Chapter 21
Adam
Iwaved to Kenny and Cookie, who were waiting on a late meeting with one of our overseas team members to start and shouldered my bag.
Anticipation and a twinge of nerves kicked at me, but I buried all of it. I’d pep talked myself into this evening for the last few days, basically since the minute I’d left Jo’s apartment on Saturday, and I wasn’t about to let my default settings take over.
I didn’t need to fall into the trap of thinking about touching Jo, or kissing her, or being close to her and how much I wanted to do that again. I certainly shouldn’t be allowing snapshots of those fleeting moments together pepper my mind at odd intervals throughout the day. I definitely wasn’t in a position to be wanting more of that.
No. Because I’d resolved to return to the friendzone with lovely, intelligent, creative, friendly, kind, beautiful Jo. Friendzone.
And while it might’ve seemed na?ve that after sharing a mind-bending kiss like we had, we could return to friendship without anything else in the way, but I had a plan. I’d simply tell her the truth.
First, I’d tell her I was divorced. She might’ve known this already, but the more we interacted, the more I suspected Ethan hadn’t mentioned it. If he hadn’t, no one else had. Second, I’d make clear it was my fault.
I could just hear Ethan and Bruce and any number of my friends suggesting that no, it wasn’t my fault. Or at least, it wasn’t only my fault. To be fair, they were right, and so maybe I’d make sure she knew it was a two-way street and it still dead-ended in both directions.
She would likely be disinterested enough by then that it’d be no issue, but if she somehow got past those issues, I’d… think of something else.
Beast waved from his truck, where he piled in but left the door open. I jogged down the front steps of the Saint building and waited until I got close enough we wouldn’t be overheard, knowing he was intensely private.
“How’s your grandma?”
“She’s okay. Thanks.”
A thousand realities could be loaded behind those words, and he wasn’t likely to tell me. If Dorian couldn’t bring himself to find words at times, Jude simply wouldn’t, although sometimes, I suspected his brutish persona was more a result of a shield he relied on than his genuine personality. Maybe that was the Pollyanna in me, and I could just hear Jess’s eyes rolling from wherever she was in town.
“See you tomorrow,” I said, and he gave me a signature nonverbal response back.
I didn’t worry about him like I did Dorian. Beast showed up, he worked, he communicated when the mission or meeting called for it. He became a lesser version of himself around Jess, true, and we’d need to figure out a way forward now that she was back, and he was still off the travel list. But I hoped I wasn’t giving him too much credit—that I wasn’t assuming he was okay when he wasn’t. He had a lot on his shoulders.
I could’ve gone home and changed, but we wore utility pants and plaid shirts to work most days, so unless I was going for jeans, I wasn’t going to get more comfortable. Sure, shorts and a T-shirt would feel nice on a hot late-June evening, but I didn’t feel like waiting. I’d psyched myself up to feel friendliness and affection for Jo, not… other things.
Passion.
Desire.
Hope.
Nope! Not those things.
After dropping my bag in my car, I locked it and walked to Jo’s since it was only a few minutes away on foot. I’d never imagined living in such a small town, but now that I’d settled in and felt like it was my town, I loved it.
I took the stairs to her floor two at a time, and by the time I reached her door, my heart was racing. From the stairs, obviously.
“Hey. You got here fast,” she said, a wide smile on her lovely face.
Okay, let’s stop thinking about how pretty she is, because that’s not going to help things.
“I came straight here.”
Her smile grew impossibly larger. “I’m glad you did.”
Something in my chest squeezed mercilessly, the beauty of her absolutely wrecking my composure and the feeble attempts to mind control myself into believing I didn’t have any feelings for her beyond friendly ones.
“Me, too.” My words were soft, and my eyes fell to her lips and then my brain kicked in.
“Come in,” she said, fortunately right as I remembered the whole goal of tonight.
Clear the air, then draw the lines. Clear the air, then draw the lines.
But then, I registered the silky-looking dress in a navy color swishing against her legs, and I was tracing the line of the zipper up her back to where it ended a hands width from her neck, revealing the delicate ridges of her spine.
Nope. Lines. Drawing lines. Clearing air.
