Jump Then Fall

by Alyssia Kirkhart

  “Lawson,” I said, “I know it’s been a weird summer. Honestly, I’d hoped for something more uneventful, a few months of boring before I left to start the rest of my life.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw, but, to his credit, he remained silent, allowed me to finish.

  “I don’t regret a single moment. Not one. Except for my dad, of course, but that was out of my control—is out of my control.” I took a breath. “But what I can control is my future. The foundation’s already been laid. I’m going to one of the best schools in the world. I’ll study under the best professors, attend classes that’ll not only prepare me for law school but give me an advantage I wouldn’t have had anyplace else. Don’t you see? I can’t put an opportunity like that on hold.”

  “You’re carrying my child.”

  Blinking, I started, “Yes, but…”

  “No. There are no buts. You’re carrying my child. Jesus, Harper.” He pulled away from me, sat up, rested his forearms on his bent knees.

  He was still here. Right there, actually, on the bed, close enough to touch with little effort. And yet he felt miles away. As if we were already separated by an ocean.

  I sat up, too. Drew my knees close to my chest. “Lawson?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated. Then, “You think I’m going to just sit back and allow you to take our baby halfway across the world, so you can go to school?” He stared at me for three whole seconds. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

  I’d never met this Lawson. Clipped. Business-like. As if we were negotiating a contract, not our relationship.

  Had he just said allow me to take our baby halfway across the world?

  Independent, feminist Harper stood up, cleared her throat, adjusted her glasses. “Actually, I haven’t lost my mind, thank you very much. Just because I’ll be a waddling blob in several months doesn’t mean I’ll be incapable of attending classes and working toward my degree.”

  “A degree you can put on hold.”

  “You can’t just put scholarships on hold. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Screw your scholarships, Harper. If it means that much to you, I’ll pay for your school, when the right time comes.”

  “If it means that much to me?” Shock and anger assaulted my thoughts in rapid succession.

  “Look,” he said, softer now, “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just—”

  “In what other way could you have meant it?” My teeth chattered. Tears burned behind my eyes. His had gone comically round. “You are not paying for my education, Lawson. I worked hard for this.”

  “Baby, I know, I get it…” He reached for me, but I yanked away from him. Childish, maybe, but I was angry. His words cut deep. “But if you’d just hear me out.”

  “Hear you out? No, thanks.” Wounded, I gracelessly scrambled off the bed, glanced around the room to determine whether I needed anything I couldn’t live without. All my clothes were still in the guest room. I just needed my toothbrush.

  I marched for the bathroom.

  “Harper, I’m not gonna let you do this,” he called after me.

  I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. At least, not until I could cool my head, process what he’d said—no, what he’d demanded. I pushed aside the shower curtain to grab my face wash, when a pair of strong arms encircled my waist, pulling me close until my back was flush against his front.

  “Let. Me. Go.” There. I could be snippy, too. “I mean it.”

  “Not until you listen.”

  “Well, we’re gonna be standing here for a long time, then, because I’m not listening.”

  “Then we’ll stand here, Harper, because I’m not gonna fight with you. Is that what you want? A fight?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “You’re in it.”

  “No,” I drew out as if I was talking to a preschooler. “This is your home, and I shouldn’t stay.”

  “Yes, darlin’. You should.” His tone was so calm, so patient, and I hated him for it. In that moment, I did. “You know what your problem is?”

  I shoved out a sigh that would’ve made my high school drama teacher proud. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “You’re afraid to let someone love you,” he said, undeterred by my pettiness. “You won’t let anyone get too close, because if they get too close, they can hurt you.” His arms tightened around me. “I know, Harper, I’ve been there. Self-preservation and I are old friends.”

  I closed my eyes as the warmth of his breath glided across my neck.

  And maybe because he was tugging on something I thought I’d kept well-hidden.

  “My dad,” he said, “he split when I was ten years old, not old enough to fully understand the kind of deep shit adults get themselves into and yet old enough to understand that when I saw him four months later in a grocery store with another woman, he’d chosen someone else over me and my mom.”

