CHAPTER NINETEEN
I hated wrapping gifts.
Either I cut the paper too short and had to piece it together like a Franken-present, or I cut it too long and the sides came out bunched and puffy. Most of the time I wound up with something that resembled a third grader’s papier-mache project. Finally giving up on smoothing the bunched paper, I grabbed some curly ribbon and went to town on the decorations part.
I sat cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom, tongue poking out of my mouth in concentration as I tried to make the small box look halfway decent. I grumbled, listing the all the reasons wrapping gifts was a stupid tradition. I persevered only because I was pretty sure it was bad form to give someone a gift in the bag it came in.
The birthday celebration had gone pretty well, all things considered. We’d had a small party at home, a family dinner followed by cake and presents. The cake had been both German chocolate and slightly wobbly, courtesy of Art. When we’d complained about the rocky layers, he’d stuck a hand on his hip and exclaimed, “Do I look like Duff? I have a pastry chef at the restaurant, okay? Call Charm City Cakes if you want something perfect.” That had shut us up pretty quickly. Jesus, that man was touchy about his culinary creations.
It wasn’t that often that we celebrated birthdays. We lived too far apart for it to be logistically possible. Jules tried to make a big deal out of mine but for the most part, birthdays were just any other day for me. When I did happen to get a cake on the occasion, out on a dinner with well-meaning friends who’d whispered to the waiter that it was my birthday, I couldn’t decide which part made me more uncomfortable—everyone staring at me while singing Happy Birthday, or everyone staring at me while I cut the cake. I hated being the center of attention.
Obviously, I hadn’t gotten that from my father.
He’d met each set of eyes as we sang our goofy birthday rendition, smiling over the Leaning Tower of Cake. When it’d been my turn to face him over the flaming candles, there had been more emotions than happiness behind that smile. Maybe this wasn’t that easy for him…maybe he still had demons of his own to struggle with. The woman who should’ve been here holding the cake was long gone, as was any version of a future he’d make with her. And maybe this thing with Irene wasn’t the worst thing in the world. He was just trying to scrabble together a version of living a new life. Hell, we all were.
I’d smiled then, even though my vision had been a touch blurry. “What’d you wish for?”
He winked, keeping things light. “What do you think?”
I didn’t need to think—I already knew. Another birthday over a crooked fucking cake, with all the people we had left that we held dear. In short? This. A hundred times over…this.
I heard the door open and looked up to see Jackson coming in, clad in only navy pajama bottoms with Nike up the leg, running a towel over his tawny hair briskly. He looked so delicious I lost my train of thought, and briefly sent up a quick, thankful prayer for the thing that was friends-with-benefits. Whoever thought of the concept should be knighted. He finished toweling his hair and ran both hands through the spiky damp strands, and I reconsidered. Being knighted wouldn’t be enough. Whoever thought of friends with benefits should be fucking canonized.
Lane stuck her head in the partially open door. “Are you guys going to help decorate for the reception? They rented the clubhouse and since it’s only a few days away, the manager said we could start setting up now.”
“Sounds good,” I said, giving her a thumbs up.
She looked at my hatchet job on the wrapped gift and gave me a bright smile. “I kind of meant Jackson. We’ll find something else for you to do.”
“Goodnight, Lane,” I growled.
“Goodnight, AJ,” she sing songed. “I know you guys have…things to do, so I’ll get going.”
She made kissy-face noises before closing the door, and I scowled at Jackson, who seemed to find us all too amusing. “Well, that answers that question. They know what we’re doing in here.”
He shrugged, giving me a crooked smile. “So?”
“So I could go without my entire family knowing about my sex life. Seeing how I’m not a Kardashian.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re not the only people in this house having—”
“Oh God!” I cut him off just in time to not hear it, but not in time to stop the mental images. “If you have a rewind button for life in general, now would be a good time to use it.”
He grinned. “Anyway, is that the watch I helped you find?”
I glanced back down at Franken-present. “Yeah. Although I think the term ‘helped me find’ is a bit generous.”
“No, giving up my entire afternoon to scour every shop in a fifteen-mile radius is generous.” He gave me a sour look as he pulled out his iPad from the nightstand and got into bed. “I missed paddle boarding with Art, you know.”
