Chapter Eleven
BRAD
God, what a fucking mess I’d made of things. Despite my whispered promises to Jordan all night that everything was going to work out in the end, I had to at least be honest with myself. I had no idea whether it would or not.
Nicole was as stubborn as a mule. She’d also blocked both Jordan and me on every single platform. She refused to take our calls and didn’t even read our messages.
I didn’t know how to get through to her, or even if I could. While I was as sure as I’d always been that she would eventually at least speak to me again, fixing things between her and Jordan might not prove possible if I was being realistic about things.
It made me feel like shit, but it was the truth.
Jordan was a complete mess about it. Broken up didn’t even begin to cover it. I stayed with her after that phone call the night before. The only reason I’d left after the first time we slept together was in case Nicole showed up.
Well that, and I wasn’t a big fan of sleepovers. But that was different with Jordan, and since there wasn’t much of a chance that Nicole was going to show up at Jordan’s place, staying over felt like a foregone conclusion.
Leaving her in that state hadn’t even crossed my mind. I held her all night, even when bouts of sobbing interrupted our sleep. Jordan’s heart was broken, and I understood why. Those two girls had been stitched together by the hip since they met.
I just wished there was something I could do make things better for Jordan, because seeing her so upset triggered the “I need to fix this. Kill, slay, maim. Anything to make it better” instinct.
It was an instinct that had only been triggered by two women in my life before, Anastasia and Nicole. I hated seeing women cry as much as the next guy, but generally speaking, the only thoughts running through my mind when I saw it happen pertained to how best to escape the situation or wondering how long it was going to last.
With Jordan, however, that wasn’t the case. If nothing else, that was what made me realize the true depths of my feelings for her. The natural instinct to protect and solve every problem she’d ever had didn’t come out to play for just anyone.
The only problem with the situation was that the only person I could kill, slay, or maim was myself. And that still wouldn’t fucking fix it.
Sighing, I squeezed her hand that was resting in my lap. After a few false starts where she dashed back into her apartment to reapply smudged makeup, and Donald bringing me a change of clothes, we were finally on our way to the office.
“How’re you holding up?” I asked.
Jordan rested her head on my shoulder, looking up at me with darkness under her eyes that betrayed her lack of sleep, almost like someone punched her just hard enough to leave little black, quarter-moon smudges there. “Can I get back to you on that?”
I half-smiled at her and kissed her forehead. “Sure, whatever you want.”
And I meant it. I would give her whatever she wanted if it would make her feel better. As long as I didn’t lose her.
Jordan crawled into my lap on the backseat of the car, and my arms went around her automatically. “Will you just hold me some more for now?”
“Of course,” I said.
Traffic was a damn nightmare, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t mind. The circumstances were fucked, but having Jordan in my arms was heaven. She smelled like soap and the berry shampoo I’d seen in her shower that morning.
She was soft and perfect, her body fitting to mine like a puzzle piece. Definitely heaven.
“What time are you meeting Nicole today?” I asked, my lips buried in her hair.
Jordan huffed out an unhappy little breath. “Lunch. I might need to leave the office a little early to get to Lucky’s by one. That okay?”
“Absolutely. You can leave whenever you want.”
She cuddled closer to me. “Thanks. I’m really not looking forward to it, though.”
“I know.” I wished I could somehow protect her from the showdown that was bound to happen. Take the hit for her.
Wait, maybe I can.
Nicole, Jordan, and I were going to have to sit down and talk sometime anyway. There was no reason why that couldn’t happen right away. Sure, Nicole had just found out, but time had a way of making things a lot worse when it came to her. Once her grudges had a chance to harden into place, it took a long time before she abandoned them.
“How about if I come with you this afternoon?” I asked.
Jordan pulled away from me slightly, frowning up at me and shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. At all.”
She had a point, but I wasn’t backing down just yet. “Why not? We could talk to her together.”
Jordan shifted in my lap, her eyes leaving mine to stare at the crowded freeway outside. Red brake lights snaked for miles ahead before they finally disappeared into the fog that enveloped the city that morning.
