for days. There were no more secrets between us, no more lies, and as his lips searched my mouth, I moaned with lust and relief.

When our lips finally broke apart, I looked up at him almost shyly. For once, he had an almost boyish grin on his face, innocent and playful.

We were going to be alright.

The distant motorcycle engine noise suddenly got louder and headlamps illuminated us as a group of bikers turned down the street. Both of us turned to look at them, but as soon as I did, I was nearly blinded by the bright lights.

Jax’s face tightened, and he moved between me and the bikes. One of the bikers, a guy with a red bandana and missing teeth, rubbed at his scraggly beard in a way that made me shudder with disgust.

"Can we go back to the bus Jax? I don't feel safe here," I said.