by Jewel E. Ann
Brendon was in therapy. I cringed a little, wondering if I was the reason? Gosh … I hoped not.
“How is he?”
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I mean … I haven’t seen him in years. We used to go to the same church, not too far from here.”
“So you were church friends?”
I nodded, completely gambling on the hope that in such a short encounter, Brendon didn’t back up the dump truck and unload onto Fisher.
“Just church friends?” He knew something.
“Brendon was the one who convinced me to go to Thailand. He’s actually the friend who went with me.”
“He’s the one, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I just said he’s the one who went with me to—”
“No.” Fisher shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. He’s the one you loved. The one we talked about. You said he’s with someone else, but not married. I told you to go knock on his door.”
It was such a game. Playing one card at a time, neither one of us knew what was in the other one’s hand. I so badly wanted to lay down my hand and show him every card.
It’s you, Fisher! Everything is you.
My heartstrings were so tangled in Fisher, I could barely breathe. Every move seemed to create a new knot. When we got too close. When we were too far apart.
“Why do you think it’s him?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s not him.”
“Fuck …” He rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger. “I didn’t see that answer coming.”
“Why?” A twinge of frustration gripped my words, making them tight and clipped.
He chuckled. “Well, because he casually mentioned having not seen you since you agreed to marry him and broke off the engagement all within twenty-four hours.”
Well fuck. (Mandatory use of the F-word)
“I told him you were back in Denver. He said to tell you hi. So …” Another chuckle. “You were going to marry Brendon for two seconds, and he’s not the guy you were talking about? This other guy must be quite something if he’s the one you think about when you think of being in love instead of the guy you said yes to marrying.”
On a slow deflate, I whispered, “He is.”
“Is he the reason you broke up with Brendon?”
My eyes narrowed at the floor while I thought about my answer. The truth. “No. I … I only said yes to Brendon because he asked me in front of a group of people, and I didn’t want to embarrass him. The reason I didn’t marry him was because I still hadn’t done anything for myself. And I wasn’t ready for Wife and Mother to be my new titles and full-time profession, which was funny because I had been watching all these babies come into the world. And I was longing for a husband like the men holding their wives’ hands. The love. The family. I wanted it, just not yet. And I didn’t want it with Brendon. And that truly sucked because he was … I’m sure still is an amazing, kind, smart, and loving man. Just not the one for me.”
“What if I can’t live up to him? Will I be the next Brendon?”
Oh my lost fisherman …
“No. You won’t be the next Brendon because he got a parting gift, I suppose.”
“What was that?”
“My virginity.”
Fisher’s head jerked backward. “You loved someone else, but Brendon from church took your virginity?”
“Took might be a strong word. I gave it to him. Persuaded him to take it.” I curled my hair behind my ears and risked a glance up at Fisher.
“Why didn’t you give it to the guy you loved?”
Such a fantastic question, Fisher. Thanks for asking.
“He didn’t want it.”
His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “What?”
“He knew the timing wasn’t right for us. And he knew, at the time, that I had mixed emotions about my V-card. After Rory going to prison, my dad dying, and attending a Christian academy while living with my ultra-conservative grandparents … Jesus, God, and every chapter of the Bible haunted me.”
“But you wanted to have sex with him?”
The hint of a smile twitched my lips. “Yes.”
“I rescind what I told you about him. Don’t go knock on his door. He doesn’t deserve you. If he didn’t have the balls to man the fuck up when you chose him, then he didn’t deserve it or you. He choked, and that’s pretty pathetic.”
I laughed. “Yeah, well … I didn’t look at it like that. So let’s not stone him for his decision. Besides, you have some things in common with him.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Such as?”
“You weren’t going to let me go past second base.”
“Fuck. Stop. Just … no.” He shook his head. “We are never talking about that again. It was a joke. I would have hit the damn home run and you know it.”
I brushed past him, moseying down the hallway toward his bathroom. “Sure. Sure. That’s what he said.”
“He’s an idiot.”
I giggled. “Sometimes.”
Fisher peeled off his shirt and tossed it into the hamper. Then he sat on the vanity bench. I draped the towel over his legs and grabbed the trimmers. He spread his legs wide, unlike the previous time, and pulled me between them with his hands on the back of my thighs.
I laughed as the towel on his lap fell onto the floor. He didn’t care. I turned on the trimmers, and he buried his face in my chest.
“I’ve missed you,” he mumbled.
“It’s only been five days.” I ran my free hand through his hair.
“And nights.” He lifted his head. “Nights too. Don’t forget nights.”
“Because we’ve spent so many nights together?” I made my first swipe with the trimmers.
“You’re with me every night. In my dreams. You’re naked, except for my tool belt. You’re always wearing my tool belt.”
I laughed. “Sounds interesting. Am I building something?”
He frowned. “No. You’re always just teasing me.”
“Funny. In my dreams, you’re always a baby with an adult head, sucking a pacifier.”
“Not funny.” He tightened his grip on the back of my legs.
