He helps me to my feet, and I walk down the aisle toward the back of the church, only turning to look over my shoulder once I’ve reached the doors. I watch as my dad, the last person I would have expected to pull me from this spiral, stands with his hands in his pockets staring up at the cross above the altar.
Maybe this will be a fresh start for us. Maybe I’ll be able to beat this cancer. Maybe my two little reasons to fight like hell will be fighters just like me. But one thing is for certain: Iamgoing to fight.
26
Then
“T, what are you doing? That is definitely not how to bait a hook,” Jax admonishes as I nearly cut my finger trying to bait this stupid worm.
“Well, then help me,” I tell him, completely exasperated by this whole experience. Jackson woke me up at nearly the crack of dawn to “go on an adventure” as he put it. I was surprised when he drove us to a lake about twenty miles out of town where his family keeps their three boats docked. And when I asked him why they’d possibly need three boats, he looked at me as if I were being unreasonable considering they apparently need different boats for fishing, wakeboarding, and then his parents have a pontoon. When I pointed out that the only other time I’d ever fished was while I was on a pontoon, he just rolled his eyes.
“Give it here,” he says, gesturing for me to hand him the pole. He looks at it skeptically, and shakes his head before bringing the line in his mouth and biting the clear material in half. The move is not sexual, and I absolutely shouldn’t find it hot, but for whatever reason I can’t seem to get enough of my husband. I’m caught up in the newlywed haze, where I find every little thingJackson does hot. Like the way his deft fingers work to thread and tie on the new bobber and hook he took out of his tackle box. Or the way he again brings the line to his mouth to pull it tight with his teeth.
Something is seriously wrong with me if I’m acting this depraved when he’s already given me an orgasm this morning in his truck when I started whining over going fishing at the ungodly hour.
Without even looking at me, Jax shakes his head and mutters, “If you keep looking at me like that, woman, we’re never going to catch our lunch.”
“I’m not even hungry,” I inform him.
“Yeah, I know. You’re just thirsty as hell if the way you’re ogling me from over there is anything to go off of.”
“Ha ha,” I mock, crossing my arms and rolling my eyes for good measure. “How long will it take us to get back to my house? I have an appointment this afternoon at two, remember?” I ask, remembering how long it took us to find his secret fishing spot that he swore up and down we’d catch a ton of fish at, but I haven’t caught anything. Though clearly the fish are biting because they keep managing to eat the worms off my hook.
“There you go. All fixed up,” Jax says, handing me back the pole now all ready to go. I take it from him and he says, “To answer your question, it’ll probably take us an hour and a half, maybe closer to two if there are a lot of boats trying to dock at the same time as us.”
I look down at my watch and bite the inside of my cheek as I try to calculate when we need to head out. “We should probably only fish for another half hour or so then,” I tell him.
“Sounds good, baby,” he says as he swivels on his chair to grab his pole and then stands to cast his line. Again, something that is not overtly sexy whatsoever shouldn’t have me clenchingmy thighs together, but here I am trying to find relief anyway possible.
I stand up, giving it my best attempt at casting my line out. When I finally feel a strong tug on my line a few minutes later, I squeal in delight, “Bear! I think I’ve got one!”
Jax sets his pole down and makes his way over to me, standing at my back and wrapping his arms around me. “You’ve gotta set the hook like this,” he explains as he helps me sharply yank back the pole before helping me reel it in.
“This has quite a bit of drag on the line,” he says like I’d know whatever that means. “You’re doing so good, baby. Keep going, just like that,” Jax praises, and I stop momentarily as a chill works its way down my spine because the way he said that just turned me all the way on.
Clearing my throat, I resume reeling and I do a happy dance when I see there’s still a fish on the line. “J, look! I’m actually going to catch one!” I squeak as I lift the line out of the water.
“Holy shit, you got a smallmouth.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining last night,” I mutter.
“Bass. A smallmouth bass,” he emphasizes.
“Right. I obviously knew that,” I attempt to lie, though my laughter is a dead giveaway.
Jax makes quick work of unhooking the fish and holding it up to me with his thumb in the fish’s mouth. “Here, hold it up and let me get a picture of you with it,” he tells me as he sets the slimy fish in my hands and I nearly throw it out of the boat before he can grab his phone to take the picture.
Once he’s satisfied with the number of pictures he takes, he takes the fish from me and places it back in the water.
“Hey, I thought you said that was going to be our lunch.”
“I didn’t think you’d catch a bass. But now that you’ve caught one, I’ll just drive us back now and that way we’ll have enoughtime for me to take you out to lunch before your appointment,” he says.
I help him put our poles away and watch as he takes off his baseball hat to run his fingers through his hair. When he puts it back on but turns it backward, I’m officially feral for him. That, in combination with the way he manspreads in the captain’s seat with one hand on the wheel and pats his thigh with the other, gesturing for me to take a seat, has me wanting to drop to my knees right here in the middle of the lake.
Biting my bottom lip to hold in the moan that threatens to escape from how freaking sexy he is, I take a seat on his thigh but he adjusts me, placing me right in his lap where I can feel how turned on he is as well. Jax’s thick hands grasp my waist, raking me up and down his hard length, turning me on so badly and causing my nipples to pebble beneath my tank top.
“Take the wheel, T. But first, take off your shorts. You’ve got a swimsuit underneath, right?” he rasps the question, and the gravel in his voice causes full body goosebumps.
