13. Jessika
THIRTEEN
JESSIKA
We go to Morgan's trailer again.
This time I know what I'm looking for.
I go through everything systematically, the bookshelves, the kitchen drawers, the cabinet under the bathroom sink, with the methodical patience of someone who has spent years looking for evidence in documents and knowing that the smallest thing can be the most significant.
Grant watches the door and the access road.
In the pocket of a field jacket hanging behind the bathroom door, I find a receipt.
It's wrinkled, edges soft from being handled repeatedly. A gas station receipt from a station in Whitmore County, Phelps Fuel, Highway 34, dated four months ago. On the back, in Morgan's handwriting, a set of GPS coordinates.
I hold it up.
Grant crosses the small space and looks at it.
"That's north," he says immediately. "Past the county line."
"I know." I look at the coordinates. "This is his handwriting. He wrote these coordinates himself and left them here." I think. "Or he wasn't sure he was leaving for good. He left something to find if someone came looking."
"He left it for me," Grant says. "He knew I had a key."
Something about the specific intimacy of that, Morgan trusting Grant enough to leave a map to his hiding place, moves through my chest.
Grant's jaw works slightly. "He mentioned you," he says after a pause. "When we talked last year. Said he said he hoped you'd come home again someday. That you'd been gone too long."
I look at the receipt.
"He also said," Grant continues carefully, "that he wronged you. The way he told things when you testified, the way he let the story land on me the way it did, he knew he done that. He was—" A pause. "He carried it."
"He was sick," I say. "The bipolar disorder, unmanaged for that long, mixed with use, he wasn't?—"
"He knew, though." Grant's voice is gentle. "He knew, and he was ashamed. And shame can make people stay away when they should come back."
I carefully fold the receipt and put it in my jacket pocket.
It's two in the morning and the house is quiet and I'm sitting on the porch steps with a blanket and the particular darkness of a rural October night pressing in warm and close despite the cold.
I've been replaying the courtroom.
I do this sometimes, I did it a lot in the early days, before the marriage and the Atlanta years smoothed over it, this specific cinematic recall of standing in the witness box in my gray blazer with my heart hammering and my voice completely controlled, the way I'd been taught, and saying the things I believed to be true.
I believed them.
That's the part that's hardest to hold.
I was young and I believed what I said and I was wrong, not in a malicious way, not in a way I could have known to avoid, but wrong in the particular way that happens when you take partial evidence and a family's worth of fear and grief and turn it into testimony.
You can tell the truth and still build toward the wrong conclusion.
I think about Morgan's prescription bottles.
Lithium and quetiapine.
I called Dr. Chandra, the psychiatrist on the label. She couldn't tell me much, patient confidentiality, but she confirmed that Morgan had been her patient and that he'd been doing well on his medication regimen until about eight months ago when contact stopped.
I hear a footstep on the gravel and I turn, and Grant is standing at the bottom of the drive.
I stare at him.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
"I was—" He stops. Looks at me sitting on the steps with my blanket. "Driving past."
"Grant. It's two AM."
"Couldn't sleep."
I look at him for a long moment. He's in the same work jacket and jeans he always seems to be in, hands in his jacket pockets, and there's something about him standing in the dark drive looking up at me on the porch that is sexy.
"Come sit down," I say.
He does. On the step beside me, close enough that the warmth of him is present in the cold air.
We're quiet for a while. The kind of quiet that exists between people who have things they're working up to.
"The night you testified," he says finally. Quiet and direct. "I never hated you for it."
I look at him sideways.
"I was angry," he says. "For years, I was angry. But I understood it. You loved your brother. You were scared. You picked up the piece of evidence you had and you held on." He pauses. "That's just love working with limited information."
"That's generous."
"It's accurate."
I pull the blanket tighter.
"I used to hate you," I admit. “Or, I told myself I did.
After the divorce, when I was rearranging everything, looking at my life and deciding what was real and what I'd convinced myself of—" I stop.
"I realized I never really hated you. I hated what I thought you'd done. Those are different things."
"They usually are," he says.
A silence.
"I thought about you too," I say. Very quiet. "In those years. Not constantly. But the way you think about something you did wrong. The way it comes back."