I jumped, holding the trimmer away from his face. “Careful.” I continued to trim his beard. “And it’s actually quite funny.”
He said nothing more while I finished, but I felt his eyes on me the whole time.
“Perfect. As usual.” I set the trimmers on the counter. “Well, my trim is perfect, considering what I had to work with.”
Fisher remained a little subdued, not as quick to jab back. In fact, he didn’t take the bait at all.
“I’ll grab the vac hose to sweep up the mess.”
“Leave it.” He pulled me closer to him again.
I smiled, running my palms along his face. “So handsome.”
He closed his eyes and took an audible breath, releasing it like it carried some pretty heavy stuff with it.
“Did you tell your therapist about me? I know it’s none of my business, but—”
“Yes.” He opened his eyes.
I nodded slowly, pressing my lips together.
“I told her I’m engaged to a woman I’ve known nearly my whole life. But I’m in love with a woman I’ve known for a breath, maybe two.”
Drawing in another one of those breaths of time, a shaky one, I blew it out with a whisper, “You love me?”
He shrugged. Of course he shrugged. It was Fisher. “I’m assuming that’s what this annoying feeling is.”
“Annoying feeling?” I narrowed my eyes.
“The increased heart rate I get just from thinking about you. Oh … and that. The constant thinking about you. The stupid smile that I can’t seem to wipe off my face because I’m thinking about you all the damn time.”
He seemed so annoyed. It made me grin, but I fought it by biting my lower lip.
“The dreams. The driving by your house just to see i
f your car is there. Lack of focus on anything or anyone but you. It’s …” He shook his head. “It’s bad.” His gaze met mine. “What about you? Do you have any feelings toward me? Or do you just want into my pants? Be honest … am I the girl in this relationship?”
“Fisher …” I whispered. His humor didn’t completely mask his nerves. How did two people fall in love so quickly? Then how did they do it twice? Just as quickly, just as passionately? And with terrible timing again? I pressed my lips to his.
We kissed.
Fisher loved me. Me …
So we continued to kiss because that’s what people who loved each other did.
He unbuttoned my jeans and eased down the zipper. Then he kissed my exposed skin just above my panties.
My fingers laced through his thick hair. “I love you, my lost fisherman.”
He stilled for a second before his gaze lifted to mine. Those blue eyes. That heartbreakingly lost look in his eyes.
“This is so messy.” I gave him a cautious smile.
“That’s how we know it’s real.” He slowly stood, taking my shirt with him.
I lifted my arms, willingly surrendering.
He dropped my shirt onto the floor and kissed me again, easing my bra straps down my shoulders as I reached around and unhooked it.
Maybe our future was uncertain, at best. But not his touch. I knew … I just knew he didn’t touch her like he touched me.
The slide of his warm tongue.
The brush of his thumb over my nipple.
And the hum, almost a tiny growl, like he was a little angry that everything had to be so damn complicated.
That slow kiss took us all the way to the bed. I wasn’t the nervous girl anymore. And knowing he wasn’t getting my virginity didn’t make it feel any less special.
I wasn’t a used sanitary napkin.
I was the woman who put myself first, who loved myself first. I was the girl who left the love of her life to find a life.
There were mistakes.
Lessons to learn.
Tears to cry.
Intimate moments with other people.
Risks to take.
And I did it all.
I did it not because I thought it would lead me back to Fisher; I did it for me. The only gift I cared to give my future husband was the most confident version of myself. A full heart and a humbled soul.
As I leaned back on the bed, Fisher pulled my jeans down my legs. “Not even death will take this memory away from me.” He grinned.
As his mouth made its way up my body, he stopped briefly to tease the sensitive flesh between my legs while sliding off my panties.
“Fisher …” I closed my heavy eyelids, and my hands fisted the bedding, my hips lifting from the mattress looking for absolutely anything he would give me. When I opened them, he was discarding his jogging shorts and briefs.
That grin … so sexy.
The slow prowl, bringing every inch of that body to me. I’d never felt so alive. My legs spread wider. My fingers feathered his chest, his abs, and the hard muscles along his back.
Settling between my legs, teasing me like he did to the eighteen-year-old virgin, he kissed my breasts, my neck, my … everything. Fisher had always been the patient one with me. And that night was no exception. He guided me onto my stomach and kissed along my back and the curve of my butt like an artist admiring every detail of a fine work of art or … a lost fisherman exploring Target with the woman he was destined to fall for every single time.
I liked that analogy best.
And that smile … the grin I felt every so often when he kissed my body.
Fisher was happy.
Happy with me.
“What … do we have here?” He angled my butt toward the window and the sliver of streetlight coming through it.
Oh … I forgot about that.
“A tattoo? You have a tattoo?”
I craned my neck to look over my shoulder as he held me firmly in place, closely inspecting my butt cheek.
“Callipygian,” he said slowly.
