by Cate Ashwood
When I was satisfied for myself that he was stable, I pulled one of the chairs over from the side of the room. The legs made obnoxiously loud scraping noises on the faded linoleum floor, but Jackson didn’t stir.
I sat, just listening to the sound of him breathing, and slowly reached out to take his hand in mine.
Every conversation we’d ever had, every moment we’d ever spent together replayed in my mind, with our last night together circling through in a loop. The more times I went through it, the less sense it made.
Why had I just let him walk out? Why hadn’t I fought harder for him to see what I saw? I’d been so willing to let him go, and now that I was here, now that he was right in front of me, it made less sense than ever.
Because deep down, below all the bullshit reasons and the flimsy excuses he’d thrown at me, all I saw was fear. Jackson was terrified to try. All he’d ever known was loss, and now, he was running.
Seconds ticked by, the clock on the wall that never seemed to hang straight almost mocking me with the movement of its thin red hand. But each beat that passed made me more sure than ever of what I needed to do.
Jackson
I opened my eyes, the room too bright to focus at first, and became immediately aware of what felt like a rhino sitting on my chest.
I groaned and scrambled to remember how the hell I had ended up here. I was obviously in the hospital. Had I had the surgery? Were the drugs they’d given me good enough that I’d lost a whole day? Forgotten being admitted for the operation? The last thing I remember was sitting in the waiting room, waiting for my CT…
I turned my head, my movements sluggish, and blinked several times to clear away the fog from my vision.
The alarm on one of the monitors went off as my eyes focused on Logan, sitting next to my bed, his forehead resting in his hand. His head snapped up, and he looked at me.
“You’re awake.”
“Can you turn that thing off?”
He leaned over and pressed a button on the screen. “Heart rate’s a little high.”
“I didn’t expect to see you here. I didn’t think you knew I’d be… Why are you here?”
Logan exhaled hard, and the expression on his face shut me right up. “You had a reaction to the dye they gave you. Your heart stopped.”
“Is that why it feels like someone shot me in the chest with a bazooka?”
He nodded. “They performed CPR and got you back into regular rhythm. You’re incredibly lucky.”
I attempted a smile. “Sounds pretty unlucky if you ask me.”
Logan looked horrified that I was attempting to joke. But what else could I do? I was having trouble processing everything—the fact that technically I’d died, the fact that Logan was sitting here, next to me, looking like he’d have died right along with me if that had happened.
My heart had stopped once, and I was in serious danger of it happening again right there. Seeing Logan again… I’d underestimated what a kick to the gut it would be.
He looked good. Better than good. Better than I remembered. It took everything in me not to touch him, to ask him to touch me.
It was a nice gesture, him looking in on me, but it hurt like a son of a bitch. As grateful as I was that he cared whether I lived or died, I still wished he didn’t know I was there.
“Jackson.”
The sound of my name on his lips wrapped around me, burrowing under my skin. He moved closer, and I could see the seriousness written all over him. I could see the expression, the same one he’d worn the night we broke up, the same one he’d had right before he told me—
I stopped breathing. “Logan, don’t.”
“I love you.”
My heart pounded, the force of it overwhelming. The monitor started screaming again. “Fuck this thing,” I said, unsnapping the cords from where they attached to the stickers on my chest.
“Jackson,” Logan said again, pulling my attention back to him. “Hear me out. Please.”
I closed my mouth and took a breath.
“Today, when Dawn phoned me and she told me… When I thought…” He exhaled hard, carding his fingers through his hair. “The thought of losing you is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced,” he said, finally.
I considered my words carefully before I opened my mouth because more than anything I wanted to hear him tell me he loved me again. I was a masochistic son of a bitch, but it was all I wanted. I hated myself for it.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m sorry?”
“You died. You fucking died. Do you get that? So don’t fucking tell me it’s no big deal.”
“I’m sorry you thought I was gonna die. Can’t really see how that’s my fault, though.”
Logan sighed again, and I could see the tension in his shoulders. “Might have been better if you had died on that table because now that you’re awake and talking, I kinda want to throttle you.”
“Logan, if this is why you came…”
He shook his head, looking more than a little resigned. “It’s not. The point I’m trying to make is that you’ve been gone from my life for two weeks, and I’ve never been so miserable. I’ve been sitting here for the last hour, waiting for you to wake up, waiting to make sure you’re really okay, running everything through in my mind for the thousandth time.”
“Nothing’s changed,” I said gently. My heart was being torn apart all over again, having to have the same conversation with Logan we’d had two weeks ago. All this was doing was digging the knife in deeper, cutting both of us up more than it needed to.
“Everything has changed,” Logan said, and the sincerity in his voice had my resolve faltering for a split second.
“It hasn’t. I’m still leaving. I still have a job waiting for me in Santa Fe.”
“Yeah, I get that. I remember all the lame excuses and half-assed reasons why you say you need to go. They’re stupid.”
“They’re—”
“Do you love me?”
