Damn, is she breathtaking.
I pull her close to me, and she kisses me long and hard. Her legs wrap around my torso from where she sits on the stool. She guides my touch below the fabric of the shirt.
If my mind had been anywhere else, it sure isn’t now. The rush of blood to my lower region demands special attention. It’s not so much that she’s wearingmyjersey. It’s the fact thatshe’swearing my jersey.
We move to the couch. We can’t get enough of one another. I undo the buttons to my shirt and peel it off, my belt and slacks not far behind, and eventually, Jordan tosses my jersey aside. I have access to every inch of her bare skin, and it’s unreal. The meticulous work of an omnipotent sculptor, from the tattoos to that scar to the smile lines by her eyes. I almost pause for a moment just to take her in.
‘What?’ she breathes, a grin playing at her lips.
‘Just you.’
I kiss her again, and again. The throw hanging over the back of the couch slides down, and I pull it over the both of us.
I could worship this woman day and night, and it wouldn’t be enough to express the way she dulls the hurt. The way she’s opened the doors to my heart and taught me to trust.
‘What if I asked you to put on my jersey and let me draw you like one of my French girls?’
I nearly double over in hysterics until I realize I can’t really do that with Jordan’s head on my chest. It’s a hell of a task lying down, but I’m wheezing my way through laughter. Jordan is the very proud owner of the world’s most chaotic pillow talk. ‘Please,’ I manage to choke out, ‘never change.’
She props her chin up on my chest, with her arms in front of her, so that all I can see are her eyes. Almond-shaped, rimmed in thick eyelashes that fan out so effortlessly I still can’t believe they’re real. Dark chocolate irises with flecks of a paler brown.Her eyebrows furrow, and she rolls the most beautiful eyes I’ve seen in my life. ‘Answer the question, Romeo-oh-Romeo.’
‘I’d jump off a bridge if you told me to. With bells on.’
Jordan jerks back in surprise, her hands flat against my chest, eyes wide. ‘If I told you to jump off a bridge, I would hope you’d call 9-1-1 and run far and fast from me.’
‘I would do whatever you told me to.’ I take her face in my hands, sweep a stray strand of hair from her cheek. ‘Just say the word.’
She swats at my hand, giving one of the hot-pink hairbands on my wrist a snap with a laugh. ‘Don’t go jumping off any bridges. Please.’
I nod, and she smiles, propping her chin back up on my chest. She traces the shape of a heart, right above the spot where I would think my actual heart lies. ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Is it about one of your French girls?’
‘Stop it!’ She buries her face in her hands with a barely concealed cackle, before looking back up at me. ‘Listen. From my first kiss, first date, first time, everything … it was always to forget. So I fell into this cycle of hook-ups and hopping from one bad date to another, away games, frat parties, all of that.’ She sighs, and her fingers trace that same heart shape, over and over. ‘I never let myself get this close to someone. I learned I could forget about all the shit I was responsible for. But with you … it doesn’t feel like forgetting. When I’m with you, I get to remember.’
I’m overwhelmed by her words, but it doesn’t feel constricting. It feels like a warm embrace, the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. ‘Remember what?’
She lifts her head and presses a gentle kiss to my chest, aslight as the petals of a flower. ‘Baby, I remember what it feels like to be alive.’
Jordan shifts against me, her cheek pressed to my heart, and her eyes slowly flutter closed, listening to each beat, maybe. But she couldn’t be more right. I wrap an arm around her, and I feel her back rise and fall with each breath. My thumb brushes her just-slightly-freckled shoulder through her veil of curly black hair. To be alive. To feel so free when she’s near me, and even when she’s not, to hear her voice in my head, to see something that reminds me of her, and to see her face, her beautiful eyes, wherever I go. To take in the excitement in Tali’s voice when she talks about riding with Jordan, to know that my daughter will have a strong woman to look up to.
Being alive. It feels like heaven.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Step into the Crosshairs
Jordan
Ihad no idea that the youth karate circuit was such a feral event. As someone with youth sports experience and youth rodeo experience I should, of course, have been better at seeing that kind of thing coming, but it’s not enough to prepare me for the tight one the environment slaps me when I step into the gym with Rod.
I think there is something nice about being outdoors for lacrosse most of the time, because the six blue-and-red mat rings crammed into the high-school gymnasium immediately freak me out. Each is running a different event, although primarily the littles right now, not too terrifying. The parents are the scariest part. They cling to the ropes that separate audience from students, screaming bloody murder and what I assume has to be some sort of unauthorized coaching advice.The bleachers are totally packed with family members who didn’t make it down to the rings, many of whom are still screaming bloody murder, anyway. A startling portion of the population wears legitimate karate team merchandise. Many tote poster-board signs.
‘When you said I’d need a drink before this,’ I mutter under my breath to Rod, ‘I thought you were kidding.’
He grimaces, raking his dark hair back as he scopes out the bleachers for an empty spot. The joys of children’s sports. ‘Yep. You thought lax weekends were bad, huh?’
‘I take it all back.’ Bagels in hand, we work our way to a fairly decent seat towards the front from which we’ll be able to watch Tali compete in sparring for the first time. I’ve been warned the gear dwarfs the children and they look like Pillsbury Doughboys each trying to land one on the other. It’s allegedly extremely adorable.
