Chapter 17
seventeen
KIT
Your Needs, My Needs - Noah Kahan
Jonah had made it all of five minutes before he had me pressed up against a table, hands searching, mouth exploring.
He was insatiable in all the best ways.
This time, however, we hadn’t bothered heading back down to the bedroom, instead opting for every inch of the kitchen and living room until we were spent, lying breathless in front of the fireplace.
We were on the living room rug, the blanket from the sofa pulled over us. The fire roared in the background, the heat burning against my bare skin. I didn’t care, not with Jonah lying beside me.
“Don’t fall asleep,” I murmured, noticing his breathing turn heavy.
He grumbled an unintelligible response, so I flicked him lightly on the nose.
His eyes opened wide, lips pressed together. “Just a little nap,” he said. “I need to rebuild my energy.”
“I still need that post-sex snack you promised me.”
“I thought we ate?”
“No,” I laughed. “I believe you ate. However, it was me that was the snack.”
“Oh yeah.” His smirk chased away any sign of sleepiness, his eyes relighting with a wild heat. “How about I help myself to seconds?”
Jonah rolled onto his side, his body already lowering along mine. My hands yanked at him, clawing to keep him near, hunger rumbling insistently in my stomach. If I let him begin again, there was no way I’d want him to stop.
“How about actual food?” I pushed. “I’m famished.”
His head dipped to reach my torso, looking to kiss the skin there. I pressed my hands to his chest, using up the last of my restraint on this man.
I was falling for him. I could feel it. That rush of blood, the overwhelming need, the lightness I felt around him. It had been only days, but I knew I could fall harder for him than I had with anyone else.
What did this look like after I went home? When he returned to the States? How would it work? Or would I be left with the pieces of my broken heart like the times before? I pushed the thoughts away, avoiding reality like I’d been determined to do.
“Okay,” he relented. “We can’t have you wasting away.”
Before I’d even registered what was happening, Jonah had scooped me and the blanket up in his arms, pulling me close to his body, and moved me across the living room.
The warmth of the fire was replaced by the heat of his bare chest against mine before he set me down on the breakfast bar stool, the blanket placed around me.
Jonah leaned back to the dining table, stepping into a pair of shorts he’d thrown there, before heading back to the kitchen and opening the fridge.
“What would you like? A sandwich? Some leftovers?” he listed.
“Surprise me.”
His head popped out from behind the fridge door. “You want me to choose?”
I smiled softly, taking in a stray curl of hair that was sticking out at an odd angle. “I trust you.”
Jonah rumbled about for a few more minutes, me watching his fine ass as he collected up some ingredients and laid them all out on the breakfast bar counter. He began to work, buttering some fresh bread we’d picked up from the bakery.
I used to wonder when my last carb had been consumed. Used to count calories and track micros. Not anymore. Not around him.
“So, I was thinking about…after,” he said.
“After dinner?” I asked, confused. “I mean we could eat early. I don’t mind.”
“No, not that.” He shook his head, suddenly unable to look at me, his focus on building my snack. “Like after here.”
“Oh. Right.” It made sense; this was always going to come up eventually. He also wanted to know what came next. What came after.
Up until now, I’d been trying to avoid it, and I’d achieved that briefly with the decision to stay a few more days, by giving us more time.
But it was only kicking the can down the road, and sooner or later I knew I’d have to confront it – confront that being with Jonah was exactly what I’d needed when I left London.
It wasn’t Scotland or even leaving the city, it was him.
And it was nearly over.
“I know I need to finish the book. I’ve been feeling better about it,” he admitted.
“That’s great!” I said, feeling truly excited for him. The book was important, especially with the looming deadline.
He smiled, his gaze cast down as he sliced some cheese, placing it delicately on top of the bread. “Yeah, having somebody to occupy my time this past week has really helped.”
I couldn’t help the way my heart squeezed at the thought that I had helped him as much as he’d helped me. “You’re welcome.”
“My plan was to go home after,” he continued. “Maybe I could find myself in London. I would need to sort my visa out, but there are plenty of tennis clubs down there. I’m sure I wouldn’t struggle to find a job.”
“You’d be willing to do that?” I asked. “For me?”
“I know it’s…we haven’t had a lot of time.