He's quiet.
"I'm sorry," I say again. Knowing, as I said it at the dinner table too, that it doesn't resolve anything. "I know that doesn't fix what happened."
"No," he agrees. "It doesn't fix it." A pause. "But it helps."
We sit in the dark for a long time.
The stars are remarkable out here, away from city light, a fact I forgot in fourteen Atlanta years and keep rediscovering. I look up at them and think about the complicated mercy of being somewhere you know, even when what you know there is pain.
"You think this county is going to let you alone?" I ask. "If we expose what Holcomb's been doing? If Morgan comes back and testifies, if everything comes out?—"
"No," he says simply. "But it might let Morgan alone. And that's the part that matters."
I look at him.
"You're willing to be the lightning rod," I say. "You've always been the lightning rod for this."
He meets my eyes in the dark. "Some people just attract it."
"Don't—" I stop. "Don't be fatalistic about yourself."
He almost smiles.
"Grant." My voice is quiet. "What do you actually want? For yourself. Not for Morgan or the ranch or, not the useful-person role you've built. What do you want?"
A long pause.
He looks up at the stars.
"Boring things," he says finally. "I want a morning where I wake up and the first thought isn't about using.
I want enough days like this in a row that I stop counting how many in a row.
" He pauses. "I want to work on engines and not have deputies look at me like I'm about to cause property damage. "
"And?" I say softly.
He's quiet.
"Grant."
He looks at me.
His eyes in the dark are complicated and guarded and somewhere underneath all of it, very honest.
"And I want—" He stops.
He doesn't finish.
But in the dark on the porch steps with the blanket between us and the cold air and the stars overhead, I hear what he doesn't say the way I used to hear things I shouldn't know.
I don't push.
But I hold it.
The cool night air wrapped around us like a secret as we sat on the front porch at two in the morning.
The only sound we hear is the distant hum of crickets. Quiet night.
Grant’s hand brushed mine, his fingers warm and tentative, sending a shiver up my arm that had nothing to do with the chill. I looked up at him, his face half-shadowed in the moonlight, those deep eyes locked on mine with a tenderness that made my heart ache.
“Jessika,” he whispered, his voice rough with longing. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I moved closer, my body drawn to his like a magnet.
Our lips met first, soft, exploratory, a gentle press that deepened slowly.
His mouth was warm, tasting faintly of wine.
I parted my lips, inviting his tongue to dance with mine, and he responded with such care, as if savoring every second.
My hands slid up his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath his shirt.
We kissed like that for what felt like hours, bodies pressing closer, hips aligning in a slow grind that made heat pool low in my belly.
His hands roamed my back, down to the curve of my ass, squeezing gently, pulling me against the growing hardness in his jeans.
I moaned softly into his mouth, my nipples tightening against the thin fabric of my shirt.
“Inside,” I breathed, breaking the kiss just enough to speak. “Upstairs. My room.”
He nodded, his eyes dark with desire. We slipped through the front door quietly, the house silent around us. His hand stayed laced with mine as we climbed the stairs, each step heightening the anticipation. My pulse raced, thighs already slick with want.
In my room, the door clicked shut behind us. Moonlight filtered through the curtains, casting a silvery glow over the bed. I turned to him, and he cupped my face, kissing me again, deeper now, more urgent but still tender.
He slid my shirt over my head inch by inch, exposing my skin for his eyes. He slip my pants down until the pooled at my feet, leaving me in just my lace bra and panties.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, his lips trailing down my neck, sucking lightly at the pulse point there. I arched into him, fingers threading through his hair. He unclasped my bra with practiced ease, letting it fall away.
His mouth found my breast immediately, tongue circling my hard nipple before drawing it in, sucking with gentle pressure that made me gasp. “Grant, yes.”
I tugged at his shirt, pulling it over his head to reveal the lean muscles of his chest, the faint trail of hair leading down.
My hands explored him greedily, tracing every ridge, feeling him tremble under my touch.
I dropped to my knees, unzipping his jeans and freeing his cock.
It sprang out, thick and hard, the head already glistening with precum.
I looked up at him, meeting his eyes as I took him into my mouth.
