Chapter 28 Tieran #2
The arrow spirals through the air and pierces just on the edge of the centre target, effectively making mine and everyone else’s jaws drop.
She turns to me with a pout lining her mouth. “Not quite as good as Katniss, I suppose.”
A stray lock of hair has fallen out of her ponytail, and I reach out to brush it out of her eyes. “Better.”
A gorgeous flush tints the top of her cheeks. “Your turn,” she whispers.
I brush a quick kiss to her temple before I step past to grab an arrow and take position.
As I pull back, I feel the telltale sign of nerves creep up. Even here, even after finally winning a match, the anxiety of under performing takes root. I take a deep breath, trying to let it go, and release, but the arrow flies wide, landing in the grass to the right of the target.
“Try again,” she says, gentle and encouraging.
I grab another arrow, and when I lift my arms, I feel Jade step up behind me. Her soft hands run up my side, and my pulse starts to gallop.
She reaches up, hand wrapping around my elbow, and my gaze snags on her petal pink nails, so soft on the fiercest person I’ve ever known.
“Pull your elbow back—good.” She moves to clutch my hand.
“Soften your hand for me, my love.” I almost release my hold completely just so I can kiss her, but she moves out of my reach, coming to stand at my back.
“Straighten your spine, but make sure your knees aren’t locked—good. Now, the bow should kiss your mouth—”
“I’d rather you kiss my mouth.”
“Be a good boy, and we’ll talk.”
I chuckle, feeling the anxiety ease out of my body just from the proximity of hers. Taking a deep breath in, I go to shoot, but as I release, I feel her hands slip around my waist, fingertips skimming beneath my sweater and brushing against my bare skin.
She’s playing games with me now. I can feel her smile against my back.
Focus, Tieran.
At the same time, I pull back and let the arrow fly, her fingers dip lower, and she taunts, “Maybe you just wanted me to touch you.”
My body jerks from the firmer touch, and the arrow soars off course on a wayward trajectory until—
“FUCKIN’ JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH!”
“Oh, fuck,” I say at the same time Jade says, “Holy shit.”
We both follow the direction the arrow went and discover it’s found a home in Barnaby’s thigh. Twenty minutes later, the ambulance has arrived, medics tending to his thankfully shallow wound while he looks like he wishes he could put an arrow in me.
Maybe season tickets would be better.
“I think maybe we should go,” Jade suggests.
“Good idea.” As we’re walking towards my car, I shout over my shoulder, “Send me the bill, mate! I’ll get it sorted.”
He flips me off in retaliation, but there's a small quirk under his bushy mustache that makes me think he can’t be too mad.
“I’m curious,” Jade starts. “Does maiming people work up an appetite? Cause I’m famished.”
The laugh that bursts out of me is loud and slightly manic. “It does, actually, and I know just the place.”
“You brought me to your parents’ house?” Jade whisper-yells at me as I tug on her arm, trying to drag her toward the yellow front door of their home.
“It’s Sunday. Mum’s got the roast going. Come on.” She digs her heels in, looking like an adorably angry cat, hissing at me.
“Tieran. I am not dressed to meet your parents. Look at me.” She furiously indicates down at her body, as if I should see anything other than absolute perfection.
I surprise her by leaning forward and placing a kiss to her lips that has her melting into me. I pull back slightly and cup her face. “You’re bloody perfect, my love. Dad won’t even notice you, and Mum’s going to adore you so much, she’ll probably try to trade me for you. Stop worrying.”
Jade’s mouth is still set into a frown, but she acquiesces a step, then another, until I’m pulling her through the front door.
Shouts can be heard from the foyer as they ping pong throughout the house.
Mum’s in a one-sided heated debate about which Big Brother character should win in a season that aired four years ago, and Lottie is standing just outside the sitting room, on the phone with someone.
“No, I can’t get out of dinner,” she says.
“Because it’s a weekly thing, you know that.