I shrugged. Perhaps someone, who shall remain nameless, had dragged him through the shops on the beach several times, changing her mind about what to get her father. Frankly, Jackson should have no complaints—he’d been far too busy devouring a blueberry-flavored snow cone to be of much help. Well, after I’d turned down his suggestion of shades, a tie pen, cuff links, and a watch fob, he’d been absolutely no help.
“Besides,” he continued, “I thought you guys gave your dad all his gifts.”
“We did. Only we like to outdo each other. Every year, we sneak him gifts after, trying to give him something to try to top the others.” This year had been no different. Art probably thought I didn’t know about the year-long beer subscription he’d purchased, but he had another thing coming. I scowled, taping up a particularly bunched-up piece of wrapping paper. “He never remembers who gave him what. I don’t know why we bother.”
“You guys really care about making him happy,” Jackson said, swiping his finger across his iPad screen. I couldn’t see it, but I knew he was checking work emails. “I think it’s cute.”
“It’s less cute when you spent extra time and money having something engraved.”
After opening the specially wrapped, custom ordered, engraved pen I’d given my father, he’d said, “Thanks, guys.” It had almost taken herculean effort not to be a selfish cur and demand credit.
Jackson sent me a distracted smile. “Well, I think your dad is pretty lucky to have you guys.”
We were the lucky ones. I knew my mother’s death had made me a little paranoid about change, but things could change so damn quickly. One night you’re saying goodnight, and the next day you’re saying goodbye. I tried not to think about how long we had left, and just enjoy it. My father being an overall pain-in-the-keister really helped curb my nostalgia.
“So.” Jackson’s voice startled me from my reverie. “You planning to come to bed any time soon?”
“Depends on what you’re going to do to me there.” I tried not to smile, sticking a gift label on the box. “It’s got to be worthwhile.”
“I don’t recall you having any complaints.”
I could give credit where credit was due. “I don’t. You could certainly teach my exes a thing or two.”
I bit my lip and stood, pretending not to see his interested expression. Cursing my wayward mouth, I took a quick moment to shake out the kinks in my stiff legs, and then carried the wrapped gift over to the dresser. There was really no need to bring Adam up, and definitely no need to rehash our sex life. Or lack thereof. Hell, back then, I’d thought our sex life was perfectly okay. A few times with Jackson made me realize it’d been mediocre at best. I sighed with relief, glad I hadn’t signed on for a lifetime of mediocre sex.
Apparently Jackson wasn’t one to miss an open window of opportunity. I could see him putting his iPad away in the nightstand drawer, and I knew what was coming. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened between the two of you?” he asked.
“We just didn’t work out.” I shrugged helplessly as I got in on my side of the bed. I fluffed up the covers way more than necessary, just to keep my hands busy. “What else is there to say?”
He was quiet then, and I felt guilty putting him off with generic answers. He deserved more than that. I sighed. “He cheated on me. Found someone else.”
“Is that why you’re so allergic to commitment?”
I scowled. And this is what you get for sharing. “Coming from you? That’s rich.”
“I know what my issues are.” He gave me an arch look. “We’re talking about you now.”
“I’m not allergic to commitment. When I find the right person, I’ll know.”
In true Jackson form, he couldn’t let it be. “And you’ll do what?”
It was a good question. I still thought love was a bit of a suck fest. I wasn’t interested on putting my heart on the line ever again. I wasn’t about to say any of that, though. “If I learn how to predict the future, I’m probably going to use it on lotto numbers,” I said mildly.
“Fuck, Avery.” Jackson ran his hands through his hair, setting it on end, thoroughly exasperated with me. “I’m starting to think the only time you give me a real fucking answer is after we’ve had sex.”
I had no denials at the ready, mostly because he was one hundred percent correct. When we were together like that, giving him anything but the God’s honest truth was a task almost Sisyphean in nature. It was a part of me that I hated to expose, because I didn’t want to be hurt again.
“Maybe you’re right,” I admitted.
“I know I’m right.” And suddenly, he reached over, lifting me as if I weighed nothing. He ignored my flailing and protesting, and lowered me onto his lap. Scrabbling for purchase, I finally steadied my hands on his shoulders. His hands settled at my waist as my hair fell forward, curtaining us both.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, needlessly. I already felt his erection pressing into me, hard and ready. Obviously, my cartoon pajamas were a turn-on for him.
“I’m getting my answers.”
He was certainly welcome to try. I sent him a look of faux-disappointment. “I can’t believe you find me sexy in SpongeBob. There ought to be a law.”
“I find you sexy in anything.” He grinned. “Even SpongeBob.”
