Chapter 43
Jameson
We walk the few blocks back to her mom’s house in silence. My head thuds with the slow beat of “I Want You.” And everything I said to Megan in the bar seems distant, obscured through a descending fog, adrift on a body of water just beyond my peripheral vision.
“I just want you to be happy.”
My words, out of nowhere, seem small and unimportant in the muggy night air. Mosquitos prick at me, and I’m constantly brushing them away, smacking my arms and neck. They don’t seem to bother Megan.
I read somewhere that they’re more attracted to some people’s blood than others.
Just more scientific evidence that Megan Hudson is a perfect specimen.
I stare at her long and hard, aching for some response.
Finally, she speaks. “You talk to me like you know me better than I know myself. Like you know what’s best for me and I don’t.”
“I don’t know what’s best for you. But I know you. You won’t be happy if you keep sacrificing what you want for a man. Any man. You’ve sacrificed for years. I know how much you gave up.” I wave a hand vaguely at the crappy little town she spent her life in—for a man who did shit-all for her.
He didn’t love her.
He didn’t put her first.
“But you don’t really know me.” Her face scrunches a little, thoughtfully. “Do you?”
That’s cute. She’s asking, like she doesn’t actually know.
I try to think of something definitive to prove that I do know her. I know her better than I’ve ever known any woman, even my sister, and I’m close with my sister.
“I know you wish we lived in the house across the street.”
She looks at me. “What?”
“The house with the big gate diagonally across from mine. The one with the huge, flowering cherry tree in front. You sigh every time we drive past it.”
“I do not.” She chews thoughtfully on her lip. “Well, just imagine how ridiculously beautiful it is when it blooms in spring.”
It is. I’ve seen it. “You take a picture every time you see a rainbow.”
“You got that from Instagram,” she says, unimpressed.
“You’ve donated an uncomfortably high percentage of your life’s earnings to the little animal shelter at the veterinarian’s office here in Crooks Creek. You desperately want to bring Daisy out west with you, but you haven’t yet because you’re afraid you’re too unsettled. And you haven’t asked me if she can come live with us because you’re afraid it will be an imposition or something.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you sigh whenever you see a puppy, too.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “I meant the money thing.”
“You pretend your favorite song is ‘Sweet Caroline’ but it’s actually ‘Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.’”
Her jaw drops.
I shrug. “You sing them both under your breath when you’re getting ready to start the day and stuff. You’re a Pisces, born on February twenty-ninth on a leap year. Every year that isn’t a leap year, you stay up to midnight on February twenty-eighth to celebrate your birthday in the moment between eleven fifty-nine and twelve o’clock, where February twenty-ninth should be. When you were a kid, your brother told you your birthday didn’t come at all on the years there was no February twenty-ninth, so you didn’t get any older, and it drove you crazy.”
“Hey. You got that from Cole.”
“You pretend you like plants better than people, but deep down, you desperately want a few people in your life who you can trust with your life, you want to be a mom one day sooner than later, and you want a Prince Charming. You’re a hard-core romantic. You don’t realize that you’ve been writing an epic love story for four damn novels already, but you not only believe in happily ever afters, you want one so badly, sometimes you wake up in the night and it’s the first thing on your mind… the fear that you won’t have one.”
We’ve completely stopped walking as I talk, and she draws a shaky breath.
“How do you know that last part? That’s scary.”
“Because I have the same fear.”
My heart beats hard and fast as we stare at each other.
Megan twists her lip between her teeth. “That’s stupid.” The insects are louder than her voice, creaking and buzzing in the overgrown weeds of the ditches around us. “Why would someone like you have that fear?”
“I could ask you that same question.”
“How did you find out all those things?”
“A combo of drilling Cole for information and my keen observational skills when I want something.”
“Stop talking and kiss me.”
I kiss her.
But two seconds after I’ve lapped my tongue over hers, a mosquito pricks my neck. I slap it. “Fuck. Mosquitos can fuck off and die.”
“They’re part of the ecosystem. They have a purpose.”
“No. They don’t. If we could lose one entire species and be better as a planet, it’s mosquitos.”
“Humans,” she says, at the same moment I say mosquitos.
She cracks a smile.
I smile back, as much as I can as the bloodthirsty little fuckers prick my ankles. “Please. If you like me even a little bit, get me out of this hellhole dust-bowl swamp and into some mosquito netting or something.”
She laughs easily and takes me by the hand, tugging me toward her mom’s place.
We break into a jog.
“Christ, how can anyone live in this province? It’s goddamn biblical—” My complaint is cut off by Megan’s mouth slamming into mine as we step into the house. She pushes me back against the door, and our collective weight slams it shut.
“Shh,” I whisper, even as I start pulling up her dress with impatience.
She giggles. “Mom can’t hear a thing when she’s sleeping,” she whispers. “She snores too loud.”
“Huh.” My mind flashes forward to a distant future wherein an older Megan snores in bed.
“You’re wondering if I’m gonna snore when I’m older,” she accuses.
I shrug, making up my mind. “I could live with it.” I kiss her again and steer her blindly into the kitchen. “Where am I fucking you? Bent over the arm of the couch? Kitchen table?” I peel her dress off over her head and toss it aside. “Bathroom floor?”
“He is such a romantic. In my bedroom.” She pulls me in that direction. And as soon as we get through the door, she shuts it behind us.
In the moonlight that glows through the window, I tear off her bra and panties. I’d love to sweep her up in my arms, carry her to the bed, and have my way with her, but I’m a bit too drunk to pull it off.
