“What is…” I sat up “…all of this?”
Boxes and boxes of tampons covered the foot of the bed.
“I got super, regular, with applicator, without applicator, organic…”
“Um… I’m not having my?—”
“Period.Yes, I know. I witnessed that fact more than once last night.” He smirked.
I blushed.
“I want to be thethatguy.”
Tampons. Tampons were my proverbial long-stemmed roses. Tampons took my breath away.
“You bought me tampons,” I whispered, still in a daze.
The bed dipped as he sat on the edge. He laced his fingers through my hair and cupped my head as his lips brushed my ear. “I bought you tampons because I kinda like you—a lot.”
I loved this man. I loved him so much it brought real pain to my chest.
“Now, since you missed your cab and hotel stay last night, you might as well come up for birthday breakfast.”
“Birthday breakfast?”
“Yes.” He grabbed the bag and piled the tampons in it. “All food choices belong to Hayden and Isa today, so they agreed on chocolate chip pancakes with bananas and whipped cream for breakfast.”
“And my leg?”
He laughed. “No worries. My mom explained it to them last night. Now it’s your turn to do what you do best.”
“But aren’t you about out of condoms and doesn’t that seem a little inappropriate for a birthday party?”
“Yes.” He adjusted himself. “And so is the hard-on you’re giving me by talking about it.” He tossed the tampon bag by my suitcase. “I bought condoms too.” He winked. “Take your time, pancakes will be waiting, and then you can show my sisters your cool leg. Theotherthing you do best.”
Come to find out,what I did best was eat chocolate chip pancakes with two eight-year-old girls. Once I showed them my leg and the other two in my suitcase, they wanted to try them on and were bummed that they could not because they had two feet already.
Aww, to be eight again.
“So how did you two meet?” Brooke asked. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I knew nothing of you until you showed up yesterday.”
I dried the dishes from breakfast after she washed them.
“Actually, I met him in Omaha shortly after his father died.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes.”
“She’s Jillian’s sister-in-law,” Cage scared me as he snuck up behind me, taking the dry pan from me.
The off-limit topic between us had been breached. I didn’t know where to go from there.
The problem was I didn’t know Jillian Knight. I knew Jessica Day—Jessica Jones. Of course they were the same person, but lives at risk and all that jazz complicated the situation. My sister-in-law was once involved romantically with Cage’s father. It was an extremely weird situation. Cage told me Jessica/Jillian contacted him after his father died. She didn’t share much because he didn’t want to know, so she offered him her overdue condolences and officially said goodbye.
I assumed he wanted to remember her as Jillian, the woman who in many ways gave his father a life, even if cancer took it in the end. I didn’t know what to say. Jessica was my family. Our relationship had nowhere to go if we could never discuss her.
“Jillian got married? That’s great.” Brooke seemed genuinely happy. “Kids?” She’d already asked more questions than Cage did.
