Chapter 34 Jackson
Jackson
“I’d never leave here if I was your parents. You’d have to drag me off the beach and I’d be kicking and screaming all the way.”
Jackson caught Leah’s hand as it swung near to his, rubbing his thumb over the silky skin of her knuckles.
The waves lapped gently by their feet, the huge expanse of darkening sky stretching out over the water as the evening began to pull in.
They sauntered along the beach, leaving the house behind them.
“They hardly ever come now. The memories are tough.” He was too relaxed to be upset at the reminder.
“That’s sad.”
She looked up at him and he shrugged. “Neither of them are really beach people anyway. I don’t think they miss it.”
Leah gave him a nudge, her eyes teasing. “The sand probably gets in the creases of your dad’s frown, huh?”
Jackson chuckled. He didn’t want to think about his parents right now. “Tell me about your family. Do you have any memories of your mom?”
“Not really.” Bending down to pick up a pebble, she stepped on the hem of her sundress and Jackson grabbed her elbow to steady her.
In typical Leah-style, she’d tugged on a voluminous knitted sweater for warmth; his callused palms caught on the chunky knit.
“There are things I think I remember but it’s more likely they were stories my dad told me.
I have a few photos of her so I know what she looked like.
My coloring comes from my dad, but he said my laugh sounds exactly the same as hers.
She used to laugh a lot, apparently. She was his thing with feathers. ”
“She was what?”
“His thing with feathers. It was kind of a play on words because of our surname being Raven. It comes from an Emily Dickinson poem. Dad said she was everything bright and positive in his world.”
Jackson’s fingers flexed. “And what was your dad like?”
“He was fun. And, oh my God, he could talk.” Leah huffed.
“He’d chat away all day long—to me or to himself, he wasn’t fussy.
Narrating what he’d just done, what he was about to do, what he was thinking.
If he went to change his socks, he’d tell me first. We’d have stupid conversations about everything.
He’d get me to describe my dream bedroom if we won a million dollars.
We’d pick names for pets we didn’t own. We watched disaster movies together and he’d make me guess which character would be the first to die.
” She threw the pebble into the waves; it landed with a satisfying plop.
“After he died, what I remember most is the silence.”
Jackson brushed her shoulder with his own. “He sounds like a nice man.” The words were insufficient but Leah leaned into him and smiled her thanks anyway. They reached the end of the beach, where the river inlet cut across, and turned back. “What was it like?” he asked softly.
“Being in foster care?”
“Yes.”
Leah squinted over the water. “Are you any good at skimming stones?”
He looked around his feet at the sparse pebbles on the sand, crouching to turn a few over in his fingers. Leah did the same. She held one out and he shook his head. They both searched until Jackson found a couple of smooth, flat stones. He offered her the slimmer one.
Turning side on to the water, he flicked his wrist and sent his stone skimming across the surface. It skipped jauntily four times before disappearing. Jackson grunted and stepped back. Leah’s stone sank without bouncing. “Too high?” She immediately searched for another.
“Yeah, you need to throw flatter—as horizontal as possible. You don’t want too much air.”
Leah tackled the skimming with the same concentration she gave everything, determined to master the technique. Impatiently brushing breeze-tangled waves from her face, she threw every stone he could find for her, fist-pumping when she got the first double-skip.
Captivated, Jackson pulled her to him with a hand around the back of her neck. She tasted of vanilla lip balm and smelled like sunscreen. The combination, along with the cool curve of her lips, sent torrid flames licking at the base of his stomach.
“Let’s go get some food. I’m hungry,” he said, pressing one last kiss to that addictive mouth and drawing back. He caught Leah’s hand in his. “You didn’t answer me before—about the foster homes.”
Her fingers twitched. “Yeah . . . I guess it was lonely and confusing at times. Very polite. There was no teasing, no jokes, no casual affection. But it was fine. Not too awful, really.”
He heard all the things she didn’t say and felt the dull echo of a shared affinity. Leah’s stark words were an exact description of his childhood after Dominic had gone. Jackson wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her closer into his side.
“It wasn’t homely, you know? Nowhere felt familiar.
There was no one who shared my memories.
I missed my dad. I missed belonging. It’s frightening to have no place you belong.
” Leah’s voice took on a matter-of-fact edge.
“But I got used to it and it wasn’t so bad.
I struggled to find the right balance between being closed off and too desperate to make friends.
Feeling grateful to other people for putting up with you isn’t the best foundation for anything.
” She rolled her eyes with typical self-mockery but his heart ached for her.
“When did you leave foster care?”
“I aged out at eighteen. There was a difficult period when I tried to access further support. I had to make do with what I could find for a while.”
