Chapter 23
ELIJAH
Today’s session with Connie was brutal. The late night and early morning left my head sludgy. Training almost killed me. Following it up with an hour of talking about my parents—my father and his ministry, in particular—has me ready to pass the fuck out the second I arrive home.
I pause halfway to my door. The stillness and quiet waiting for me in my apartment appeal to my whirring mind.
However, the wrench in my chest and gut pulls me to Jayden’s door instead.
I can’t fight it when my feet plant on his Goonies doormat with a bright yellow Hey you guys!
and a portrait of Sloth that makes me chuckle.
It’s an accurate portrait of my mind right now.
My hand is halfway to the doorbell when the door swings open and Jayden leans into the doorjamb. A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth as he holds his copy of Dorian Gray open on his chest.
“I was about to ring the doorbell.”
Jayden chuckles. “And I got bored of waiting for you to do it.”
“Somebody needs to learn patience,” I tease when he grasps my forearm and pulls me through the door.
Even though it’s still light outside, the curtains are closed, and the glimmer of the Christmas tree lights warms the living area as I trudge through the apartment. Dropping my gym bag on the floor, I perch on a stool at the breakfast bar.
“Is everything okay?” JJ whispers, slowly sinking onto the stool next to mine. “Are you feeling all right?”
I take a moment to think through my reply. It kills me to lie to him, but the truth doesn’t feel like an option right now. It’s complicated and winding, and I don’t want to bring my shit into his place.
It’s peaceful here. I can leave my demons at the door and breathe.
“Eli…”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Okay.” Jayden nods and pushes to his feet.
I watch him prepare a small teapot with loose leaves while the electric kettle boils.
Placing the hive-shaped honey pot on the counter, along with an empty, holly-decorated cup in front of me, he tops up the teapot with boiling water and comes back to sit beside me.
It’s obvious he’s purposefully holding back.
The tension locking his body in place is palpable.
I hate myself for being relieved that he’s not touching me. I hate that it’s even a thought crossing my mind as I observe the way he’s toying with the lid of the teapot.
“Since when do you have a teapot?”
Jayden side-glances at me. His cheeks flame a cherry-popsicle red that has my chest doing funny things.
“Well, there’s some unsavory shit in those tea bags you use. Like bleach and stuff they use in the mesh… or whatever.”
Oh. The thrum behind my ribs stutters. “Who told you that?”
“The internet.”
“Isn’t it a common fact that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet?” I don’t know why I’m teasing him, except that the atmosphere is tight and the air is sort of hard to breathe.
JJ shrugs. The color staining his cheeks percolates to the tips of his ears while I keep watching him trace the curve of the stainless-steel pot with his thumb.
He doesn’t let the silence stretch for long before he says, “It’s an Ayurvedic blend. I found it online when I was researching why anyone would prefer tea over coffee.”
“There are more tea options than coffee options, for one.”
Jayden spins on his stool to look at me. His brow is cocked with an amused expression. His eyes are bright, and it’s not the same as the color slowly fading from his face—the glint is all mischief. More green than gold.
“Too many, if you ask me,” he says, gaze flashing to my hands as I keep cracking my fingers. “I mean, there are like a bazillion kinds of green tea. I gave up trying to figure out which one I should get because it was giving me a fucking migraine.”
“You don’t drink green tea.”
“I wasn’t getting it for me.” He gnaws on his lip, and that glorious cherry glow brightens again. “I don’t know how you drink that stuff. Tastes like pond water.”
“You were getting it for me…”
“Duh,” he retorts with a roll of his eyes. “You’re the only one who drinks it. Fin and I can’t—pond water. Pretty certain she says it tastes like rotten fish guts or something…”
“What?” I burst out laughing at the effeminate voice he tries to put on… and fails, because his timber is too gravelly and deep.
“I don’t know how you drink it, and I gave up trying to figure it out, so I got this blend instead. It’s meant to be good for the mind. Like, calming and shit.”
“Calming and shit,” I echo his remark because I can’t figure out what to say for the life of me.
There’s something in my chest coiling and pulling and vibrating, and I don’t know what to do with it—with the sensation or the way it’s got my breath and my words sticking together at the back of my throat where my logic is all jammed.
“Well, a-a-are you going to pour me a cup?”
Jayden nods. “It’s a quiet-mind blend. Vanilla, fig, rooibos, and chamomile.”
