“You do help. More than you know.”
Smoothing out the worry lines from his brow, I ask, “Has he always been like that with you?”
JD exhales and darts his eyes away from me. “Pretty much. The sad thing is, I always wanted to please him. He would yell and get mad, and all I could think was, how could I make him love me? How could I make him proud? I work hard to be the best at the game, to be the best player, hoping that one day he will look at me with pride in his eyes. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.”
My heart breaks for him. I lean in to press my cheek to his. “I love you,” I whisper.
His arms spasm around me and I hold my breath, not meaning for the words to come out so soon. I may have just ruined, with those three words, what was becoming the best thing in my life.
“Oh, God, Aurora. I love you, too. I love you so much,” he says with such reverence, I start to cry. I never cry. JD blankets my face with kisses. “Say it again,” he commands.
“I love you, Jackson. It’s scary and new and really fast. But I do love you.”
“You’ve made me the happiest man in the world, sunshine.”
We never make it to the place JD wanted to take me. Instead, we spend the next several hours wrapped in each other’s arms—just two people confessing their love for the first time in a truck parked on the side of the road.
It was perfect.
Chapter 21
Me: Good luck today! Call me when you get back. I miss you!
My phone starts playing music, alerting me to a video call. My cheeks hurt with how wide my smile is when I swipe to answer.
“Hey baby!” JD’s grinning face appears and then disappears when he’s shoved out of the frame and replaced with Prescott’s.
“Hey baby!” Prescott says, blowing me a kiss.
“Move your big-ass head so I can say hi,” I hear Dustin say.
“Get your own girlfriends, assholes,” JD tells them and turns the phone back to him. “Sorry about them.”
“Where are you? Isn’t the game about to start soon?” I ask. They had an away game today and it was supposed to start at seven this evening.
“We’re still in the locker room waiting for coach to come give us our pep talk. I wish you could be here.”
“Me too. Maybe next time?”
Several shouts go up in the background. “Definitely. I need my good luck charm. When are you heading out?”
Knox is racing tonight at the Fields, and Renee and I are going to go cheer him on. Devon and Trevaughn are supposed to be there, too. I’m looking forward to finally meeting the last member of the New York Four, as I call them. Shelby, of course, is with the cheerleaders accompanying the football team so she isn’t here to join us.
“Renee is meeting me here.”
“You sure you’re ready for that?” he asks.
It will be the first time that anyone else, outside of JD, Dustin, and Prescott, finds out about my new ties to the Montgomerys. Once I open that door, I won’t be able to close it. It was something I talked with Fallon about before he traveled to South Africa this week. He left the decision up to me, but he suggested I make an official announcement via a public press release. I declined. No thank you. I want my life to remain private. Fallon and Trevor can be the poster children for our family.Our family. Shit. Still not used to that.
“Yeah. It’s just Renee. I trust her.”
“Okay, sunshine. Now blow me a kiss to tide me over until I can get my hands on you.”
My face heats and a rosy blush stains my cheeks. JD and I have donea lotof kissing and many, many other things this past week. In his truck. In my room. At school. I know his body better than anyone’s now, and he knows just how to touch me or kiss me to send me flying in under two minutes. So many orgasms.
A knock on my bedroom door has me turning around to see Knox standing in the open doorway. I wave him in. “Knox is here. Bring home the win,” I tell JD and blow him his kiss.
“Always do.” JD gives me our heart hand signal. The screen goes black when he ends the call.
