Chapter Thirteen
BRAD
“Stop pacing, baby,” I told Jordan. “I’m not particularly attached to that rug, but I’d rather not have it on fire when Nicole gets here.”
I set down my tumbler of scotch on the glass side table next to me and reached for her hand.
She took it and let me tug her forward. I spread my knees, making space for her to stand between them. Planting my hands on her hips, I leaned forward to press a soft kiss onto her stomach.
“Where is she, Brad? She was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.” Jordan looked like she was on the verge of tears again, and I didn’t blame her. I was rapidly losing hope that Nicole was going to show up myself.
But I would deal with my disappointment on my own time. For now, I had to focus on Jordan. Pulling her onto my lap, I tunneled my hands into her hair and held her face close to mine, locking our gazes together. “I know she was supposed to be here already, and I don’t where she is, but whatever happens, we’ll get through it, okay? If she doesn’t come tonight, we’ll keep trying until she does.”
My voice was soft, reassuring, and it worked. Jordan sighed, but nodded. “You’re right, I guess. I was just so sure she was going to come.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Nicole shrieked from the doorway to the living room. Which was when I realized what the scene must look like from her perspective.
From the way I’d tugged Jordan onto me, she was almost straddling me, her long, flowing skirt covering my legs. Our faces were so close together, and with Jordan’s back to the door, blocking us from complete view, it would’ve looked like we were making out.
I’d started a fire earlier in my stone fireplace, which cast the room in a slight glow while the shadows of flames licked across the walls. The wood crackled and popped softly, but we’d been speaking in such low tones that Nicole wouldn’t have heard us anyway.
It looked like we were fucking right here.
Rising quickly, I brought Jordan up with me and then set her down gently. At least this way, Nicole would see that we were both completely clothed and that things weren’t, in fact, what they looked like.
“Nicole,” I said. “I know what that looked like, but it’s not. Don’t leave.”
She stood frozen on the threshold, so still that I wondered if we’d managed to shock her into some kind of seizure, but then her shoulders drew up, and she crossed her arms. “Fine, so it wasn’t what it looked like, but it was still disgusting to see. Just like this whole goddamn relationship.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Disgusting? Your friend was beyond worried because she thought you weren’t going to show. I was comforting her. How is that disgusting?”
“Not this again,” Jordan muttered beside me.
“What’s disgusting is that you were comforting ‘my friend’ by kissing her,” Nicole snarled, making air quotes with her fingers when she said “my friend.”
“I wasn’t kissing her just now, I’ll have you know.” I shrugged, lacing Jordan’s fingers through mine. “But I do plan on kissing her in the future, whether you’re around or not.”
Nicole’s eyes dropped and zeroed in on our joined hands like a laser. “Like I said, disgusting. This was a mistake.”
Jordan stopped her. “I thought we’d covered the gross slash disgusting thing with Justin.”
“Who’s Justin?” I asked. I hadn’t met many of Nicole’s boyfriends. She didn’t keep most of them around for long enough, and the ones she had brought home to meet me were all jackasses that never stuck around anyway.
Nicole shot Jordan a warning look, but Jordan squeezed my hand and glared at Nicole, not breaking eye contact with her while she told me. “Justin is an ex-boyfriend of Nicole’s from last year. He was fifty-six.”
“Fifty-fucking-six, Nicole? Really? That’s nearly a decade older than I am.” My free hand went to my hair, shoving through it over and over again as I tried to control the rage that was starting to boil in my stomach.
Nicole’s eyes tore from Jordan to stare me down. “Yes, fifty-fucking-six. You have a problem with that?”
“You were twenty-five. He was fifty-six. That’s an age difference of thirty-one years. Jordan and I are only twenty-two apart, but we’re gross and disgusting?” How the fuck had I not known about this guy?
My daughter had the good sense to look ashamed for all of about five seconds before she stuck her chin out defiantly and took up arms again. “I wasn’t friends with his kid, and I never lied about it.”
My glare softened, and I motioned her toward the couch. “Fair point. Will you sit down, please?”
Nicole didn’t move for a few beats, her eyes alternating between Jordan’s and mine before she sighed and sank into what she’d coined her spot on the couch years ago. Her dark hair spilled over the gray material, and my own eyes stared back at me, so much hurt in them that it made me want to slay dragons to protect her.
Again though, the only dragon I could slay was myself. What a fucking mess.
Lowering myself back into my seat, I reached for my tumbler, then thought better of it and reached for Jordan instead. She was hesitant to come to me, glancing at Nicole who was still staring daggers at us.
Fuck that. I needed her if I was going to say what I knew I had to say, so I tugged on her hand a little more roughly, and she sank back onto my lap, blue eyes wide and questioning.
Wrapping my arms around her delicate waist, I shifted to have clear view of Nicole and made sure to meet her gaze dead on. “I love Jordan, honey. I need you to know that this isn’t some kind of game or fling for me.”
Then I turned my eyes to Jordan’s, who had clasped her hand over her mouth and had tears swimming in her eyes as she drank me in. “I need you to know that, too. I love you, and I want to be with you.”