“Rooibos.” My grandmother drinks it all the time because it’s naturally caffeine-free, and the Lord’s temple should not be tainted.
The thought of her shudders all the way from the top of my head to the soles of my feet in an icy wave. Every cut that’s ever graced my voice sparks with a bone-deep stab.
“Shit, you don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it,” he says, stopping mid-pour.
Naturally, my hand grasps his, tilting it so that he continues pouring the tea into my Christmas cup. “I haven’t tried it yet, JJ.”
Every other sensation needling my body fades at the contact. I only feel him—his warmth, and the effect it has on me. That Jayden has on me.
He’s a balm that soothes every wound I’ve ever had. When he puts the teapot down, I reach for his hand again. I’m desperate to be tethered to something other than the past.
“Eli,” he whispers my name with a questioning glance, as though he’s afraid to reciprocate the tightness of my grip on him.
“I’m here, Jayden.”
“I know.”
“Like you asked. You know… to give you the chance to… to…”
Jayden’s hand crushes mine. No words. No fuss.
He simply holds me in silence. That one touch becomes the buoy I desperately need.
A reminder that I’m not that kid stuck in Havenview.
I’m not the teenager scared to act on his feelings because the Lord might smite me—or worse, his grandmother might whip the skin off his bones.
“It was hard today,” I whisper, picking up the tea and swirling it while Jayden encapsulates my other hand in both of his. “Talking to Connie. It was fucking hard today. That one hour felt like forever. Like I was suffocating for an eternity.”
“You’re not suffocating, Sweetheart. Sometimes it hurts to breathe, too.”
I look at him, and yeah, he’s right. It does hurt to breathe right now. Like there’s a wound in my chest, and the air is slicing it open again.
“I… JJ… it felt too real today. It finally hit me that I’ve never been enough for them.”
I take a quick sip of the tea, trying to escape the sweet, nutty taste of the rooibos, only to go back for more when the fruitiness of the fig lingers on my tongue. It’s like proof that I don’t need that—Jayden makes everything better.
“I don’t know why it hurt, because the truth is, I’ve never wanted to be enough. I never wanted to be someone they wanted to hold on to. Maybe that’s why they never loved me like parents should love their child. Maybe… maybe… I don’t know…”
“We are enough for the people who matter. The ones who deserve us.” I chance a glance at him. “You are so much more than enough to me, Eli… to Finley.”
“But you deserve better. Finley deserves more than…”
“More than?”
“Me… I guess.”
“That’s your opinion,” he says with a shrug, leaning closer, slowly, until his lips hover over my cheek and his breaths burn against my skin.
“And although you are entitled to your opinion, I decide who deserves me. Who deserves my time—” he deposits a kiss on my cheekbone.
“—and who deserves my energy—” another kiss.
“—but most of all, who deserves my love.”
I lift my face to his. “Jayden…”
“It’s you, Eli,” JJ murmurs over my parted lips. One of his hands grips my knee, spinning my stool to face him. “I decide you deserve me. I decide that you are so beyond enough for me.”
“Okay.”
“Oh-kay.”
Every inch of my body is trembling. Waiting for him to close the distance between us.
God, he’s so close. So close I can taste him—licorice and… home. Jayden tastes like everything warm, and comforting, and wholesome. He feels like that first moment you arrive home and take your first breath of safety.
Jayden is everything I never knew I could have.
He and Finley are all I’ve ever needed, and Connie is right.
All this time, I’ve allowed who my father is—what he represents, the expectations of the name I was born into—to dictate what I can and can’t have.
I’ve allowed the guilt of not fitting their mold to diminish my worth, and I think that maybe I deserve more. I deserve better from myself.
“JJ…”
“Yes, Sweetheart?”
“I want you to kiss me now.”
His mouth is on mine in an instant with a garbled, “Thank fuck.”
Rough hands grasp either side of my face—hard and possessive—with the swirl of his tongue over mine. Each roll of his lips pulls me deeper into him. I brace my hands on his thighs and let him take everything he wants from me.
It feels good to be this wanted and needed—from the bite of his nails on my jaw to the rake of his teeth on my lips and the groans that vibrate down my throat, filling my chest, to bursting with his affection. With his love. And—
“Fuck.” Jayden pulls away with a growl.
He’s heaving. I’m heaving. We’re equally breathless, and the burn of his stubble on my jaw is screaming for more. More kissing. More touching. More friction.