We’d spent the rest of our time in France, touring the countryside and even managing a day at the beach. Our evenings — and some of our days — were spent making each other come in various ways, Jesse losing his words when I removed some of the direction he was used to giving.
He softened under my touch. Not his cock — that should’ve been considered a site of scientific interest and remained hard for what felt like most of the time — the rest of him. The second night I fell asleep in his arms, I woke up to find him still awake, his body utterly still. When I’d asked him if he was okay, he’d barely breathed a word until I’d shifted in his arms.
“I didn’t know if you’d wake if I moved. I didn’t want to move in my sleep and wake you up.”
I’d laughed and kissed him, telling him it didn’t quite work like that, then I’d fallen back asleep with my heart feeling ten times the size it had before.
When I’d dropped him off at home after we landed, he’d become awkward, distant, as if he had no idea what to say or how to act, which I figured he didn’t.
We’d agreed that it would end in France, whatever we’d been doing. It stopped when we got on that plane, and it had. I wasn’t heartbroken; I’d known that we had an expiry date and I’d been prepared for that. I’d made a decision to take what he offered, because if I hadn’t, I’d have always wondered.
Better to have loved and to have lost than to have never loved at all.
Was I in love with him?
Yes. But I think I had been before we went to France. It hadn’t taken a chateau to make me fall.
But he hadn’t broken my heart. I just wished we’d had longer.
Now, Jesse was in my brother’s kitchen, unusually quiet and toying with a paperback, contents unknown.
Nate was going on about something — I’d tuned out minutes ago — and Amber was listening happily. She was still in the phase where she thought my brother could walk on water. I knew he was perfectly capable of falling in head first with a splash.
They were also now engaged, something that seemed to have increased the light in both of them. The girls were enthralled by it, both of them increasingly glued to Amber’s side, which she seemed to love.
My spare part status was growing daily.
“Have you seen the girls’ treehouse?”
I woke up to what my brother was asking Jesse.
“Not since you’ve put the furniture in it.” Jesse’s eyes flicked to me again.
“Jerrica, can you show it Jesse? I need to go through something with Nate so I can send it off.” Amber smiled at me, her hand on her very large bump.
I’d given her the bare outlines of what had happened with me and Jesse. She’d asked, because Nate had mentioned my phone call with him, and gossip was her main form of sustenance at the moment. There was a lot I hadn’t told her.
“Sure. Want to pretend you’re Libbie’s age?” I avoided the word again, because I knew six-year-old Jesse had not had a happy life.
He stood up, holding the bag. “Let’s have a look.”
I was positive he gave Amber a grateful look, but maybe I was reading too much into it.
It was the first time I’d properly seen him since we’d returned from France. I had hoped that when we did get home, we’d have clicked back into how we were before, however tortuous that would’ve been.
I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t happen.
I didn’t feel used or led on; maybe I’d have been more concerned if he’d carried on with his tiny touches and kisses when no one was looking.
But I did want to know what was in the bag.
The summer house was on the side of the garden away from the patio, set back deep into where bushes and shrubbery and trees had been allowed to grow a little wild. A camera had been installed so Nate could keep an eye on what the girls were doing from the house, if in the future he ever let them down here alone, which maybe he would do when they were older.
It was more like another building instead of just an overlarge garden shed, even to the point of having heating installed and a lockable door.
“This is some project.”
“It is. Its thunder was totally stolen, though, by Nate proposing the day it was built.”