He groaned, hands gentle in my hair. “Fuck, Jessika, your mouth feels so good.”
I sucked him tenderly, swirling my tongue around the shaft, taking him deeper until he hit the back of my throat. I bobbed slowly, savoring the salty taste of him, the way his thighs tensed.
My pussy throbbed, aching to be filled.
After a few minutes, he pulled me up, kissing me deeply, tasting himself on my tongue. We moved to the bed, collapsing unto the soft sheets. He hooked his fingers into my panties and slid them down my legs, his eyes devouring my bare cunt. “So wet for me already,” he whispered, parting my thighs.
His mouth descended, tongue tracing my folds with exquisite care. He licked from my entrance up to my clit, circling it slowly, sucking the sensitive nub between his lips. I cried out, hips bucking gently against his face. “Oh god, Grant, right there.”
He slipped a finger a finger inside me, then two, curling them to stroke that perfect spot while his tongue worked my clit. The pleasure built in waves, tender and overwhelming. My hands fisted the sheets as I came, shuddering, my juices coating his fingers and chin.
He kissed his way up my body, positioning himself between my legs. His cock nudged my slick entrance, rubbing against my folds teasingly. “I need you,” I whispered, wrapping my legs around him.
Grant pushed in slowly, inch by inch, stretching my tight pussy around his thick shaft.
We both moaned as he bottomed out, buried deep inside me.
He stayed there for a moment, forehead pressed to mine, eyes locked.
“You feel incredible,” he said softly. Then he began to move, long, slow thrusts that made me feel every ridge, every vein of his cock sliding in and out of my dripping pussy.
I met his rhythm, hips rising to take him deeper.
Our bodies moved together in perfect sync, skin slick with sweat, the sound of our gentle fucking filled the room, wet slaps, breathy moans, whispered names.
He kissed me through it all, his hands caressing my breasts, pinching my nipples lightly.
I reached down, rubbing my clit as he fucked me, the dual sensations pushing me toward the edge again.
“Faster,” I begged. He obliged, picking up the pace, balls slapping against my ass with each thrust, his cock hitting that sweet spot inside me over and over. “I’m gonna cum,” I gasped.
“Cum for me baby,” he urged, grinding deep. My orgasm crashed over me, pussy clenching around his shaft, milking him as waves of pleasure rippled through my body. He followed soon after, during himself to the hilt and spilling inside me with a low groan, hot cum flooding my pussy.
We stayed joined like that, panting, kissing softly. But we weren’t done. He rolled us so I was on top, his cock half-hard inside me. I rode him slowly, grinding my clit against his pelvis, feeling him harden fully again. His hands gripped my hips, guiding me, thumbs stroking my hair tenderly.
“God, Jessika, I love watching you like this,” he said, eyes roaming my body as I bounced on his dick. My tits swayed with the motion, and he sat up to capture one in his mouth, sucking while I fucked him. The angle let him go even deeper, his cock stretching my walls perfectly.
I leaned forward, kissing him as I rode harder, our bodies slapping together. Sweat glistened between us. He reached between us, thumb circling my clit, and I shattered again, crying into his mouth as my pussy spasmed around him.
He flipped us once more, this time entering me from behind.
Spooned closer, his chest to my back, he thrust into my soaked pussy with long strokes.
One hand cupped my breast, the other rubbed my clit.
“You’re so tight, so perfect,” he whispered against my neck, biting gently.
The tenderness in his touch made every sensation deeper, more intimate.
He pulled out only to flip me on my back again, spreading my legs wide and burning his face into my pussy again, licking our mixed juices before sliding back inside.
We collapsed together, limbs tangled, his cock softening inside my cum-filled pussy. His fingers traced lazy patterns on my skin as we caught our breath. The room smelled of sex and sweat, the clock ticking past 3 am now. I nestled in his chest, heart full.
We stayed like that until after 4, I knew that I make my rounds early. It just felt so good to be close to him, I actually could’ve went to sleep right there.
I knew that Nova wouldn’t like it much if she caught us, or caught him leaving my room at early hours of the morning.
We said our good-byes, while he said he’ll be back later that morning.
Wow, what a day.