by Kelly Rimmer
That’s just not who he is. When I’ve given him my burdens, he never once weaponized them—all he ever did was offer to carry them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jake
I’M BACK AT the hotel room, lying on the bed staring at the ceiling—which is what I’ve been doing for over an hour. This moment was always inevitable, but that doesn’t take away from the disappointment. I remember how it felt after Jess and I broke up the first time . . . how deeply I missed her. How sharp the sadness was. We were together for months then, really together, sharing our bodies and our lives. This time it’s only been a few weeks of friendship, but I’m just starting to realize that my brilliant plan to keep things casual by staying out of the bedroom has been a miserable failure but losing her all over again is going to be worse even than the first time around.
My phone sounds—it’s a text message. I know it’s not going to be her, and for a minute, I consider ignoring it. Maybe it’s Dad butt-texting me or Paul sending me some random snap from the last few days of his New Zealand trip.
After a minute or two, it occurs to me it might actually be the clinic trying to get in touch about a patient, and I sigh and reach for the phone.
Jess: I’m at your hotel. Can I see you?
I know she’s not coming to tell me she’s changed her mind. I don’t know why she’s here, and I don’t hold anything like hope that it means we can be together.
But I can’t say no to her. I love her too much to turn her away.
She’ll need a key to get up to my floor, so I go down to the lobby to get her. Our eyes lock as the elevator opens and Jess silently steps inside, but we don’t speak as it travels back up the twenty-six floors to my room. We don’t even speak as we walk side by side along the corridor. As soon as we step inside, she rests her handbag on the hook on the wall, then walks to my bed and sits on the edge.
She holds herself with dignity and pride, her chin high, her shoulders back. Even so, I can see that Jess is distressed. It’s in the lines around her mouth and the little wrinkle that’s formed between her eyes.
“I don’t know where to start,” she admits. “It’s so hard for me to talk about. And . . .” She raises her gaze to mine. “I just want to explain it all to you so you can understand, but nothing has changed. We still can’t be together.”
She’s agitated and wound up. I don’t think she even wants to talk to me about whatever she has to share right now. Or maybe she does, but now isn’t the time.
I want to reconnect with her. I want to express my love for her. I want to worship her. I walk to the bed and kneel before her to rest my hands on her shoulders.
“We can be together tonight, can’t we?” I murmur, bringing one hand to her face, where I run my knuckle gently down her cheek . . . to her neck. Maybe I’m completely misreading the mood here, but if I am, I know she’ll tell me.
Jess gives a confused whimper as my hand comes to a rest just above the curve of her breast.
“What are you doing?” she whispers thickly. “I thought you didn’t want this.”
“You know I wanted this,” I whisper back. “I just thought that we could make the separation easier if we tried to keep sex out of the equation. But that’s not going to work, is it? We were apart for an hour and I had a taste of what’s coming, Jessica. When I go home tomorrow, I’ll be leaving a part of my soul behind—nothing we do tonight can change that.”
“Are you sure?” she asks me. I lean forward and kiss her gently but pull back before it can escalate.
“Do you want this?” I ask her gently. “We can just talk if you want to. Or we can do both. You’re in control here. You just tell me what you need.”
“I want you to make love to me,” Jess says, her voice breaking. “Jake, I want you to make love to me. Please.”
I kiss her properly then, from my uncomfortable position on my knees beside the bed. She’s uncharacteristically coy—her mouth soft against mine, her tongue hesitant when she touches mine. I run my hands over her shoulders and her neck and then cup her cheeks, the movements gentle and reverent. Jess tilts her head back, and I know that means she wants me to kiss her neck, so I slide my way down to comply. I kiss her everywhere—along the neckline of her shirt, all across her neck, over her cheeks and even her eyelids. Then I help her back into the center of the bed, and together we slowly remove her clothing. The shirt goes first, then her skirt, and soon she’s lying on the bed in just her lacy white bra and panties.
My mouth goes dry. I stare at her for a minute, and she lies beneath my gaze, unashamed. My eyes roam over her abdomen, and I see it now—the collection of faded stretch marks around her belly button, and the trio of scars that I think I remember her telling me were from a laparoscopic appendectomy.
In my mind, Jess’s body is perfect—but no one is really perfect. She’s scarred, this woman, but when you love someone, you love them scars and all. That’s why I bend to kiss her belly, kissing my way across the stretch marks and the tiny, pale surgical marks.
Then I kiss her nipples through the bra, and I kiss her over her panties, but to her obvious frustration, I don’t remove her underwear yet. I want to draw this out. Maybe I even need to draw it out.
When I glance up to her face, I find her staring at me, her pupils wide and her breath coming in pants. I shift so that I can kiss her lips again, and she’s bolder now, much more like the Jess I remember, kissing me with want and need and demands. After a while, she breaks away and says unevenly, “Take your clothes off. I want to see you too.”
I do as I’m told, throwing off my T-shirt and jeans and briefs, and I come back to her naked. I cup her breasts through her bra and then kiss the valley between them, then I slide my way down to the junction between her legs.
“I like these,” I murmur, running my fingertip over the lace of her panties. She sucks in a breath, then laughs shakily.
