Kate #2
“So you like the flowers?” he murmurs against my mouth when we finally come up for more air.
I attempt to spiff up the smushed white petals and bent stems. Tears pinprick and tingle in my eyes, nose, cheeks. I breathe in the sweet floral scent and blink up at him through tearstained vision.
“They’re perfect, Jackson. They’re…” I roll my lips together, blinking up at wisps of cotton-candy clouds in a light blue sky. This moment is so perfect, I can’t believe it’s real. “These were our wedding flowers. Did you know that?”
His eyes widen. “No. I saw…” Jackson’s tone is guttural, full of emotion.
The column of his throat moves up and down with a thick swallow.
“I saw them and felt like you should have them because you deserve nice things like flowers. You deserve an uninterrupted soak in the hot springs, for me to make you coffee in the mornings, and to be kissed as many times as I can fit into a day. So…so I bought them because my wife deserves pretty flowers.”
“And to be kissed as many times as you can fit into a day?” I tease, reaching past him to carefully set the bouquet on the hood next to our pizza and snacks. “That’s a lot of kisses.”
“I have sixteen years’ worth of practice I need to make up for.” He taps a finger against my lips, a wicked smile playing at the corner of his, and I can’t help but assume he’s thinking about making up for much more than simple kissing practice.
Jackson’s hand glides into my hair, tugs my mouth to meet him in a kiss.
Swept up in the moment, he slowly grinds his pelvis on mine.
His hands move to grab at my ass. It’s anything but small-town parking lot appropriate.
Twenty minutes of driving to get to the hot springs suddenly sounds unbearable.
A car slows next to us, and an older woman shouts at us to get a room.
Kisses transform into uncontrollable giggles, with my head resting on his shoulder and his hand sweeping across my back. Then we’re racing to grab all our belongings off the hood and hop into the car before the woman and her black sedan make their second loop of the parking lot.
The woman slows right down as she passes by, and I flip her the bird out of my window.
“Now this really feels like when we eloped. The random small-town pit stop, grocery store bouquet, sparkling wine for our hotel room…I don’t remember anybody yelling at us, but I’m sure some people wanted to with the amount of PDA we had going on.”
Turning the key, I look over at Jackson and take in the features of his face as if I haven’t seen them a thousand times.
A thousand times or a million, I’ll never tire of it.
Strong jaw, kissable lips, gently sloped nose, and eyes staring back at mine with so much love in them, my heart skips a beat.
“I can’t believe of all the bouquets they had in there, I grabbed these.” Jackson looks down at the flowers—still a little worse for the wear, but somehow better in their damaged state. It feels like a metaphor for our life.
“I can.” Reaching to slip the shifter knob into reverse, I stop for a quick squeeze of his hand.
“A lot of the memories are out of reach, but you’re still you.
It’s not Old versus New Jackson, like you always refer to yourself.
You’re the same observant, thoughtful, loving man I’ve known for sixteen years.
Maybe you can’t see it because you don’t remember, but everyone around you can. ”
“You think?”
“I know.”
He tips his head back, eyes drifting to look out the passenger window, and his left hand falls onto my lap. I feel the drag of his thumb drawing circles through my jeans. “Why did we elope?”
“Um…” I turn the radio dial all the way down. “A few reasons. After your mom died, the ranch changed—the way you see it now, with people always around, laughter throughout the house, kids running around? It wasn’t like that for a long time after she died. Would’ve made for a bummer of a wedding.
“And because we were all busting our asses to keep the ranch going in those first few years, we didn’t exactly have disposable cash to spend on a party.
My parents would’ve paid, but…you’ll meet them when they visit at Christmas and see why I wasn’t having a big wedding to appease them.
They’re…I love them. I do. But they’re so different from the family, and the home, we’ve created.
I grew up riding English because they saw it as a classy sport—one where I’d surely meet some well-off man to sweep me off my feet. ”
He snorts. “And instead you ended up with a cowboy.”
“Oh, they hated it. Not that they’d ever say as much to your face, because appearances.
They’ve come around to you over the years, thankfully.
But I think the sight of Odessa covered head to toe in mud, barn cat tucked under her arm, would send my mother into a coma—oh my God, that was a fucked-up thing to say to you. ”
Jackson’s booming laughter fills the car, vibrating through my chest and tingling the skin from my scalp to my toes. It’s the best sound in the entire world. Better yet because I wasn’t sure I’d hear it again.
“The next time they come over, I’m paying Odessa to do exactly that,” he says.
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t even need to pay her. That’s just a typical day in our house.”
He shakes his head. “That’s what I love so much about it.”