“But with you, I don’t have to be those things. Besides, apart from hookups, when was the last time you had a relationship?”
I didn’t answer because she knew when. College.
“Jodie, baby, you can’t ask me to become celibate at the age of thirty.”
She snorted. “I wouldn’t think of it. It would be an open marriage. We’d get to meet other people for sex, but we’d be a family. Just like we said.”
“We were sixteen, Jodie. Can you even hear yourself right now?”
She frowned. Her bottom lip trembled a little.
Of fuck. Not tears.
I pulled her close and wrapped my arms around her.
“Look, it’s not that I wouldn’t marry you, but I think you should be with someone you can have a whole life with, not just a half-life.”
“I want it to be you. I’m moving to Cliffborough. I’ve already started the moving process. The lease for my office is up, so I told my landlord I’m not renewing. This morning, I went to see an office a few blocks away, and it’s perfect. It even has space for a showroom.”
I took a deep breath, and she held my hands. “Just think about it, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”
She kissed me and left, promising to come over on my day off so we could hang out properly.
An hour after she left, a different Mitchell walked into my office.
“I’m so sorry,” Jax said, coming around the desk and kneeling at my feet.
I ran my hands over his hair, letting them rest on the back of his neck. It was such an intimate gesture, something fuck buddies shouldn’t do. Best friends or boyfriends, yes. Fuck buddies, no. And since we hadn’t talked about it, I could only assume that was all Jax wanted from me.
I kissed him because I was weak and wanted to banish those thoughts from my mind. Filling it with thoughts of Jax’s sinful mouth was so much better.
“It’s okay. It looks like she sprung her visit on us without warning.”
“I was going to text you, but I was late for work and haven’t stopped all day. I managed to get out earlier, hoping I could warn you, but she messaged me to say she’d seen you already.”
I rested my forehead against his and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the aftershave I knew he kept in his locker at the hospital. He said it made him feel more human, even when he usually went straight home or here and the first thing he did was take a shower.
“Any chance I can suck your dick before going home?”
I laughed. “I’ll never say no to that, but there’s something you should know.”
“What’s that? And can you tell me and get undressed at the same time?”
“Jodie wants to marry me.”
He choked and sputtered, “What the fuck did you say?”
Jax
Two weeks after Tanner broke the news of my sister’s crazy plan to marry him, my life felt like a downward spiral of disappointment.
First, I had to contend with being around Jodie, who’d decided she wasn’t going back home after a few days but instead had gone into full bridezilla wedding-plan mode from my spare bedroom.
Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’d checked the public records for the state of Nevada, which confirmed Tanner and I weren’t married due to the absence of an actual record.
I’d hoped the news that Tanner already conveniently had a husband would stop the wedding plans, but there was no point in outing our relationship to Jodie when there was no marriage certificate, only the memory of one of the best nights of my life.
“What do you think?”
