Without Jaxton (Loving Jaxton Book #2)

maddie - chapter 19

Rylee's POV

Two weeks later

We're working on it. It's not easy but we are, and the fights, we're slowly learning how to avoid them and how to work on our shit together. I know we both have made mistakes, and I'm really trying to make this work for us, I want too.

I'm sitting at the dinner table with Maddie doing her homework and Jax isn't here. He was supposed to be back around five, but he had to stay late at work with one of his clients, and I'm not upset. I'm learning to trust Jax, and if he told me it's an overweight man with goals of weight loss, I believe him.

"I don't get this!" Maddie exclaims just like Jax when he's frustrated. She slaps her pencil down and rubs her hands through her hair as I stop here from pulling out her brown locks.

It's math, and I love Maddie but math is going to kill her in high school. She's stuck on long division right now, and she's only in third grade. Math was never my best, but I managed to get through it, and I know she will too. If not Jax can help her because he's better at math than anyone else I know, he's got the mind for it. I was surprised to learn that he was the only one in his high school that passed AP calculus when he was a senior, he's a smart guy but didn't want people to know it.

"Baby what do you not get? You take the bigger number, so for the problem it asks how many times five goes into thirty. So thirty goes under the house and five goes outside of it. Go off to the side and do your multiplication tables of five. Five times what gives you thirty?" I ask her.

"Mama I don't know!" She tells me as I sigh. Yes you do. What's five plus five?" I ask as she starts, "Ten" she tells me.

"Good. So you have five twice right? So that would be five times two" I tell her as she sighs looking at the paper. "So you need five how many times to get thirty?" She asks as I smile.

"Yes baby. Five times three means five three times. So fifteen, then five four times gives you twenty, then five five times gives you twenty five, so five six times would give you thirty." I tell her as she sighs.

"Mama I don't get how that has anything to do with this division." She tells me as I take the pencil from her. "Because you multiply the five and six to get thirty, so thirty divided by six would be five, and thirty divided by five would be six." I tell her as she instantly starts bawling tears.

"I don't know!" She tells me storming off to her bedroom leaving her homework on the table. She always gets herself frustrated when she doesn't understand something. She's a little perfectionist and I know she only wants to do her best. But lately she's been upset about something more, I know it.

I sigh and close her notebook before looking over at the boys playing video games. Of course it's baseball but what can I do, I'm just happy they're not being too rough with each other and rolling in the mud. That way I don't have more clothes to wash this week, that makes me a great mom, worried about laundry, I laugh to myself.

"Boys I'll be right back. Dad should be here in a few minutes." I tell them as they nod paying me absolutely no attention.

I sigh at my thoughts before moving to the stairs and taking the hike up them. I find Maddie's room and tap on the door for a few seconds before I open it and see her sitting in her window seat bawling her little eyes out.

"Baby what's really wrong?" I ask her as I close the door and lock it. "Look the doors locked, the boys are downstairs and it's just me. You know you can tell me anything that's going on Mad." I tell her as I walk over. She looks up and I see her little wet eyes before she stands up and comes to me. I wrap my arms around her and sit down on the bed before I kiss her head.