Jordan’s small hands grabbed my face between them, her eyes glittering in the light of the fire, filling them with tiny sparks that made the blue orbs look like a starry sky at midnight. She was staring at me with an intensity that I had never seen before when she said the words that I needed to hear.
“I love you, too.”
“Holy crap on a cracker,” Nicole muttered, then raised her voice. “Did you really have to do that with me in the room?”
As much as it killed me to do it, I forced myself to look away from Jordan’s beautiful face and over at Nicole instead. “Yes, we did. Because now you know how we feel about each other, and so I’m going to ask right now whether you can accept our relationship for what it is?”
Jordan’s hands covered mine, trembling slightly as we waited for Nicole’s answer.
“You really feel that way about each other?” she asked.
“Yes,” Jordan said, and I nodded right along with her.
“We do,” I said.
Nicole nodded slowly, looking a little dazed. “Well, okay then. I’m not going to lie to you and say that right now, in this moment, I’m okay with this. You both ripped my heart out and stomped on it. You betrayed me in the worst possible way that I can imagine.”
“Nic—” Jordan started, but Nicole held up her hand to stop her, letting loose a mammoth, shaky sigh.
“Just wait, Jay. Please, I need to say this, and I need to know that both of you hear me. I’m not just going to forgive you overnight, and I’m sure as shit not going to be able to accept that.” She waved a hand in our direction. “Just like that.”
“But?” I prompted when she fell silent, pressing her fingers against her temple and making slow circles with them.
“But if you really feel that way about each other, I promise you that I will try my best to get to a place where I can accept this.” Her voice was softer now, with more of its usual warmth in it. There was my baby girl. “Eventually, I will get there. I just need both of you to promise that you’ll give me some time to wrap my head around it.”
“We can do that,” Jordan promised her excitedly, but Nicole didn’t look convinced.
“I mean it. Neither of you can push me. I need some time to myself. This is a hell of a lot to process, and I need to do it in my own time. No calling me every five minutes, no texting, no nothing. I’ll reach out to you in a couple of days, when I’m ready. Can you respect that?”
“We can,” I told her. I had plans for the next couple of days anyway, and she wouldn’t want to be anywhere near us for any of them. “As long as you promise me that you’ll stay safe, and that you’ll call if you need either of us.”
Nicole rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. Yeah, she was going to be fine. “I promise.”
“Good.”
“Right now, though, I’m leaving. I have a killer headache coming on, and I need to get away from all the lovey-dovey vibes in here. Like I said, I’m not quite there yet.”
Now that she mentioned it, she did look a little gray. “Okay, but Donald is driving you home.”
“Dad—”
I shook my head firmly. “No arguments. You’ve had long day, you admitted to having a headache, and you don’t look great. You’re not driving.”
“Fine,” she agreed, but probably just out of desperation to get away from us. She stood up from the couch, waved, and practically ran from the apartment.
Jordan turned in the circle of my arms so that she was straddling me again, her eyes burning with the same intensity as before. “Did you mean what you said?”
Bringing a hand up to her cheek, I stroked the smooth skin there with the backs of my fingers, dangerously close to losing myself to her intense gaze. But this was too important. “That I love you?”
Jordan swallowed, then nodded.
“I did mean it,” I told her. “I love you, Jordan. You’ve brought me back to life. I haven’t felt this strongly about anyone since Nicole’s mom, to be honest.”
Jordan’s eyes popped wide open, and she tensed. “Really?”
I smirked at her shocked expression. “Really.”
“Wow,” she breathed.
I groaned when tears started rolling down her cheeks, her lips curled into an angelic smile. “Come here, love.”
Guiding her mouth to mine with my hand still on her cheek, I kissed her deeply and passionately, pouring my all-consuming feelings for her into the kiss. Salty tears mixed with the exquisite taste that was just uniquely Jordan.
“I love you, too,” Jordan whispered against my lips. “So much. I can’t believe that my silly crush turned into all this.”
“You better believe it.” I smiled. Bumping my nose with hers, I waved a hand between us. “We’re real now, love. I hope you’re ready for that.”
“I am,” she assured me, kissing my nose and my cheeks and my jaw. “Do you really think Nic will come around?”
I answered without having to think about it. “I hope so, and yes, I think she will. We’re just going to have to give her the time that she asked for. You were right this morning.”
Jordan’s lips twitched into a wide smile. “I know. You should get used to saying that, though.”
“What?” I asked.
“That I was right.” She giggled.
I couldn’t hold back a grin of my own as I tugged lightly on her ponytail. “We’ll see about that.”
Wonder filled her eyes. “I guess we will, yeah. Tell you what, though. I’m hoping that you’re right about Nicole coming around. I don’t want to lose her.”
“Neither do I, love.”
Jordan brought her lips down on mine, kissing me softly until I could feel her smiling. “You really like saying that, don’t you?”
“Love?”
She nodded, and I nuzzled her neck, licking and sucking gently on all the places I now knew that she loved. “I do. I’ve waited a long time to be able to say it again.”
Jordan sighed happily and started squirming in my lap. “I’m just really happy that I’m the one who gets to hear it after all this time. Now, you asked me if I was ready for what it meant to be together for real. Are you gonna show me what you meant by that?”
I smacked her ass and nipped at the exposed flesh on her shoulder. “You bet.”