“I was glad you wanted to get together after the other night,” she said as she turned, fingers laced together in front of her in the first show of genuine uncertainty I’d ever seen from her.
Okay, we’ll dive right in.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. And I want to be clear, I’m not sorry because you don’t deserve to be kissed and kissed well. I’m sorry because I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, and I don’t want things between us to be confusing.”
She blinked, her brow furrowed. “Can you explain that to me? I’m not sure what you mean when you say you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. It feels like I’m missing something, especially when you say it like that—with all the ‘you deserved to be kissed and kissed well’ business.”
I pushed out an exhale, willing myself to find the right words and not sound like a total jerk here. When I didn’t respond right away, she continued.
“In my head, we’re both consenting, single adults who like each other and have a nice friendship and a solid helping of physical chemistry, so this makes a lot of sense. But clearly, I’m not seeing the whole picture.”
I nodded to the couch and she sat, then I took the spot in the chair perpendicular to it. “Did you know I was married before? That I’m divorced?”
Her brows popped up. “I didn’t.”
I nodded. “Yeah. And the marriage failed because of both me and my ex.”
“That makes sense. Seems like it’s rarely just one person, right?” She tucked her hands between her knees and waited patiently.
“It was a gradual slide into being barely roommates. And in retrospect, we never should’ve gotten married. But I was young, and going into the military gives you this feeling that you’re grown—you’ve got a salary and benefits and a housing allowance if you move out of the barracks. It feels normal to get married at twenty.” I shook my head, remembering the way I felt like I had everything together. I’d been on my own for more than two years by then, so I thought I knew everything.
“That is really young. How long were you guys married?” she asked, the disinterest or shutdown I’d anticipated not hitting yet.
“Almost five years. I deployed a couple times, so that probably allowed us to delay the reality that we didn’t know each other. Some of it’s a normal part of leaving for a year and coming back—you have to reintegrate. I remember thinking it was normal when I didn’t feel close to her, or even like I wanted to be…” I ran a hand through my hair. “Do you see what I’m saying?”
The compassion on her face was almost unbearable. She scooted to the edge of the couch and reached for my hand. I didn’t want to touch her, to be comforted by her, and yet nothing in my arsenal of personal willpower could make me turn her away.
“I see that you were young and tried to do one of the hardest things two people can do, and it didn’t work out. I see you accepting responsibility for your part in it, and maybe a little more than your part. And I see you punishing yourself even now, more than a decade later, for something you did in another phase of your life.”
Her big brown eyes glittered with so much care and concern for me and not an ounce of the disinterest or worry for herself I needed to see.
“You’re missing my point, and that’s no surprise because you’re so intent on seeing the good in people and being kind, I should’ve guessed you’d see this as a mistake in my past. But Josie, I’ve had other relationships, and they failed, too.”
Didn’t she get it? I didn’t know how to do this. I didn’t know how to be with someone and give them everything.
“I appreciate the backhanded compliment, I think, but I’d like to point out that I, too, have failed at relationships. Hence the reason I’m single.”
I let my face speak for me in response because it wasn’t at all the same.
Her lips twitched and a streak of longing shot through me like a shooting star, wishing to see the smile she hid away.
“My question for you is this—are you the same person you were when you married her?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Of course not. Because it’s been almost twenty years since then. You’re not a spring chicken anymore, Adam, honey,” she said, shaking her head and tsking.
It was so ridiculous, I laughed again but grasped onto the thread. “Well, that’s another reason. I’m a decade older than you. At twenty-eight, I was fumbling around like an idiot, still obsessed with work and unable to prioritize whomever I was dating enough to make it last.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Well, the good news here is, I’m not an idiot. I’ve always been an old soul. I’m mildly obsessed with my work, but I admire yours. And handy enough, we work five minutes from each other.”
For some reason, this response, of all of them, cut through my determination to shut things down. She had her own life, her own goals, and she wasn’t going to begrudge me mine. She was also absolutely one of the smartest people I knew and her point landed—I might’ve been an idiot at her age, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know her own mind now.
“You’ve really thought about this. Us.” The thud of my heart nearly shook me as I sat there on the edge of my seat, my hand still cradled in hers.