  He’d never told me about his dad. I knew he wasn’t in the picture, sure, and that Lawson had taken over the role as man of the house at a very young age, but no details. I hadn’t asked and he hadn’t offered. Until now.

  “They fought a lot, he and my mom. Over money, over bills, over all the time he spent at the office. He was gone so much, and Mom needed a diversion, so she put everything she had into my music. She sold Avon, Pampered Chef. Any extra money she got went into musical instruments.”

  He turned me in his arms and when I looked up at him, there was pain in his eyes. The recollection of memories he’d either suppressed or tied to the end of a long rope in his mind.

  “I didn’t do great in school.” He held my shoulders, his gaze boring into mine. “But I do understand your goal of an education. I’ve told you before: goals are something I connect with. Mine may not be the same as yours, but I know what it means to see a future and wanna go after it. When my dad left? I blamed myself. I wasn’t good enough. If I’d just done better in school, made something of myself, either a doctor or a teacher…” He paused, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. “A lawyer, maybe.”

  I huffed a laugh.

  “Maybe he would’ve been happier,” he said. “Maybe he would’ve stayed. It took years for me to realize nothing would’ve changed what was in his heart. Because you can’t change people’s hearts, Harper. Only they can do that. My dad, your mom. They left because there was something missing in their hearts, something we couldn’t give them, something they may still be searching for, I don’t know.”

  I took an unsteady breath. “What about my dad?”

  He shook his head, slowly. “I don’t know why he did what he did. Why he chose a path that could only lead to losing the most important thing in his life—you. Because I’m going to tell you something, Harper, and if it scares you, so be it. At this point, I don’t care. This heart?” He placed my hand flat to his chest, pressed his hand over mine. “This heart loves you. This heart wants you. My heart? It’s yours. It belongs to you.”

  chapter twenty-four

  I gaped at him. Tears shimmered in his eyes and I wondered if there would ever be another moment in my life quite like that one. Of me, standing with my hand over the heart of a man who loved me so deeply. Who said out loud how he felt, offered his heart to me like one offers his coat to someone who needs it more.

  I needed Lawson.

  Truth: Knowing this scared me. Dad had raised an independent woman. Taught me to never lean on anyone but myself. Maybe he was unconsciously preparing me for a future without him. Only he knew the answer to that. But Lawson had entered my life at a time when I didn’t need anyone. I’d laid out my plans. Was working every day toward that glorious vision of a future me. Yet he’d smiled at me, spent time with me, talked with me, revealed himself to me, and shown me I could need someone and still keep sight of myself.

  The pregnancy, though. Unexpected didn’t even begin to describe the shock I still felt. A change in campus housing, a mix-up with classes. A bad haircut, a sudden bout of
weight gain. These were all issues I could deal with, get past, secure solutions and soldier through.

  But a baby.

  I couldn’t just work through that.

  I couldn’t just shrug my shoulders. Oh, well, guess I’m dealing with this now.

  “I belong to you,” Lawson was saying through tears. His, mine. “Have since that first night you sat by my side while I played Elton John. And if you don’t feel the same, that’s okay. I can’t force your heart to feel for me what mine feels for you.”

  If a heart had the ability to balloon, that’s what mine did. Doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size so that my lungs felt suddenly overtaxed. I exhaled a watery breath. Behind Lawson, six pregnancy tests lay around the sink, each with positive results. Positivity was a scarce commodity these days and yet there it was.

  Here he was.

  “I do feel the same.” I kissed his chin, my hand still flattened beneath his, absorbing every beat of his heart. “And I’m sorry for getting upset. Clearly, there are things we need to work out. Adult decisions and so forth.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Adulting sucks.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I smoothed a hand up his chest, around his neck. “Some adulting’s kind of fun.”