“I was drunk, hence the hidden tattoo on my butt. It means—”
“It means you have a shapely ass. Alcohol makes you confident and a little vain.” He chuckled before biting it.
“Ouch!” I wriggled out of his grip and rolled onto my back. “How do you know that word?”
He guided my knees apart. “Because I have the same word tattooed on my ass.”
I giggled. “You do not.”
He dipped his head between my legs.
“Stop teasing me,” I pled my case with my hands claiming his hair as he tried to set up camp down there.
“Don’t hurry me.”
I smiled as his mouth made a lazy exploration up to my lips, making several stops along the way. He didn’t understand my rush because in his mind, he’d been waiting weeks for this. I’d been waiting years.
He seemed pretty proud of himself when he made a production of getting a condom from the unopened box.
“Wipe that grin off your face.” I rolled on top of him and pinned his arms next to his head.
Our mirrored smiles faded as I lowered my head and kissed him. He guided my hips over his erection.
I sat up just enough to let him push into me the whole way. Drunk on the feeling, I couldn’t move. I just wanted to stay in that exact position forever. I’d imagined that feeling so many times, and despite the other men I’d been with, there was no comparing them or anything I’d done with them to Fisher being inside of me.
Him sitting up and kissing me.
Him rolling us again and again.
Arms and legs tangling together with the sheets woven every which way.
The look in his eyes when he moved inside of me—so intense. His strong hands all over my body, laced with my fingers, and tangled in my hair as he kissed me.
The whispered promise of never forgetting that moment—so heartbreaking.
The focused expression and taut muscles in his jaw and face when he made sure I came before he did, but only by a few seconds. So many emotions flooded me in that moment.
I had never felt so vulnerable in my life, a permeating fear that I just gave him something so much greater than my virginity.
After long minutes of stillness with him collapsed on top of me and still inside of me, he rolled to the side. “My therapist is going to be really pissed off with me.”
I shifted toward him, finding my new favorite place—my naked body molded to his. My face in the crook of his neck, his in my hair, and his hand on my butt. “Why?” I asked.
“Because she told me to take a step back, to not get distracted by the physical part of my relationships.”
“I’d get a second opinion. Because in my humble opinion, we should do this again … maybe even a lot.”
Fisher chuckled. “I second that opinion.” Kissing my head, he moved to sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to take a shower. You should join me.”
I sat up, hugging his back and teasing his earlobe with my teeth. “I’m going home. You distracted me with sex, but I wasn’t done telling the world about the birth I witnessed.”
He turned his head to look at me. “Are you saying the birth was more memorable than the sex?”
I hopped out of bed and dressed quickly. “I’m saying it’s my constitutional right to not answer your question.”
“You can’t plead the Fifth on this.” He grabbed his shorts and sauntered into the bathroom.
I slowed my hands as I hooked my bra, taking a few seconds to watch his callipygian figure. “Did you hear me say that birth was one in eighty thousand?”
Seconds later, he appeared around the corner in sweatpants and a tee, leaning against the wall, hands crossed over his chest.
“Tonight, you were one in a billion … times infinity. But if I didn’t live up to one in eighty thousand, then I think we’re done here.” Fisher didn’t even smile. He simply bowed his head.
“Tonig
ht, you were one in a billion … times infinity.”
If Fisher didn’t pick me, fall eternally in love with me, if he got his memory back and it brought with it an unmatchable love for Angie, I knew I would be the one in therapy for the rest of my life.
“You’re right.” I squeezed past him, ignoring his pouty face, and grabbed my shirt from the bathroom floor. I shook the hair off it and pulled it over my head. “Angie has been giving you everything. She wants you to remember how you felt about her. And if I were wearing a diamond ring you gave to me, I’d probably be doing the same thing. Retelling our story to you a thousand times in a thousand different ways. But for me, it doesn’t matter if you loved me then, it only matters if you love me now.”
He turned.
“Just …” I whispered. “Love me today.”
I saw it in his eyes. And I thought he would say it, say something like “I’ll love you every day,” or “I’ll love you always.” And what woman in her right mind wouldn’t have wanted a man to say that to her?
Me.
So either I was the exception or I wasn’t in my right mind.
Fisher got lost. I got lost. And nobody could help me find my way. It was something I had to do myself. In my own way. In my own time.
I couldn’t ask for more from Fisher than I was willing to give myself. If that meant he had to risk losing me to find himself, then I would accept that.
“I love you today,” he said.
That was his reply. The perfect reply.
I nodded toward him. “Thought you were going to shower.”
“After I drive you home.”
I grinned, taking two steps to him then taking his hand and pulling him toward the front door. “You’re one, Fisher.”
“One in what?”
I opened the door, and he closed it behind us.
“Not in anything. Not one in eighty thousand. Not one in a billion times infinity. You’re just one. The one.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Where have you been? I messaged you and tried calling you,” Rory asked before I got both feet in the house.
I missed that message, which wasn’t good since I was on call. Retrieving my phone from my pocket, I checked for messages or missed calls other than Rory’s.