“What?” He caught me so off guard, it took a second for what he’d asked to process.
“It’s a simple question.”
“It’s not.”
“It really is. Maybe I’m being an arrogant fuckhead, but I think you do. I think you feel the same way about me as I do about you, and if I’m right, then this thing is worth fighting for.” He stood, pacing back and forth in the cramped space beside my bed. “I should have fought harder in the first place. I should have argued with you, made you see all the possibilities, rather than just letting you run. Because that’s what you’re doing. You’re running.”
“I’m not.”
He turned his focus back onto me, his eyes intense. “You are too, but you still haven’t answered me. So?”
“So what?”
“Are you in love with me?”
“You should have been a lawyer rather than a surgeon.”
“Answer the goddamn question, Jackson.”
“Yes.” I exhaled. “Yes, I love you. But that doesn’t change anything.”
“How the hell can you say that?” he asked. “Good Christ, you’re complicating this when it doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, this is the simplest thing in the whole fucking world.” He leaned in closer, his eyes locked with mine, and I could see the assuredness in them, plain as if it’d been written on his skin. “I don’t know what’s going to happen a year from now, five years from now… All I know is that I’ve never met anyone who makes me feel the way you do.”
“But Santa Fe—”
“Can be canceled. Or we do long distance until you can get back to Alaska. Or I take a job at the hospital there.”
“You would move to New Mexico.”
“I would do whatever it took to be with you. If that meant moving to another state, yeah. If it meant moving to the goddamn moon, I’d find a way.”
“You’re serious.”
“I’m not willing to miss out on what could be something amazing just because we’re both scared it might
not work. Yeah, it’s terrifying to think that this could implode, and given how much it hurt to lose you before, later it might fucking kill me.”
“Way to sell it, doc.”
“But what if it doesn’t implode? What if this is the best thing to happen to either of us and we just gave up on it before it even got going because of what might happen? It’s fucking terrifying to think I could lose it. What kind of fucked-up logic is that?”
“You’re actually serious.”
“Yeah. More serious than I’ve been about anything, and I went through a pretty severe emo phase when I was fifteen.”
“Your mom still have pictures?”
He grinned. “Yep. You gonna be around to see them?”
Was I? His speech had stirred something in me, and Christ, I had no idea what all of this meant or what the long-term implications were going to be. He was right—walking away the first time had almost wrecked me. If I lost him again, I couldn’t imagine how much it would hurt.
But I’d spent my whole life running from one place to the next, moving around, nothing ever permanent. Maybe it was time for me to try a little permanence.
I waited for the cold wash of terror to spread through me, but it never came. All I felt was warmth and the stirring of possibility that maybe he was right about this too. Maybe I didn’t need to run anymore.
I took another breath, my chest expanding and a dull ache setting in. I knew the next words out of my mouth would change my life, one way or another.
“I’ll stay.”
Logan
“The roast is going to be fine for another few minutes.” Jackson’s voice came from behind me. “You just checked it. It’s still raw.”
“I don’t want to overcook it,” I said, prodding it with a meat thermometer that confirmed Jackson’s guess. It was still ice-cold in the center.
I closed the oven but didn’t stand, my eyes trained on the large hunk of meat in the middle, as though if I wasn’t watching every second, it would spontaneously burst into flames and we’d be serving our guests a brick of charcoal for Christmas Eve-Eve dinner.
Jackson slid his hands over my back and down my stomach, his fingers catching at the button of my jeans, slipping it easily through the hole.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked.
“Trying to distract me. Won’t work, though. This dinner is going to be perfect.”
He pulled me to standing, turning me and pressing me against the counter. Sliding one arm around my waist and the other against the side of my face, he held me so I had no choice but to look at him.
Such a hardship.
“It’s going to be perfect. And if it’s not, well, whatever. There’s too much to appreciate about tonight that even if the food tastes like poison, it’ll still be great.”
“You think it’s going to taste like poison?” I glanced back at the stove to see if there was smoke pouring out of it yet.
Jackson laughed. “You’re missing the point.”
He leaned forward, his lips dragging across my throat, and suddenly, the whole kitchen could have been engulfed in flames and I wouldn’t have cared, as long as he didn’t stop.
A couple of weeks had passed since Jackson had been discharged from the hospital. He’d opted to postpone the surgery until the new year since there was no rush to get it done before he left.
Because he wasn’t leaving. Ever.
We’d turned Bishop Ridge Ranch from my dream childhood home into a place that we both felt we belonged. While I’d moved in first, this house, this place, was as much Jackson’s as it was mine, and he loved it as much as I did.
We were still learning things about each other, like the fact that Jackson ate 90 percent of his meals with a side of barbecue sauce, and living together out in the middle of nowhere seemed to expedite that getting-to-know-you process. But being with Jackson, getting to see him every day, having him there when I got home after a difficult surgery, or a mind-numbingly boring day—it was everything.