  He pressed his forehead to mine. When he was close to me like this, fear slinked into the shadows, replaced by a surplus of intensifying emotions. “Stay open with me, Harper.” His hand slipped behind my neck, the other fell to my waist. “Let me take care of you. Let me love you.”

  “Okay.”

  I melted into his kiss. Lawson wasn’t what I considered an alpha. The dominant, oftentimes overbearing male, Me Tarzan, You Jane type. On the contrary, he was patient and refined, kind and supportive. The polar opposite of domineering. Well…save for his reaction to my plans to move forward with college, pregnant or no, that is.

  But when he kissed.

  Yeah, sometimes he was soft and unhurried. I liked that kind of kissing. The kind you could do for hours without worry of having chapped lips and hickeys the next day.

  But most of the time—most of the time, he kissed like he was kissing me right now. The perfect combination of hard and sensual with an urgency that this might just be the last time, even though it wasn’t. But it might be.

  His tongue moved with my own in an erotic dance. Our bodies were flush, shuffling, shuffling, until he pressed me hard into the tile wall of the bathroom. I let out a little oomph, he murmured a breathless sorry, and his mouth was on mine again.

  My hands coasted up his arms, my blunt nails bit into his shoulders.

  Cupping my bottom, he lifted me, urging my legs around his waist. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not feeling sick or anything?”

  I shook my head jerkily. “All good.”

  My ass hit the counter and pregnancy tests went flying. Clink, clink, clink. His lips rejoined mine with heightened desperation. I hitched a leg over his hip. He kissed a path down my neck and when he met the collar of my t-shirt, he growled and tugged it off.

  His urgency made me giggle.

  “What?” He palmed my breasts, squeezed them gently.

  “Nothing.”

  “Do they hurt?” His thumb circled a rosy nipple.

  “N-no.” He covered it with his mouth, and I sucked in a harsh breath. “Oh, God.” When had my nipples gotten so sensitive? My fingers tightened in his hair, my legs tightening around his waist.

  I ground against him shamelessly, seeking friction. Seeking relief. He fingered the waistband of my shorts, kept sucking and kissing my breasts, one then the other—neither felt neglected. My head fell back, one hand braced to the sink, the other threaded in his hair. His fingers whispered over my inner thigh and chills raked across my body.

  “Babe,” he breathed over my taut nipple, “you’re not wearing underwear.”

  “You’re not supposed to wear underwear with these,” I told him.

  His thumb grazed my clit, and I bucked a little. “God, that’s sexy. You’re sexy.”

  “Not really.”

  An airy chuckle and he sank to his knees. I watched as he pushed my shorts further to the side, revealing all of me to the open bathroom. “Learn to take a compliment, Columbus.” He pressed a chaste kiss to the aching nub between my thighs, which sounded absurd, because we were being anything but chaste, but Lawson was tender and sweet.

  He eased a finger inside and I moaned. His breath was hot, and I was so wet. Heat rolled over me with every soft stroke of his tongue. I was barely breathing, each release from my lungs a paltry puff of air.

  “You taste so good.” He pulled back and I whined a complaint. He laughed softly. “But when you come, I want to see it in your eyes.”

  He stood and his eyes were on mine, dark and gorgeous and melting my insides. “I want to feel you coming on my—”

  I slammed my mouth to his, swallowing the word cock. Man, what a turn on. He might’ve been nice and sensitive ninety percent of the time, but the other ten? He was like a freaking sex god. Whispering words into my ear that rocketed my pulse and soaked my panties.

  One minute we were making out in the bathroom, the next were making out and in motion. Lawson urged my legs around his waist and carried me to the bedroom.

  “Is this okay?” His breath mingled with mine. “You can tell me to stop.”

  “I don’t want you to stop.”

  He laid me on the bed, and I removed my shorts. “Come here,” I said, walking on my knees to the edge of the mattress.

  He lifted his chin and an eyebrow. Complying, he moved closer, kept his focus on my face as I popped the button on his jeans and pulled down the zipper. His tongue darted out to moisten his lower lip. I pushed his jeans over his hips, revealing his black boxer briefs.