She smiled softly. “I have. And I think that while all your excuses are understandably concerns, they are just that—excuses. I think we should give this a shot.”
My throat tightened and I cleared it. “You deserve so much?—”
Her hands squeezed mine and she shook her head slowly, eyes locked on mine. “Let’s let me decide what I deserve, okay? I deserve an honorable man who is good and thoughtful and kind of cute.”
My brows dropped, and she grinned before admitting, “Okay, maybe more than kind of.”
My stomach clenched, the sensation I was standing on the edge of something huge and deadly and life-giving bursting in my head.
Marlee’s words snuck back in. “You’ll never change…”
Had I given them too much power? For so long, I’d accepted them as fact, and yet I’d just admitted I wasn’t the same person. Who was the same at twenty and nearly forty?
Still, the thought of hurting this woman who was so loving and full of life and joy made my heart shrivel up.
“Jo, I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t hurt you,” I said, my last-ditch effort here.
Her eyes welled with tears in an instant, the emotion so quick to rise to the surface, I didn’t know what to do. But she brought my hand to her chest and flattened it against her sternum. The smooth, thin skin there was warm against my fingers, the silk of her dress at my palm an unfortunate impediment, and the contact drop-kicked my breath.
“You’ll hurt me more if you refuse to take a chance on yourself. I know I’m not the only one who feels this…”
Her chest rose and fell under my hand, and whatever part of me that had resisted this, resisted her, crumbled.
“I’m going to mess up. I don’t know how to do this,” I said, my words ragged.
“Me, too. But I’d also like to suggest that the way you’ve been a friend to me has been wonderful. The way you’re a friend to so many people. And I think, if we just do that but enjoy the other aspects of being together, too, it’ll work out.”
She bit her lip, and a flood of images detailing the other aspects crashed through my brain.
There was no way this would work in the long run—was there? She was completely wonderful, and I would never forgive myself if I hurt her. But what if we dated for a while and we got to connect and I could experience what it was like to be with someone as full of joy and beauty as Jo, and then when she was ready, we’d move on. Inevitably and rightly so, she’d move on. When she figured out I couldn’t put her first in the long term…
I’d let her go.
I could accept that. It would be better for her, too. She could have this, whatever it was between us, like she wanted, and then when it stopped being best for her, she could be free.
It could work.
Or maybe, it could be more than that. More than just for now. Maybe this sense of inevitability with her means more than just attraction.What happened at twenty didn’t need to repeat itself at nearly forty… Another shot of hope weaved through me.
So I agreed. “Okay. Okay. Let’s… try.”
She’d want marriage and babies, and I hadn’t planned on that. I’d planned the opposite. And living with a certain plan in mind for over thirteen years couldn’t simply shift in a matter of minutes in a conversation.
It wasn’t fair to let her think I’d miraculously shed all my doubts and hang-ups born out of very real failure and lessons learned, and I had to make sure she got that. “Jo, you understand what you’re getting into here? I’m not?—”
“I do. I know. And I’m not scared.”
She smiled, and we both moved. I slipped the hand already on her up and around her neck to the back of her head, drawing her closer even as she climbed onto my lap and took my face in her hands. We were kissing before my brain could fully register the choice, like the gravity in the room drew us to each other instead of back to earth.
After far too few intoxicating seconds of kissing, she pulled back, my head still in her hands.
“I think, as much as it pains me to say it, we should move slowly.”
I nodded, knowing this was the wise course even though a small insurrection occurred in half my brain and planned to stage a coup on the matter. But realistically, this was absolutely how we should proceed.
I wouldn’t focus on that now, but moving slow was prudent. Maybe it would last, but if it didn’t, this was safer—better for us both.
The look she gave me was so sincere and sweet as she said, “You talked about rushing, and while I think comparing what you did as a twenty-year-old to anything going on here isn’t necessarily helpful, I’m guessing you’ll trust yourself more if we’re more purposeful.”
“I want you to trust me, too,” I said, realizing the truth of that ran deep.
She pressed another kiss to my lips. “I already do. You just need to catch up.”