“I’ll like them a lot better when you take them off me.”
“Soon,” I say, and then I take my time—touching her through and around the lace, licking and kissing and sucking her. I know I’ve riled her up when her hands sink into my hair and she’s holding me in place.
That’s when I slide her panties off to throw them across the room. Jess is wet and swollen, and the shine of her sex is all over her folds. I can feel my dick weeping against my stomach as I bend to bury my face against her, focusing my tongue and my lips over the swollen bud of her clit. She bends her knees on either side of my face, and I shift my hand so that I can slide one . . . two . . . three fingers into her. Loosening her up. Stretching her for me. I can’t wait too much longer. I want this too much. I want her too much. There’s something I just need to finish right here, and then I can—
“Jake!” she moans, long and loud, as she suddenly stiffens and cries out. She collapses on the bed, and I climb up to rest on the pillow beside her, watching as she recovers.
Jess is so beautiful like this: her cheeks flushed, her features relaxed, the curve of a smile on her face. I reach to touch her lips with my fingertips just as she opens her eyes. The haze clears, and just like that, she’s already hungry again. I run my finger around the shape of her lips, then dip it inside like I did the other night with the popcorn. When she sucks on my fingertip, my dick jumps.
“Enough of that,” I laugh weakly as I reach to kiss her. “I want to be inside you.”
“I want that too,” she whispers back. I lean away from her to scoop my wallet up off the nightstand so I can fetch a condom, but as soon as I bring it back to the bed, Jess scrambles away and runs to her own handbag.
And just like that, something shifts in my mind and I see a pattern I never really noticed at the time: when Jess and I were together, we always used her condoms.
It’s smart and it’s safe for a woman to provide the protection, given she bears more chance of consequences if there are any mishaps. But Jess and I had known each other for years. And were together for four fucking months, but even at th
e end, she was still the first to reach for her own condoms every single time we made love.
I wanted to broach the subject of finding other contraception so we could be together skin to skin, but I never got around to it. Maybe on some level I knew this was an issue for her. Maybe I even knew that pointing out how long we’d been together and asking for a deeper commitment would freak her out.
Now, she comes back to the bed, condom in her shaking hand. Our eyes meet. There’s shame in her gaze. I’ve never seen this look on her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask her gently.
She looks down at my erection, then shakes her head with some determination.
“Not now. Later.”
She throws the condom onto the bed beside me, then rises onto her knees. I’m not expecting this—but there’s sudden heat and warmth around me as she takes me into her mouth. She gets me good and wet, and she’s working me with her tongue and her hands and very quickly, it’s almost too much.
“Jess,” I say breathlessly. She looks up, my dick still in her mouth, and I groan and gently pull her up toward me. I scoop the condom up from the bed but pass it to her to apply it.
Our eyes lock again, and hers fill with tears.
“Thanks,” she croaks, and then she blinks the tears away and slides the condom over me.
“How do you want this?” I ask her gently, brushing her hair back from her shoulders. She’s still got the bra on, so I sit up and gently unclip it. Jess throws it onto the pile of clothes beside the bed, then climbs on top of me and guides me into her body.
Time is a funny thing. It can play with your memories, making moments feel richer or poorer than they really were. I remembered that sex with Jess was uniquely special—that our connection was vibrant. I thought, perhaps, that my memory was playing tricks on me—romanticizing things.
I realize now that I was wrong about that. In fact, my memories didn’t do these moments justice, because I forgot that being with her is transcendent. I forgot how it felt like a union of souls as well as a union of bodies.
I love you. I love you so much.
I can’t say the words now. I don’t want to upset her . . . to distract her as she chases her pleasure. But I decide that I will say them tonight. I’ve never known when to push Jess and when to just let her be, but on this, I realize, I need to say the words, even if it makes her angry . . . even if it makes her feel uncomfortable.
For now, she’s got one hand on my shoulder, and the other resting on my waist. She pauses, letting her body adjust, then she begins to work against me. She stares down into my eyes, that brief moment of shame long gone.
“You feel so good,” she whispers thickly. “I love your cock, Jake. I love how hard you are . . . I love the way you fill me. You stretch me.”
I’m way past the point of intelligible dirty talk. Maybe we’ll go another round later and I can make it up to her. For now, all I can manage is a strangled groan, and Jess laughs, then bends to kiss me deeply. She leans down onto me, pressing her breasts into my chest, her nipples pulled into tight buds that brush against mine.
I wish this could last all night, but it’s just not going to. Jess is already whimpering as she moves, and I’m thrusting up into her, urgency taking over.
“Jess,” I whisper. “Are you close? I need—”
“Now,” she chokes. “I’m going to come too.”
The pleasure bursts over me, sending sensation across my nerve endings through my torso and my spine and into my limbs. Jess cries out, and then after a few violent jerks against me, collapses to lie across my chest. I’ve all but dissolved into a puddle on the bed, but I wrap my arms tightly around her and hold her close while we catch our breath.
After a few minutes, she kisses me sweetly, then moves to use the restroom. I tie off the condom and throw it into the waste basket, and I turn off the lights and we reunite in the bed. I’m sated and tired and conflicted—so happy to be with her again, so miserable that it’s all going to end again tomorrow.