  “I can help, you know.” He reached behind his head, tugged off his shirt.

  “How do you do that?” My hands spanned his chest, and I pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat.

  “Do what? Take off my shirt?”

  “Undress like you’re on camera. All smooth and effortless like you’ve practiced for photo shoots.” I paused. “Have you practiced for photo shoots?”

  He started to laugh, but I skimmed my hand over his erection, and he groaned, instead. “I don’t know how to answer that, baby, I just like taking my clothes off around you.”

  “I know, but…” I dipped my hand inside his briefs. “I like undressing you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A lot.”

  “Hmm.” He toed off his jeans the rest of the way. “Well, I like undressing you, too.” He pushed me back on the bed, but I had other ideas.

  Shifting, I ducked beneath his arm and urged him to flip over. “I want you on your back, Lawson. Please.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  I mirrored his smile. Bent and kissed his chest. Smiled again when he sucked in a sharp breath. Emboldened, I allowed my lips to travel down, down. I traced his navel with the tip of my tongue and his chest began to heave. Our eyes met across the plane of his chest. Shit, he was gorgeous. He made me feel out of control, an insatiable depth of emotion I couldn’t compare to anything else.

  “Is this okay?” I whispered, mimicking his concern a moment ago in the bathroom. My breasts brushed his thighs as I pushed the band of his underwear down.

  “Harper.” He was panting, his cheeks flushed. “You know—”

  My tongue brushed the head of his shaft and he stopped breathing.

  “Guess so,” I said.

  “I think…” He struggled for air. “I think you know it’s okay. Oh, God, Harper—”

  I took him into the warmth of my mouth, and Lawson let out a slack-jawed groan. His eyes rolled back inside his head. He fisted the bed linens. I hummed and he bowed a little off the bed. He liked that. Good. I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt right, exciting.

  I removed his boxers and let instinct take over.

  I sucked, slowly, in and out, using my tongue to
take him deeper. His body relaxed. I glanced up and his hands were tucked behind his neck, his lungs drawing in air. I went faster, stroking him with my hand, patterning his rhythm when he was inside me. His breathing began to escalate. His lashes fluttered. Eyes opened.

  “Harper.” Reaching down, he gently gripped my arms, pulled me to him. My body melded against his and we kissed hard. Insistent. He squeezed my bottom, and I rolled my hips. Not for the first time I felt a rush of gratitude for the way his hard lines formed to my softer ones.

  We fit perfectly, he and I.

  Our mouths crashed, opening and taking. Passion knifed through me. A desperation heavier than thought, greedier than a thief on a fool’s mission

  I bit his lower lip. Licked his upper. Swept my tongue against his.

  “I don’t want you to forget me,” I said, and I could feel the rapid beat of his heart against my chest. “I want you to remember what it feels like to be with me. When I go to college—” I shifted up, then slowly joined our bodies by aching degrees.

  Lawson’s eyes squeezed shut and he groaned, pushing against tight, wet walls. Filling me to the hilt. He gripped my hips as I bent to kiss the side of his mouth.

  “I want you to remember,” I whispered again, my heart constricting within my chest, “what it feels like to be inside me.”

  Because there wasn’t even the slightest possibility I could forget him. What this meant for us, as two people, a man and a woman who had made a child, I didn’t have the answer to just yet. I only knew I couldn’t divert from the path. No matter how bad I wanted to, no matter how complete being with him made me feel.

  I had to press forward.

  I had to let go of what happened to my dad.

  I had to get on a plane and go to England.

  I had to—

  Without breaking contact, Lawson flipped me over and eased his weight onto my body. He took control. Our tongues danced in delicious strokes. Thoughts vanished, swept away by sensation after sensation. My body loosened beneath his. Melted. Yielded as he drove into me. I moved with him, and when he slid his arms beneath me, holding me close, our mouths working with relentless desire, I moaned so loudly it vibrated through to my very core.