Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JORDAN
“Why is ice cream late at night so superior to ice cream at any other time of the day?” Jo muses as we walk along Broadway, ice cream in one hand and our other hands twined together.
Fireworks are long over, but Jo convinced me to walk from Hudson River Park back to the Upper West Side instead of fighting with thousands of people to get a cab or take a packed subway. To be honest, she didn’t have to try very hard. Walking meant more time with Jo, and I’ll do just about anything if it means more time with her. When I kissed her earlier, it was like my entire world exploded open. I thought the first time I kissed someone after Allie it would be slow and tentative, maybe a little awkward and weird. But it was none of those things.
It was everything.
I want to kiss her a million more times. I want to do so much more than kiss her. I knew my feelings for her were big, but I didn’t realize just how enormous they were until my lips touched hers under the colorful night sky. Until my brain said yes, this, and I thought about attaching myself to her and never letting go.
It’s probably too soon to be thinking of anything but this moment, but my brain is a runaway train, and it wants Jo. Tonight and tomorrow and for every single day she’ll have me. She makes me laugh, and she makes me think. She makes me want things I didn’t think were in the cards for me ever again, and with her, I’m the happiest I’ve been in years.
I glance down at her, drinking in the way strands of her dark hair escape her braid to curl around her face. The way she laughs a little as she tries to catch the drips of her three-scoop cone because she couldn’t decide which flavor to get, so she chose them all. The way her tank top strap slides down a little, baring one perfect shoulder. The way her tongue licks her ice cream cone has my dick immediately hard. Or, hard er , since that’s basically been a permanent state of being since the kiss by the water. Everything about Jo does it for me. She’s under my skin, and I have no interest in it being any other way.
“I think anything late at night is superior.”
Jo glances up at me and grins, swinging our joined hands happily as we walk. “Got that right. Were you always a night owl?”
I shrug, taking the last bite of my ice cream cone. “Not until residency. Surgical residency is brutal. The hours are insane, and the schedule constantly switches between nights and days, to the point where time pretty much ceases to have any meaning. If I wasn’t working, I was sleeping, and it didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was. I could fall asleep anywhere and everywhere, pretty much on command.”
Jo sticks her tongue out to catch a drip rolling down the cone, and I have to stifle a groan at the visual.
“Was it like that after residency?”
“Sometimes. The schedule was still brutal, but the hours were more predictable. But by the time residency was over, I had met Allie. Sometimes our schedules were opposite, and the only time we had together was the middle of the night, so we made it work.”
“Or early in the morning to visit a dinosaur.” Jo smiles at me, and I know she’s remembering the morning she found me on the bench outside the museum.
“Or that.”
Jo finishes her ice cream and tosses the napkin she was using in a trash can as we make our way past Columbus Circle and back to the West Side.
“Can I ask you a question?”
I know this is her way of telling me she’s about to ask me something big, but the way she digs past my surface scares me a little less than it used to.
“Anything.”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
With those words in my head, I tug Jo off the crowded sidewalk, spinning her so her back is against one of the pillars outside the New York Institute of Technology. Leaning one arm on the pillar over her head, I grasp her chin with my other hand and tip her head up, bringing my lips down on hers. She inhales sharply before she melts into the kiss, opening right up for me. I sweep my tongue into her mouth, and she answers by nipping my lip, and I groan at the sharp bite of pain. Jo lays her hand on my chest, like she’s trying to feel the beat of my heart, and something about that makes my heart pound even as my blood heats.
I break the kiss but keep my mouth close to hers, stroking my hand down her cheek. “There is nothing you could ask me that I wouldn’t want to answer. You are the first person in two years who makes me want to tell my secrets. Open up parts of me I thought would stay locked forever. Only you, Jo Jo.”
“Shit,” she mutters, her face an adorable shade of red. “That was so hot.”
“What was?”
“That lean thing you did, tipping my chin up, the way you just went for it. That’s, like, five-alarm fire hot, J.”
I wink at her, feeling more like myself than I have in forever. “I know.”
She snorts out a laugh and shoves me back a step. I toss an arm around her shoulders as we keep walking north. “So, you had something to ask me?”
“Is it weird to kiss me when you thought Allie was the last person you would ever kiss?”
Jo’s question has my heart tugging in grief. But instead of a sharp, agonizing pain, this is more of an ache. The kind that settles in your bones and becomes familiar. The kind you make peace with, knowing it will always be there. Accepting that it’s a part of you now.
Somehow, I know my answer to this question is the most important thing I will ever say. I choose my words carefully.
“I thought it might be weird to kiss someone else,” I admit. “To open myself up to someone else again. For a long time, I thought that part of my life was over.” I stop walking and turn to face her so I can look at her when I say this next thing. “Until you. You make me feel things I never thought I would feel again. I would be lying if I said it didn’t scare me because I know what it’s like to lose my most important person, and the thought of going through that again is unbearable. But the thought of not trying, of losing the possibility of whatever we might be, is unbearable too. So, no, Jo Jo, it’s not weird to kiss you when I thought Allie would be the last person I would ever kiss. You feel exactly right, and I didn’t think anyone would ever feel right again.”