It was another rainy day, but the weather suited my mood. Dark, heavy, depressing. I usually didn’t think twice about it, but like everything else in my life, it was different with Jordan. Things came into sharper focus when I was around her, like someone had turned the wheel on the lens of the camera that was my life and adjusted it until the blurriness was all gone.
Her blue eyes drifted from the traffic to mine. “I know that we could talk to her together, but I just don’t think it’s a good idea yet. It’s still so soon. If we have any hope here, we need to give her time to adjust to the idea of us together. Shoving our relationship in her face by showing up together the day after she found out about us is not going to achieve anything good.”
“Maybe,” I told her. “But maybe it would help if she could see how we are together.”
Jordan tilted her head slightly, and one of the corners of her lips curled up just a little. “Yeah? And how exactly is it that we are together, do you think?”
“Good,” I answered earnestly, pressing a soft kiss to that corner of her mouth.
It pulled up a little farther. “Just good?”
Okay, I saw what game she was playing. I kissed her again, deeper this time. “Not just good, no. Great.”
Our lips were barely apart, and I felt her smile against mine, her breath fanning my face as she released a soft exhale. “How do you know that? You sound so sure, but it’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“I am sure, that’s why. One day with you was enough to convince me, Jordan. I just didn’t want to see it before. Nicole wants us both to be happy. You know that as well as I do. Maybe if we can show her that we are, it’ll soften the blow.”
Jordan still hadn’t told me how she felt about me, but that was okay because I already knew. I would wait forever to hear her say it, if that was what it took.
The small smile that I managed to elicit from her fell from her face when I resumed our conversation about me going with her to meet with Nicole.
“It’s not going to soften the blow,” she said. “It’s going to be another. Especially if we ambush her with you just showing up when she’s only expecting me.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. “She’s not talking to either of us, so how do we not ambush her? It’s not like she’s going to read any message that we send her to warn her I’m coming with you.”
“Easy,” Jordan said. “You don’t come with me, not to lunch anyway.”
“Okay, what do you have in mind then?” I still thought it was better to confront the situation, and Nicole, head on. But I also surprised myself by trusting Jordan’s instincts on the subject.
“Let me try talking to her this afternoon. She didn’t invite me out to lunch or anything. She just chose lunchtime because of work, I’m sure. I don’t think she’s going to be ready to talk yet, but I’ll try. I’ll ask if she’ll be willing to sit down with us.”
I thought over the new plan. It could work. “Fine, ask her to come to my house tonight at seven. We’ll talk there.”
“Tonight?” Jordan squeaked, uncertainty flashing in her eyes. “You really want to do it so soon?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m trusting you about not going with you this afternoon, so trust me when I tell you that the band-aid needs to be ripped off sooner, rather than later. She’s going to build up the whole thing in her mind if we don’t do it soon. Before you know it, she’ll be thinking we were together behind her back from the first day we met.”
My daughter had inherited her tendency to be overly dramatic from her mother. It was exactly why Jordan was so good for her. She grounded her. Kept her in the here and now.
Jordan turned her gaze toward the window again, contemplating quietly. We’d made it to the city and would be arriving at the office soon. We needed to wrap the conversation up, and I needed her to say that she’d talk to Nicole.
“Babe?” I prompted her. “What’s it gonna be?”
I saw determination in her eyes when she looked back at me. “Fine, I’ll try. But I’m not making any promises.”
Leaning forward slightly, I bumped her nose with mine and then planted a soft kiss on its tip. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Jordan said. “We don’t know that it’s going to work.”
“But you’re willing to try. For me.”
She smiled as we pulled up to the curb outside of the office. “I am.”
Then she crawled from my lap, took a deep breath, and climbed out of the car, blowing me kiss. “I’ll see you around, boss man.”
I mimed catching the kiss and smacked it to my lips. “See you around, Jordan.”
Watching her make her way into the building, my heart squeezing with each step that she took that carried her farther away from me, I was struck by the sudden realization that I hadn’t felt that way since Anastasia.
Holy fuck.
I loved her.