” She pauses, and I can vaguely hear a masculine voice on the other end as we step into the doorway.
“I’m sorry, you know I didn’t want to miss it.
I’m going to come by after dinner, I’ll just be a little late.
” Her eyes start to glisten. “I do support you.” A tear falls.
“Please don’t be like this. I haven’t seen Dad in weeks; I didn’t want to miss him.
” Lottie looks up at that moment and sees us standing in the doorway.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll see you soon. I lo—” She stands and turns away from us to furiously wipe at her face.
I step toward my sister. “Charles? What happened?”
“It’s nothing. Liam’s just upset I can’t go to this party with him tonight.”
Liam? I thought her and that bellend broke up. “Liam?” The question is clear in my tone.
“We got back together, but I’m pretty sure he just broke up with me again.”
Fury drenches over me in a tidal wave. “I’ll end him.”
Jade puts her hand on my forearm, rubbing affectionately in an attempt to calm me down. “I’ve got this,” she says to me. “Lottie, I’m going to say this as delicately as I can, but that man is a fuckwit.”
Lottie sputters out a laugh, and I have to hold myself back from shouting I love you at the woman who has ingrained herself into my life so thoroughly, I will never be able to extricate her.
“I’m sorry—actually, I’m not. He’s a twat who wouldn’t know his ass from his elbow even if it hit him in his stupid face.
You,” she points aggressively at my sister, “are absolutely perfect. You are creative, kind, hilarious, and so damn beautiful. I want to know why that stuffy loser thinks he deserves you.”
“It’s complicated.” Lottie says, sounding dejected.
Jade looks over at me and then reaches to interlace our fingers together. I swear, I breathe easier with the feeling of her hand in mine. “It doesn’t have to be.” For the second time in five minutes, the instinct to blurt out that I love her is on the tip of my tongue, begging to burst free.
“Sweetheart, who are you talk—oh, Tieran, you’re here. Who is this?” Mum steps into the room, drying her hands on a tea towel covered in daisies.
“Mum, this is Jade, my…” My mind blanks, not knowing how I should introduce her. Friend? Boss? Lover?
“His girlfriend,” Jade finishes, and I snap my neck down to look at her, only to find she’s already looking up at me with a soft, slightly challenging look. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Stone.”
Mum rips her right out of my arms and envelopes her in a hug.
“Call me Harriet, sweet girl. I’m so happy to meet you.
” Jade stiffens momentarily, but then she slowly brings her arms up and hugs her back, closing her eyes and inhaling softly.
It makes me wonder about the last time she received a mother’s hug.
Mum pulls back slightly, but only to yell out for Dad. “Charles! Come meet Tieran’s girlfriend!”
Charles Stone comes ambling into the room, looking down at his phone with glasses balanced on the tip of his nose. When he looks up, skepticism lines his eyes. “Do I know you?”
Mum smacks him on the arm, voice raising several octaves. “This is Tieran’s girlfriend, Charles.” Dad’s looks over at Mum, his eyes softening a fraction in a way they only ever have for her.
“Right. Nice to meet you.” It’s a lukewarm greeting at best as they shake hands, and a weird silence fills the cramped hallway.
“I’m going to show Jade around before dinner. We’ll be back.” I push at her lower back to lead her out of the sitting room and up the stairs until we’re standing in the bedroom I lived in for the greater part of my adolescence.
She slowly walks around my room, noting the blue plaid bedding, old school textbooks, a rugby ball signed by the National Team from when I was seven, and framed photos lined up on my wardrobe.
Her eyes catalogue every bit of this room, seeing what she can put together about what she doesn’t already know about me, filling in the blanks from my childhood.
“Girlfriend?” I prowl closer to her, resenting the distance between us.
A sheepish look fills her eyes. “Was that okay? I know we haven’t talked about it, and maybe we should have before I said anything, but—”
I bring my hand up to and cup her neck. “Jade.”