Jo studies me, her pretty green eyes swirling with feeling as she lays her hand on my chest again, right over my heart. “Allie would be so proud of you, J.”
“You think?” I manage, through the bubble of emotion rising into my throat.
Jo nods, decisively. “I know. You’re living, Jordan. Even when it’s hard and even when it’s scary. I hope you know you can talk to me. You can tell me all the hard and scary, if you want to. I’ll keep it all safe for you.”
Entirely undone, I pull Jo in and wrap my arms around her, burying my face in her hair and memorizing the way she fits perfectly against me. The feel of her warm, smooth skin under my hand where her tank top dips low in the back and the way she smells like cupcakes and summer and everything good. The way her thumb strokes my lower back, and her sigh as she steps closer, wrapping her arms tighter around me.
We may be standing on a busy Upper West Side street, but there is no one else in the world. Just us and the way we feel holding on to each other and how I know that neither of us wants to be the first to let go.
It’s the music that breaks us apart. The notes of a saxophone rising above the din of the city night. The music both haunts and soothes, and something about it calls to me, like I want to plant myself here and listen to it forever.
“Do you hear that?” Jo breathes. She glances around until she spots it. The man standing at the top of the Lincoln Center steps, the fountain lit up behind him as he plays his instrument. “We have to go watch!”
Jo takes my hand and drags me to the crosswalk. As soon as the light changes, she makes a beeline for the steps, darting up them with me close behind.
She comes to a stop at the top of the iconic steps, standing with her eyes glued to the saxophonist, swaying a little to the music. I step up behind Jo, wrapping my arms around her as we listen. She rests her arms over mine and I lean my head against hers. Somehow, the Lincoln Center plaza is empty but for the musician and the crashing fountain, and it feels like this moment is meant for us and us alone.
“Dance with me, Hurricane,” I murmur in her ear.
“What?” She turns her head up to look at me.
“I know you were disappointed to miss Midsummer Night Swing when you were sick. This may not be swing dancing, but it is Lincoln Center, and it’s nighttime, and there’s music and everything. Dance with me.”
Jo turns in my arms and grins up at me.
“Is it possible you’re a secret romantic?”
I shrug. “Could be.”
“I like it. I would love to dance with you, J.”
I slide an arm around Jo’s waist and rest our joined hands on my chest. She wraps an arm around my neck, her fingers toying with the hair at my nape. The song switches to “New York State of Mind,” and Jo’s body is pressed against mine as we sway to the music. I dip my head, pressing a kiss to her temple and closing my eyes, overwhelmed by the sheer rightness of it all.
Wrapped in my arms is something I never thought I would find again. A woman who makes me laugh and makes me want and makes me consider a future I didn’t think was available to me anymore. Jo seems to understand innately what I’ve been through and is happy to walk alongside me while I do the endless work of untangling grief and getting on with the business of living.
The way I want Jo is deep and primal and the absolute opposite of slow and careful. Maybe it’s low-key terrifying to go from kissing her to all the other things I want to do with her, but it’s also something the old Jordan would do, and for a minute, it feels like visiting with an old friend.
“What’s going on in your brain, J?”
Jo’s murmured question yanks me out of my thoughts and back into the moment. “What do you mean?”
“You’re thinking pretty loud for dancing under the stars. What’s on your mind?”
I smile against her hair because, yeah, she knows me. It feels so good to be known again. “You’re on my mind.”
“Me, huh?” Jo glides her thumb along my palm, and the small movement heats my blood and settles every single part of me. It’s a fascinating combination.
“Yep.”
“What are you thinking about me, exactly?”
I turn us in a slow circle and have the thought that I could stand here forever, dancing with Jo to saxophone music under the stars. “I’m thinking that the way I feel about you should terrify me. And it does, but in this moment, I can’t remember any of the reasons why. I’m thinking I should want to take this slow, but I don’t. I’m thinking that your hair smells good, and I like the way your skin feels when I touch it and the way your body feels pressed up against mine.”
Jo tips her face back, a small smile playing on her lips. “Those are really good thoughts.”
“Yeah?”
Standing on her tiptoes, Jo presses her lips to mine in a slow, dizzying dance of a kiss that fuzzes my brain. When she pulls back, her eyes are a little hazy with lust and heat and feelings that make my stomach roll. “Yeah. And I’ll be honest, J. Slow has never really been my speed.”
All the remaining blood in my body moves south so fast I get lightheaded as my cock jerks, and I know she feels it because she chuckles at the same time as her body tenses, just a little, betraying a hint of nerves below her bravado. Somehow, it has my need for her soaring. We’re both flying without a net here, but whatever we do, we’re doing it together.
I lean down and kiss the spot below her ear that makes her shiver. “You ready to go home?”
“So freaking ready.”