Instead, she helps me get undressed, and when we’re both naked, I just kind of fall on her, pinning her to the bed and kneading her soft flesh with my greedy hands as I probably squish the breath out of her.
She’s panting as we make out, her hips rolling against me. My cock is deliriously hard as I grind against her, wanting in.
“Your dog’s watching us,” I tell her between kisses. Daisy is curled on a blanket on the floor, staring.
“It’s okay. She’s a voyeur like me.”
I groan as she sucks on my neck.
“Guide me inside you.” My voice is thick with lust. “And please tell me you locked the door, because if Donna throws it open and comes face-to-face with a plumbing shot, I will never get over it.”
“It’s locked.” She bites my lip as she grips my dick and angles it, pushing the head into her soft, wet opening. Then she kisses me, hot and soft, making my balls ache.
“Your cunt’s a little slice of heaven,” I groan as I sink into her.
“Jameson. You’re so…”
She never finishes that sentence as she digs her fingers deep into my ass muscles and pulls me deeper, panting hungrily.
We fuck slow and wet and desperate, grinding into each other like we want to merge our souls.
* * *
I collapse back on the bed with a satisfied sigh. I just came, dizzy with lust for her, when the convulsions of Megan’s orgasm racked her body so hard, it yanked me right over with her.
Mutual perfection.
Now my lungs feel shaky. My stomach presses up into my ribs. This unease I’ve carried with me ever since I found out Megan had flown home has only intensified.
Maybe it’s all the beer.
Maybe it’s the singular, unsettling fear that I’m losing her and there’s nothing I can do about it.
That she’ll choose another life over me and the one I can give her.
That at the end of our fake engagement, one year from when we started, she’ll set off on that new life she wanted when she left this place. I’ve given her the means to do it. She won’t need me anymore.
The panic of it pounds into my brain with every beat of blood through my veins now, the truth purified by alcohol.
Daisy’s head rests on her paws, and she’s still watching me, those pale-blue eyes assessing sleepily. Still deciding if I’m a good idea or not.
“What would make your life complete?” I ask Megan in the silence.
Next to me, she shifts, drawing a blanket up over our cooling bodies.
“I don’t know. I wish I could figure that out, but I just haven’t been able to do that yet.”
We lie in the near-dark, her breathing gradually settling back to normal. I’m still breathing like I’m floating on some raft in a swamp and a creature from the depths is lurking, bumping at my boat. I’m afraid I’m about to capsize, and I don’t know how to find the shore.
Without her, I don’t know what the shore even looks like anymore or why I’d want to get there.
I feel adrift. Poised to drown.
“Sometimes, it takes a while,” she adds with a sigh.
Like when you weren’t born into the life of a billionaire, with everything laid out for you so nicely, she doesn’t say. But I know what she means.
I wasn’t just given everything in life, like some people probably think. But at the end of the day… I kind of was. Even so, I’ve always wanted more. I’ve always been driven.
But right now… I have no motivation. For once in my life, I don’t want anything but the woman lying next to me.
I lie here, half panting and really absorbing that truth into the marrow of my bones, even as the room vaguely spins.
So this is love.
“I thought my life was complete before I met you,” I muse out loud.
It’s the wrong thing to say. I know that when Megan sucks in a breath.
I turn my head to find her staring at me.
“I meant—Shit. I’m drunk. My life was complete except in the relationship department.” I drag my hand down my face. “Obviously. Remember what I said about my fear of no happily ever after?”
Her eyebrows pull together. “So you don’t think there’s any way you could have one with me?”
“No, I fear I won’t have one with you. But that’s up to you.”
“It’s up to you, too.”
“No. It’s really up to you.”
She stares at me for an infinite minute. “This is a dumb drunk argument that’s going nowhere.”
“No. It’s going somewhere.”
She frowns.
The woman is so fucking adorable when she’s annoyed with me. Like a kitten in a bad mood.
I roll on top of her and kiss her little frown. Twice. Three times. Both corners, then the middle.
“You’re going somewhere,” I clarify. “With or without me. Can’t you see that? You don’t need me, Megan.” I say all this while I crush her with my body, trapping her. Because I’m so damn scared she’ll say, You know what, you’re right. See ya.
“I never said I did.” Her face softens and her frown melts away. “I said I want you.”
I shake my head slowly, smoothing her hair back from her face and looking deep into her gorgeous amber eyes in the moonlight. “I want to give you back the opportunity I took away,” I tell her solemnly. Because at this point, fucking millions or even billions aside, I know it’s the best thing I can ever give her. The most important thing.
And I don’t want to wait until a year’s up to do it.
I need to know. Now. Is she in or is she out?
“What opportunity?”
“To decide the life you want.”
“What, this life? You seriously think I’d come back here?”
I force the words out. “I don’t know.”
“And you’d let me do that? I thought you wanted me out of Crooks Creek,” she says softly. “You know, Frodo?”
“I do.”
“I thought… maybe… you loved me,” she says, even softer.
I do. Jesus Christ, I do.
But for a long minute I can’t answer. My heart is beating too hard, way up in the knot in my throat.
I take a deep breath, gathering my words. In the thudding silence, I can really feel how drunk I am. So drunk, I can’t be expected to make sense, maybe.
But I know this much is true.
“I’m saying this because I love you. Imagine you never met me, Megan. What is the life you want?”
She stares up into my eyes as we breathe together.
Then she says the best thing she could ever say to me. Something so good, I never actually imagined her saying it.
“No, Jameson,” she breathes. “I don’t want to imagine a life without you.”