Jackson made a conscious effort to relax his jaw. “The shed.”
Leah laughed. She actually laughed. “Yes, the shed. It was summer and I wasn’t there for long. I had offers from past foster homes, too. They let me stay a couple of nights here and there when they had room. Then I got the housing placement.”
“It must have been scary.” They’d reached the beach house now and Jackson turned her toward him, tracing her cheekbone with one finger. “You can share it with me, if you want to.”
“Why?” She frowned, searching his face. “It’s in the past. Why does it matter now, Jax?”
He couldn’t explain. “It just does. It matters to me.”
Leah stepped closer. Turning her head, she rested her cheek against Jackson’s chest and curled her arms around his waist. He wrapped her up tightly, soothing them both, playing with the ends of her hair where it fell between her shoulder blades.
The clear sky was beginning to fill with faint stars, the waves lapped sleepily onto the sand.
“I felt worthless and vulnerable and helpless to do anything about it.” Her voice was so quiet, he strained to hear her. “Abandoned and anxious. It really sucked.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jackson murmured over the top of her head. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She lifted her chin and they held each other’s gaze.
Leah’s eyes glittered, framed by charcoal lashes.
The dusting of barely there freckles over her nose had faded into the half-light, leaving her skin delicately pale against the inky tendrils of her hair.
She was a lake nymph. A dandelion seed. A wisp of smoke.
Real and yet unreal. Something that could vanish at any moment.
He wanted to keep her so badly. A weird ache rubbed at the inside of his chest.
Jackson jerked his chin toward the house. “Takeout? I’m buying.”
A smile broke out on Leah’s lips. “Lead on.”
Dinner was delicious. They picked it up from Juliana’s on Williams Street less than ten minutes away—homemade Italian meatballs, drowning in a spicy marinara sauce, covered in cheese and served over linguine.
Tearing off chunks from a loaf of fresh, herby bread which came with the meal, they demolished the lot, their table manners carelessly casual.
Jackson licked his fingers and stretched, loosening the kinks in muscles exhausted from the surf.
They did the dishes together. Simple chores, easy company. A nudge here, a joke there, unchecked laughter. Leah flicking him with soapy water and Jackson retaliating with a crack of the dishtowel against her ass when she bent to open a cupboard.
He struggled to think of anything over the past couple of years that had brought the kind of light-hearted relief he felt around Leah.
People didn’t tease him. They came to him with problems to fix, tasks to get done.
They expected concise conversations. Immediate action.
No one but Leah thought there was any more to him.
Like warm rays of sun on chilled water, she thawed him, until Jackson felt more real than he had in years.
“What now?” Leah dropped onto the couch with a tired and happy sigh.
He lifted a deck of cards from the shelf of a bookcase. “Poker?”
One of her dark eyebrows kinked and she smiled a knowing smile which kicked him in the groin. God, the way she could switch from dorky to dirty on a dime did him in. “Just poker?”
OK, now he wasn’t interested in just poker. Desire inched stealthily through his bloodstream and Jackson made a speedy evaluation of her clothes (of which there weren’t many) and his own (similar). He liked his chances. “Strip poker would be more fun . . .”
“Obviously.”
“It’s your call.”
“Hmmm.” Leah made a show of thinking about it. He was almost certain she wasn’t wearing a bra. There was suddenly a lot less room in his shorts. “Alright. I’m game if you are.”
Jackson dealt the cards and shot her a deliberately wolfish smile. “You better hope you brought your A-game, Raven. I’m not taking any prisoners.”
Leah chewed her lip, folding protective arms around her body. “Maybe we should play euchre instead?”
This was going to be fun. “Too late. You’ve gotten your hand—do your worst.”
Forty minutes later, he was sitting in his boxers, with Leah’s flush—the two, five, nine, jack, and king of diamonds—laid out jauntily in front of him.
Damn that he’d ever trusted her innocent expression.
She lounged beside him, still wearing every single item of her clothing.
Jackson chucked his pair of sevens on to the table.
Forearms braced on his thighs, hanging his head with a wince.
Leah squinted over the top of her glasses, waggling a finger toward his hips. “Get ’em off, Jax.”
He’d unleashed a monster.
Jackson raised himself slowly to his feet. She ran hungry eyes over the planes of his chest, the mischief falling from her face, and he stood taller. Knowing she wanted him, seeing the effect his body had on her, he looped his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers slowly. Leah’s lips parted.
“Never let it be said I don’t pay my dues.”
Grateful for the blinds they’d dropped at each of the windows, he pushed the shorts down his thighs and let them fall to the floor.