Chapter 13
Jamison
Exercising by means of relieving sexual frustration had proved fruitless.
Now, there was the further frustration of wondering what I had interrupted between Sadie and my dip-shit cousin.
Derrik had been leaning against the wall I’d had Sadie pressed against last night.
I had no logical reason to be jealous, she didn’t have any commitment to me.
Which was good because I wouldn’t wish a relationship with me on my greatest enemy, let alone Sadie If she wanted something with Derrik, I didn’t have a leg to stand on. Wallowing wasn’t going to help.
But then wallowing seemed to be my only option.
I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my socks.
A knock on my suite door made me pause halfway to my bathroom.
My eyebrows pinched together wondering who it could be and knowing it wouldn’t be Sadie.
Even if she were the only person I’d want to be on the other side of my door.
That the ache of being near her and not touching her was still better than the ache of not being in her presence.
Swinging the door open, my stomach flipped to find her gripping her little bag in both hands and chewing on her lip.
“Hi,” she breathed.
After a beat, she swallowed, and I realized I hadn’t said anything, just stared down at her.
“Hi,” I choked out.
She swung her arms toward my open door. “Can I come in?”
Blinking, I took a step back to make enough space for her to walk through the threshold and not let our skin touch. “Is everything okay?”
“Mmmhmm,” she hummed. Her eyes shifted around my room, taking in my laptop on the coffee table and the balcony on the outside the far wall.
I’d opened the glass door, and the breeze off the ocean moved the sheer white curtains.
The starry sky stretched endlessly over the crashing waves.
The moon’s reflection wobbled on the water’s surface. “That’s . . . gorgeous.”
I took in her silhouette against the nighttime scenery. “Yeah.”
She looked over her shoulder back at me.
“It is.”
Her shoulders were tense as she looked at me from across the room, taking in the stretch of white cotton across my torso and chest. She bit down on her lower lip, and I let myself believe in the undertones passing silently between us. I let the handle go. The door closed with a click.
“I think we should talk,” she said.
“About?” I needed her to spell it out to me, regardless of the energy cracking in the air.
“Not being platonic.”
It was a dangerous idea. I was not equipped to fight it.
“You’re giving me whiplash, woman.” There was a gravel, an almost pained tone, in my voice.
Doubt flickered in her eyes before she looked down at the floor. “Should I leave?”
Yes. The realization that I had fallen way too hard for her to keep sex and emotions separate was vividly obvious. But so was the knowledge that I missed a goodbye.
When she stopped returning my texts, and had ghosted me for another man, I hadn’t known that would be our last time. This time it would be clear.
I wanted, needed, to say a proper goodbye.
I shook my head. “No, we should talk.”
“It would just be for this weekend.”
“Okay.”
She let out a slow breath and lifted her hands to her hair to pull a little metal pin out, but her hair stayed twisted at the back of her head.
Then she pulled out a second, her fingers still searching.
She stilled when I stepped closer, taking her shoulders and turning her to face away from me.
As gently as possible, I brushed my fingers over the soft strands of her hair until I found another and removed it from the twist.
Her hands drifted to her sides.
I paused with a pin halfway free.
“It’ll be easier when we’re back home, when we’re not so . . . ” Her voice drifted off. A wavy dark strand fell and brushed her shoulder blades.
I didn’t finish her sentence, we both knew exactly what was unsaid.
One last pin came loose between my fingers.
I shoved them into my pocket. Restraining from the demand surging inside of my body, I plunged my hand into her hair.
The strands filled the space between my fingers.
I gripped a fistful to ease her to look back at me.
She rested her weight against my chest, and something tied tight inside me unspooled.
“Just promise me”—the fingertips of my free hand brushed down the column of her neck, and she shivered—”while you’re with me, you’re not thinking about someone else.”
Her eyebrows twitched, and she blinked twice.
“Only me,” I said somewhere between a demand and a plea.
“Only you.”
Those three syllables washed over me soft as a feather down my spine, sharp as her nails down my back.
I pressed a kiss to the arch of her dark eyebrow telling myself that this weekend would be enough. Nuzzling my nose into her hair, I breathed in as deeply as I could, filling my lungs with her scent. Under her sweet smell was the sharp bite of my sweat.
I groaned. Straightening, I untangled my fingers from her hair. “I need a shower. Give me ten minutes.”
“Don’t go,” she said. Turning to face me, she looked at me with heavy-lidded dreamy eyes.
“No”—I gestured down at my sweaty shirt—”I can’t touch you when I’m like this. Help yourself to anything. Grab a drink from the mini bar and watch the ocean for a while. Ten minutes.”
She pursed her lips. “Less than.”
“Fine, less than,” I promised pulling my shirt over my head as I took long strides to the bathroom with its moody dark wallpaper and glass walls surrounding the subway tiled shower.
The water was still getting hot when I stepped under it, but I didn’t want to waste a single minute that could be spent with Sadie.
My hair was barely wet when the door opened and she stepped inside the room. She stood with her hands behind her back, leaning against the wall, taking me in through the fogging glass. “Is there a reason you didn’t invite me to join?”
Because I’m a broken person who doesn’t recognize opportunities.
“Because I’m an idiot.”
Her smile filled her face right before she looked down at her bare feet. “You are . . . oblivious for someone so smart.”
“I’m not smart at all,” I argued. Nothing had felt more true as my brain went completely blank watching her take slow steps to the shower entrance.
Her dress was a blur of color against the dark walls.
She stood out like a dandelion on a lawn of grass, and I wondered how anyone would choose a blank green yard instead of a field of the bright flower and all the life it attracted.
It was as if all of my memories of her had planted and spread, filling up every corner of my mind.
No matter how many times I saw her, touched her, tasted her, I always wanted more.
Stepping over the lip, she placed her foot on the white tile.
The hem of her dress dragged on the shower floor, water climbed up darkening the fabric and weighing down her neckline.
It clung to her breasts, dipping between them.
Her nipples outlined by the wet cotton. Drops splashed off the skin of my chest and misted on her cheeks, clinging to her eyelashes.
Her lips glistened. The waves of her hair fell in dripping tendrils.
A four-letter word clung to my tongue, desperate to be whispered into existence. But I kept it to myself, knowing that wasn’t what this was. Knowing it was better that way.
My feelings might be unrequited, but I felt like I’d been resurrected. Fresh air breathed into my lungs.