“You’re depraved.”
“You love it.”
I loved it better when he forgot about getting his damned answers and fucked me like he was getting paid to do so. But after, with our hair mussed, our bodies sweaty, and the bedcovers so messed up that we had to get out of bed and remake it, I had to face facts.
This casual sex thing had gone far enough. I was not capable of having a casual fling with Jackson. I’d woken up the night after we had sex to an empty, cold bed. Cool pillows and wrinkled sheets on his side greeted my seeking hands, and it had the appropriate sobering effect as I’d rubbed a hand over my wild tangle of hair, wondering what the hell I’d done? I thought about all the things I’d told him…things that only seemed shareable there in the quiet and the dark and I’d pulled the covers over my head.
I’d lain there under the sheets, quietly hyperventilating. Clearly, I lived here now. Here under the sheets. Alone. With my shame.
I’d had to acknowledge then that I clearly liked him a lot more than I’d previously admitted. And that liking had only increased with the things he’d told me and trusted me with. He wasn’t just some privileged, arrogant, gorgeous guy who’d always had the world by the cajones. He’d had a privileged upbringing, yes. But with that had come a heavy cost. He was damaged in his own way, and wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable with me…which was something that was really working for me.
As the panic started to set in, the door had opened. I’d peered over the covers to find Jackson with a tray of breakfast items. Orange juice. Fruit. The promised waffles. I’d laughed at his wriggling eyebrows and his leering, and sat up, accepting the tray with the sheet tucked under my arms. We’d eaten then, and used the leftover syrup to…well, do things. And then I’d gotten on top of him and rode him hard, hips flexing, hands tweaking my own hardened nipples as I really got into it.
We’d had to go slow and be quiet, in deference to the waking household, and it had only increased the intimacy between us. He’d looked up at me with this expression…like I was the only thing he’d ever wanted, and it made my insides go soft and gooey, melting like M&Ms in a kid’s heated palm. Looking into those hazel eyes as he came apart quietly under me was something I wasn’t ever going to forget. Or repeat.
I should’ve known then. I already cared too much. Caring was two steps away from losing my heart again, and I wasn’t going to do that.
I snapped the sheet hard enough to snatch it out of Jackson’s hand on the other side and he sighed exasperatedly. “Problems?” I asked, a hand on my hip.
“It doesn’t have to be that tight,” he said, grabbing for the end again.
“You’re trying to put on the wrong end.”
“I have two degrees, Avery,” he growled. “I think I can manage to make a bed.”
“Obviously neither of those degrees was from Linens & Things.”
His frustration was understandable. We’d been trying to make the bed like Irene had, but neither of us was very good at it. As we went back to fighting a fucking fitted sheet in our underwear, I continued my inner monologue. As I was saying, sexual flirtation? Over. We’d indulged our baser natures, and now it was time to be mature.
I was mature. My driver’s license said so. So did the young clerk at my local ABC liquor store who kept calling me “ma’am.” The red-haired, freckle-faced youth made me wonder whether I should purchase the cotton candy-flavored vodka or hang on to it, just so I’d have something to bash him over the head with if he fucking “ma’am”-ed me one more time.
I nodded, sagely. Yes. I was wise, I was old, and I had a sudden hankering for flavored liquor. To ensure I didn’t do something stupid like fall in love, Jackson and I would not have sex with one another again. And that was that.
*
There was no denying it—the man had obviously taken some sort of class in mind control. I lay in the mess of sheets, watching the palm-frond shaped fan blades rotating lazily, cooling my heated skin.
“I think it’s getting better,” he said, his voice a husky rasp. “Is that even possible?”
“It can’t get too much better,” I murmured. “I don’t relish the thought of dying young.”
His hand slid down the side of my neck, his thumb caressing my jaw, stroking my skin. His hand on my neck was warm and soft, and after orgasm-a-palooza, it was easy to grow sleepy. “Admit it,” he said, his voice smug, “You like it when my hands are on you.”
He was wrong. I didn’t “like” it when he touched me. I loved it. Needed it. Craved it like a heroin addict’s first sweet fucking hit. “Go to sleep,” I finally said. It wasn’t long before he did, blond head nestled close to mine. I turned to say goodnight, but his fluttering eyelids told me he was already somewhere off in dreamland. And hoping I’d maybe find a cure for falling for Jackson somewhere in my dreams, I closed my eyes and joined him.