Page 44 of Traitorous Lies

Complaining about Jax and his family was pointless. What was done was done, and she’d been truthful when she told them she understood they’d acted out of desperation and not with a malicious desire to hurt her.

But she’d also been truthful when she said using her wasn't okay.

Just because it was hard for her didn't mean that she didn't enforce her boundaries. Over the years, she’d become an expert at it. If she hadn't, she’d be living under the thumb of her grandparents and have been effectively sold off in a business partnership marriage as soon as she was legal.

Boundaries were important, but Monique longed to be able to lower them and let people in.

Like she’d done with Jax.

No one else other than the cops who had worked her kidnapping case, the doctors who had treated her, and the counsellor who worked with her in the immediate aftermath knew about the rape. For once in their lives, her grandparents had actually done the right thing for her and made every single one of them sign detailed NDAs.

More than a decade later, almost half her life, she had never found a person she was comfortable sharing those details with.

Until Jax.

She hadn't just given him her secrets, and she hadn't just given him her body. She’d also given him her heart.

Which had to make her the stupidest woman on the planet.

What kind of idiot gave out their heart to a man they didn't even know within days of meeting them?

Obviously, that answer was her.

She was that idiot.

Worse still was that Monique knew herself well enough to know that she would now close herself off even more as another man shattered a piece of her trust. How many pieces of trust did you have before you ran out?

It felt like she was dangerously close to running empty.

That wasn't what she wanted. She wanted a big family filled with love and laughter, the opposite of what she’d grown up with. She wanted people she could go to when she was sad, or angry, or happy. She wanted people who would share the ups and downs of life with her. She wanted to be loved and accepted for who she was as a person and not because she’d happened to be born into one of the wealthiest families in the world.

She just wanted to be seen.

Wasn't that what everybody wanted?

To be seen and accepted.

It sounded so simple, and for billions of people around the world, it was.

For Jax it was.

While she sat alone in her backyard, playing with her little hedgehog, he was at home surrounded by his family without the ache of loneliness in his chest that she had in hers.

An ache she was starting to wonder if it would forever be a part of her.

After all, she’d handed over a piece of her heart to Jax, so there was a piece missing now, one that she could never find and replace.

Chapter

Twelve

November 7th

8:38 P.M.

The light shining from the simple cabin sitting in a small clearing in the trees called to him like a lighthouse, guiding him safely through the storm.

It was a beacon calling him in, and ignoring the call left his heart aching.