“—it just felt right and—”
“Jade.” I lean my forehead against hers, pushing her back against the wardrobe.
“But if you’re not ready, we can just pret—”
“I love you.” The second the words are out of my mouth, I feel a relief so acute, my knees threaten to buckle.
“You—what?”
My thumb lazily grazes her jaw. “I love you. I have for a long time, and I figured, since you’re my girlfriend now,” she lightly slaps my chest, “I should tell you how I feel—have been feeling. You don’t have to say it back. I just wanted you to kn—”
“I love you too.” The words rush out of her mouth like an avalanche, and I feel crushed by the magnitude of happiness hearing those words come from her mouth.
“And not because you said it, but because you are the best person I’ve ever known, and not loving you was never going to be an option for me—”
I crush my lips to hers, and the world spins and tilts until all I know is Jade—her mouth on mine, coaxing open my lips until the taste of her kiss dances along my tongue, her perfume, warm and sweet, invading my nostrils, the feel of her soft hair sifting through my fingers.
She is everywhere, woven into my soul in a way so fundamental, I’m not sure how I endured before I had her quiet strength to anchor me.
Her lips are soft as flower petals, but they’re firm against mine as she kisses me with a fevered sort of reverence.
This is so much more than a kiss. This is the beginning of the rest of our lives, because there’s no way in hell I could ever let her go now.
No universe in which I could give this up with her.
She is mine, and I am hers, and no force on this Earth could tear us apart.
For the first time in a long time, the anxiety that’s been looming over me like a spectral monster, waiting to feast on my fear, is nowhere to be found.
In its place is love and trust and connection.
Deepening the kiss, Jade whimpers into my mouth, and I bend down to grab under her thighs, wrapping her legs around me. My hands find their way to her arse, squeezing and digging in as her hands rake through my hair, tugging the strands as the bite of pain makes my cock twitch beneath my jeans.
I band one of my arms around her waist, needing to hold her tighter, desperate to have her as close to my body as possible while my lips find the answer to questions I’ve been seeking my whole life.
Jade. Jade. Jade.
She rolls her hips against my thickening cock, making us both groan in pleasure.
I spin around, holding her firmly in my grasp, and set her down atop the chest of drawers I have against the wall.
Breaking away from her mouth, I trail kisses down her throat, and she mewls into my ear, needy and wanting.
When she slips her hands under my shirt and scrapes her nails down my stomach, I have to stifle my groan, biting her neck.
“Quiet, or your family will hear,” Jade whispers on a husky laugh into my ear.
I lick and suck, soothing the spot I just wounded before kissing my way back to her mouth.
“I can’t help it. Whenever you touch me, I go out of my bloody mind.” I nip at her bottom lip, and she smiles against my mouth.
I dive in for more, coaxing her lips open with my tongue. Running my hands up her thighs, I settle my palms against her waist, gripping her tightly and getting lost in the euphoria being this close to her induces.
“Yes, I’ll let them know the roast is ready,” Lottie shouts, accompanied by overly aggressive stomping up the stairs.
I pull away from Jade, groaning as I rest my head on her shoulder, slowly coming to terms with the fact that we have to stop.
The laugh that trickles out of her mouth is soft—effervescent.
A light knock on the door alerts us of my sister's presence. “Ummm…if you guys could stop doing whatever you’re doing, that would be great.”
“We’ll be right down,” I call out before we hear her footfalls walking away.
Jade hops off the furniture and checks her lipstick in one of the frames atop it.
“You look perfect,” I say, openly admiring her.
“I look like I was about to get fucked,” she panics.
“Like I said, perfect.” Smug satisfaction rings through my tone, clear as the crystal blue waters of the Mediterranean. “Let’s go. You’ve not lived until you’ve had my mum’s duck fat potatoes.”
We only make it to the top of the stairs before I stop to scoop her up in one more kiss that sets my world right.