I didn’t know if I’d ever been happier. It had taken some convincing—there’d been a slip-up or two in confidence, even after he’d agreed to call the company in Santa Fe and cancel his contract. But if I had to spend every day of the rest of my life convincing him he’d made the right decision, I’d do it happily.
“I picked something up today,” Jackson said, pulling away and momentarily leaving me feeling stunned and disoriented.
“What’s that?”
He came trotting back into the room carrying something wrapped in red tissue paper.
“It’s not too exciting or anything, but there’s not much to buy in Sawyer’s Ferry that is.”
He handed me the little package, and I unwrapped it carefully, prudent not to tear the paper. I didn’t know why, but this felt important. Jackson stared at me, and for a split second, I thought I saw a moment of vulnerability pass over his face.
Inside the tissue was a small wooden carving of an almost perfectly anatomically correct heart.
“Ron carved it for me,” Jackson said, his voice quiet. “I wanted to give you something that showed how much I love you, and I may have gone overboard on the cheese factor. I just thought since you’re a doctor—”
“It’s perfect.” I thought my face was going to split open with how wide I was smiling. He’d given me his heart in the most literal way possible. “I love it.” I stepped closer. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” He grinned at me again, his expression turning from one of happiness to a wicked one in the span of a heartbeat. “I got you one more thing.”
Quickly, he dashed away, then was back a second later, holding the second gift—this one unwrapped—just above his crotch. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“You have some kinda pain kink you’re only just telling me about now?” I asked, eyeing the thorns on the shiny green leaves.
He thrust his hips out a little. “It’s mistletoe. You gotta kiss whatever’s under it. It’s tradition.”
I couldn’t stop the burst of laughter that escaped. “That’s holly.”
“What?”
“That’s not mistletoe. Where’d you get that?”
“A little girl was selling bunches of it outside the market.”
“About twelve years old? Redhead? Big blue eyes that would make you wanna buy ice from her in December?”
“I bought holly because she told me it was mistletoe,” he said like it was all the confirmation I’d need.
I snickered. “You got played hard. That’s Isabel, Mason’s little sister. She’s destined to be a high-powered CEO one day. She started honing her entrepreneurial skills when she was about six.”
“Seems a little young to be in business.”
“She’d go into the Cornerstone Café, ask for water, then stand outside and sell it to people walking down the street while her mom was in the bank.”
“And no one noticed?”
“Took months for people to catch on, but by then, she’d caught the business spark and there was no stopping her. There’s a good chance the holly you bought was stolen, probably from the Herreras’ yard.”
“Well, now I feel like an idiot.”
“Don’t. Half the people in this town have bought stuff from her.”
“Think she needs any employees?”
I brushed a kiss against his lips, careful not to squish the holly between us. “You’ll find something. Just give it time.”
Trying to find a job in a place with only a handful of businesses could be a challenge, especially for an outsider. We’d learned pretty quick that there weren’t even jobs posted online or in the paper—it was all word of mouth and who you knew. But I knew a lot of people, and soon Jackson would too.
“And until then, you get to be my sugar daddy.”
“Does that entitle me to any special privileges?” I asked, the roast now long forgotten.
“That entitles you to anythin
g you want.”
“Anything?” I asked, leaning in close again.
“Always.”
“Well, in that case…”
Carefully, I took the holly from him and held it just above my belt. Jackson shot me a wicked grin before dropping to his knees.
Fuck, I loved when he did this. Just seeing him on the floor in front of me did crazy things to me. My body responded, my cock going from half-hard to pounding nails in the time it took him to get my pants undone.
Jackson nuzzled against my groin, the heat of his breath penetrating the thin cotton of my boxers, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the wet friction I knew was coming. He was a master at this—the sucking-dick part as well as drawing it out and making me wait for it.
There was no easy path to satisfaction with Jackson. He made me wait for it, made me work for it, and in the end, it felt so fucking good.
As he pulled my cock free, I threaded my fingers through his dark hair, pushing it back so I could see his face. It’d gotten longer since I’d met him—he’d complained more than once that he needed a trim—but I liked having something I could hang on to, just enough to pull when the need arose.
Which was now.
My groan mixed with his hiss as I tightened my grip, pulling him forward, the tip of my cock slipping between his lips.
“Christ, you’re gonna kill me,” I gasped, Jackson taking me all the way down to the root in one smooth movement.
His mouth was like fucking heaven, the sensations he was pulling from me with each swirl of his tongue making me light-headed the longer they went on, but I didn’t want to come like this. We still had some time before people started showing up.
“Jackson,” I said, pulling slowly out of his mouth, a moan falling from my lips as he sucked harder. I could already feel my balls tightening, the throb of my impending orgasm threatening just out of reach. A few more strokes and I’d be coming, but I wanted him to come with me.
There was nothing in the world I loved more than watching Jackson come apart with pleasure, the look of relaxed bliss on his face, and God, the sound of my name tumbling out of his mouth as he emptied inside me… it was my favorite thing.