But most of all, I’m ready to tell her how I feel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jess
“I HAVE TO SAY IT,” Jake whispers, his breath hot against my ear. “Let me say it, Jess. Just once, and then you can forget you ever heard the words.”
I know exactly what he wants to say. He hinted at it on the rooftop that day when we talked about his exes, but he’s never said the words to me directly. And although it makes me nervous, it turns out that after all we’ve shared these last few weeks, I actually want to hear him say the words. I squeeze my eyes closed and nod once.
“Jessica Cohen, I love you. I have loved you . . . God, probably ever since I saw you in those fucking short-shorts in ‘the incubator’ in Brooklyn when you were just a tiny baby CEO with the gleam of megabucks in your eye. And no matter what you go and do for the rest of your life, wherever I am in this world, a part of me will be missing you, and all of me will be loving you.”
So many emotions bounce around inside me as he speaks. I’m soaring. He loves me. I’m drowning. He loves me. I’m ashamed. I let him love me. I’m sad. Maybe I even love him too, but we just can’t be together.
“It wasn’t just the ring,” I blurt. I feel him stiffen a little, but his arms are still locked in place around me. “I didn’t just break up with you because I knew you were going to propose. I’d already been thinking about it.”
“Why?”
“The . . . We went to the theater with Paul and Izzy and Abby. Remember?”
“I do,” he says slowly. “We saw that stupid play. About the robots.”
“God, it was bad.”
“So bad.”
“When we were waiting at the bar that night, you said something about kids.”
“I did? I don’t even remember that.”
“Abby didn’t know we were together, obviously. She was teasing you about some girl she wanted to set you up with . . . joking about how you and this woman would get married and have two-point-four kids. And you said something about ‘Why stop at two-point-four? I want a whole football team like Izzy’s parents.’”
“So I made a stupid joke about having kids. Why was that such a big deal?”
“I don’t want more kids. I’ve . . .” I draw in a sharp breath, then motion toward my stomach. “I had a tubal ligation. I’m sure of this, Jake. I’m not having any more children. Not now, not ever.”
“The surgical scars?”
“Yeah.”
“You said it was an appendectomy when I asked last time.”
“I didn’t want to explain. No one knows.”
“When did you have it done?”
“I couldn’t find a doctor to do it when I was in my early twenties. I finally nagged a surgeon into doing it after my twenty-fifth birthday. They kept telling me I’d change my mind, but I knew I never would. That they wouldn’t let me manage my own body still . . .” There’s tension in my voice. I try to wind it back and fail miserably. “Those fucking bastards. It makes me so angry to think that they felt they knew better than me what I wanted for my own life.”
“So that was nearly ten years ago?” Jake murmurs.
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I didn’t want to get pregnant in the first place, but I loved Tristan. I honestly loved that baby more than I knew I could love another human being. But I had my choice taken away from me once, and I’m not ever going to let that happen again.”
“We always used your condoms, didn’t we?” Jake asks gently. “I don’t think I noticed at the time, but tonight . . . Mine were right here, and your bag was way over there . . .”
“Yes,” I croak. “I never, ever let a guy supply the condoms.”
“Can you tell me why?”
He speaks so gently. He’s so relaxed, his arms around me keeping the world out, not locking me in. He’s a good man. He deserves to understand.
“When I was fifteen, I started sleeping with my high school boyfriend. His name was Garrett, an
d he was . . .” I actually smile at the memory. “He was the sweetest kid. We were young and stupid, but we thought we were in love, and it was actually kind of beautiful. But . . .”
I hate these memories. I hate going back there in my mind—to small-town Georgia, to a family that was a vacuum for self-expression. But for Jake, I’ll do it. I’m about to give him more power over me than I’ve given anyone else in my adult life, but he’s earned my trust, and he’s earned this explanation.
“I wanted to go on the pill. Garrett’s parents had given him condoms, but I wanted to be extra cautious. I wasn’t sure if I wanted kids or not at that stage, but I knew I wanted to go to college and an accidental pregnancy would make everything so difficult. So, I sat down with my mother and I asked her to take me to the doctor so I could get contraception.”
You’re sleeping with him? You little slut!
“I take it she said no?” Jake murmurs.
“Yeah, we’re talking nuclear-level-meltdown type reaction.” I draw in a sharp breath. “They basically grounded me permanently. Drove me to school. Picked me up from school. I snuck out a few times, but it was almost impossible. My paternal grandfather was the mayor of the small town we lived in, and he had been for two decades. He was retiring soon, and my father was planning on running. I honestly believed that our reputation as a wholesome, clean-cut family meant more to my parents than anything. And you have to understand, they weren’t deeply religious—but they were conservative to the core. I have an older brother and a younger sister, both of whom were very compliant . . . very good. My brother got married in his late teens, my sister wasn’t much older. And then there was me. Defiant from birth, determined to leave Georgia and set the corporate world on fire, mad about boys and then sex and I loved to party and . . . Basically I was just like I am now. Long before I lost Tristan.”
“Jess, I get it. You don’t love sex because you’re traumatized. You were always the black sheep.”