Chapter 32
32
Jake
I breathe her in, close my eyes, give myself the gift of this moment. Just her body and mine, together. It’s elemental and right in a way that scares the shit out of me.
Forever. That’s what I want and that’s what pushes me back to reality. To the time and place where she’s using me and I’m using her and we’re on a floor after fucking like animals.
There’s nothing more to this. Nothing at all.
“You’d better not thank me.” Tearing myself away from the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, I roll away from her onto a hallway floor that is way too hard for my knees.
“Huh?”
“I mean it. Don’t thank me. I don’t like it.”
“Oh. Okay then.” She sounds lost.
My heart feels wrong in my chest.
“This isn’t a service I’m providing. It’s…an itch I’m scratching.” What a lie. It’s not an itch anymore, it’s something much, much bigger. It’s a hole I’m trying to fill. Or something.
“It still itching?” There’s a smile in her voice.
I force a smirk to my face and admit the truth. “Much, much worse than before.”
“Clark called me a bitch, guess now I’m down to itch. Maybe someday I’ll just be a tch.”
“You’re not a bitch.” Just thinking about that little prick raises my ire again. I wish I’d ground his face into the university’s brick walkway.
“Oh, I know.” She turns over with a groan, puts her chin on my chest and looks at me. “I’m an itch.”
“You’re a fuckin’…” My brain supplies nothing except, “ Treasure ,” which surprises a laugh from her. She’s laughing, but I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe and that’s not good when your job involves diving underwater.
“What? Oh my god. Where did that come from?”
“You are a treasure. Okay, one…” Warming to any subject that doesn’t involve my heart, I sit up with my back to the wall, and she shifts so she’s lying face-up, head in my lap. The breath I’ve been trying to catch quickens. “You’re all sparkly.”
“Sparkly?”
“Shh, let me finish.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“So, you’re sparkly. You know, like you glow from the inside out. Two, you’re…deep.” Her shout of laughter is the best sound. The best. “Hard to get to, and…”
I put my hand over her mouth to smother her snorting. “And you’re worth the fucking dive.”
“Dive,” she repeats, muffled by my palm.
“Like a treasure. At the bottom of the sea.”
“I guess you’d know.”
I pause, my chest doing this weird thing where it goes tight and sort of expands at the same time. Christ, is it a heart attack?
“You okay? Jake?”
I nod, picturing myself out on the platform. Whenever I have to dive to weld underwater—literally the most dangerous gig in the world—I go in knowing that it doesn’t matter if I come back up or not. The hazard pay’s worth it when you don’t give a shit.
And I don’t give a shit.
Right?
“I’m good. I’m good.”
She shifts until she’s sitting across from me, legs drawn up, clearly uncomfortable in nothing but her top. Her makeup’s kind of smeared and her cheeks are bright red, her lips, the most bitable, kissable curve nature could have made. “What’s going on?” she asks laying a hand on my leg in a way that feels natural, easy.
“Just thinking.”
“Okay.”
“Got a couple weeks before I take off.”
She watches me, wary.
“We should…we should make sure we give you that baby.”
Her smile is hesitant. “I thought we were doing that.”
“Yeah, but… It’s not an itch for me now.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a mission.”
Her features tilt up in shock, surprise, a bit of a smile, too. “O-kaaay. What’s going on? What changed?”
“I want to give you a baby. I want you to have that. And also…” That thing in my ribcage clenches, twists. I lift a hand and rub it. “I want to give… you to some baby.” I drop my head in my hands. “Christ.”
“You want to give me to a baby?”
“I…I’m not good at this. I only talk to guys, usually.”
“Oh. I’m your first woman? Is this a weird conversational virginity thing ’cause I am not a proponent of virginity nonsense talk.”
I elbow her playfully and she elbows me back. “No. I’m good with women. I know women. I like women. I just don’t usually…care.”
There’s a pause. Quiet. Her thinking things I wish she wouldn’t and me fighting this tightening vise around my middle. If it gets any worse, I’m calling 911.
“You care,” she whispers, looking me dead in the eye.
I sigh.
My head flops back and thunks against the wall.
Dammit. I do. I really fucking do.