” He looked up at me, his dark eyes holding a hint of worry.
“And I know it’s insane to make plans, but I look at you and I wonder how I’m supposed to exist here after you leave.
” The honesty in his words, the ache in his tone, it stole the breath from my lungs. “Honestly, I’m dreading it.”
A thousand thoughts flew through my head, and I couldn’t vocalize a single one.
Instead, I was pinned by his gaze as he spoke again.
“So yeah, I’d do it for you. I’d also do it for myself, because…
” He took a moment, but I watched as the courage collected itself across his features, the resolve building. “Because I think it’s worthwhile.”
That we are worthwhile.
“I think that too,” I admitted, my voice so small I was barely sure he heard me.
Jonah tore his gaze away, and instead, with a nudge of his knuckles, he softly pushed the plate towards me. Silently, I picked up the sandwich, carefully shovelling it into my mouth. He lowered opposite me, leaning down on top of the counter.
“Thanks for this,” I said, before biting into the sandwich.
“Anything for you.”
Swallowing another mouthful, I found a shred of courage. “Let’s play it out. Because as much as I want that, I also want us to know what we’re getting into.”
Jonah straightened. “Yes, that’s smart.” He began to clean, grabbing a kitchen towel and sweeping up crumbs from the counter, as I began to map out what our life together in London could look like: finding a new favourite coffee shop, sunny afternoons on the Heath, picking out new furniture for my place to help make it ours…
“So, you move to London and start coaching,” I said. “Is that what you think you’d enjoy? Isn’t that what you were doing before the book?”
“I didn’t like it then, but I could find a job that suits me.” He kept working, maybe so he could outrun the reality of what he was committing to. “Maybe work more one-on-one with people, use some of my contacts in the professional world.”
I thought about it for a moment, seriously considered the idea, and it felt good.
However, I knew how the world of professional tennis worked all too well.
As a coach, he’d have no control. He’d be at the whim of tournaments and flight itineraries.
“If you get involved with the pros, that’s a lot of travelling, right? ”
“That’s true,” he said. “There’s options.”
“Like general lessons and camps, which you don’t enjoy?”
The faintest smile appeared on his lips, a desperate single flash, before it was gone again. “At least home would be with you.”
“I’d be travelling too,” I admitted. “I go where the job takes me, and it’s not like you could pick up and come with me. It’s a lot of late nights, long days. I was barely home last year.”
The more I talked, the more I hated every word coming out of my mouth.
Every syllable felt like another nail in the coffin, and I found myself turning desperate to see a bright side of it all, to find a way this works.
Couldn’t we stay here? Squirrel away in the Highlands together?
Ignore the world completely and just be… us?
“So, both of us travelling for work, hoping our time at home overlaps. Praying for even a few days together,” he summarized, my heart sinking painfully. He must’ve read the pain on my face, because he lowered his voice an octave or two, a gentle whisper as he said, “I’m playing it out.”
“I know. I just hate it,” I admitted. I swallowed down my fear, trying to make us face the secret I’d been holding back from him. “And then there’s the other thing.”
His face slacked, like he braced himself for another hit he couldn’t take. “What?”
“Do you want kids?” I asked.
I already knew the answer, I’d seen it on his face at Archie’s when he was playing with their children. He’d said he’d imagined having a big family like his own. He wanted the chaos and the noise and the screaming and the sticky hands.
“You don’t?” His voice cracked, and all I could do was shake my head in response. His shoulders fell, and I felt my heart shatter in my chest. “I mean, it wouldn’t be for years, and I’m sure we could find a way around the modelling. There are options.”
I shook my head again. “No, it’s not about my career.”
“It doesn’t have to be this big deal,” he reasoned. “I could change my mind.”
He could change his mind, but I never would.
I looked down at my plate. The bites of the sandwich I’d managed to swallow now felt like lead in my stomach. I needed something to take the edge off this conversation. Wine. A cigarette. A line of coke. Anything to change the way I felt, to take this heavy weight off my shoulders.
How do I explain?
How do I tell him?
How couldn’t he judge me?
I’d never told anyone, but I owed him this explanation. If we were considering this thing between us to become a long-term relationship, if we were playing it out, undergoing the postmortem while the patient was still breathing, then he needed to know.
“I already have a kid.”