SAVANNAH DIDN’T SLEEP after that particularly raw experience with Jackson. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to. Yes, she was discovering that orgasms were a bit of a sleeping pill. But not after something like that.
It had felt loaded.
When he had turned her over like that.
It had been hot, there was no denying that. But for some reason, he had found the blow job confronting.
In her experience men didn’t find that confronting, they found it nice. But there had been something in his response that made clear that it had been different for him. He certainly didn’t act like her ex-husband. Ultimately, she couldn’t even compare the two men. Darren had loved his veneer of respectability and had been prideful about his position in the community. His reputation. Jackson didn’t seem to care about his reputation. He didn’t care what anyone thought—he only cared what he did. What it meant to him. And now, what it meant for Lily.
She was fascinated by that. By the way he was. By the way that interacted with who she was, and how she had always seen herself. By what she had thought about marriage and what she thought of it now.
Her parents had had a particular sort of marriage. One she had never wanted to emulate. And still, even though she had ended up in an entirely different situation, it had been a bad one. She had started to think it was marriage.
She rolled over onto her side and looked at Jackson’s silhouette. She was so different with him. There was no expectation of a future between them, and maybe, because of that, she hadn’t held pieces of herself in reserve so that they couldn’t be hurt. Couldn’t be destroyed.
But she had told him about herself. About all her failures.
She had been married to her husband for five years, and other than him using it to insult her at the very end of everything, they had never discussed the fact that she hadn’t orgasmed before in her life. Why hadn’t they talked about that? And why had she been able to talk about it with Jackson?
She had a feeling the answer was complicated. A little bit her. A little bit him. A little bit of them together. Just like his reaction to what they’d shared earlier.
Maybe it wasn’t marriage that was wrong. Maybe it was sometimes just the person. Because she could imagine forever with Jackson. With Jackson and Lily in this cabin on this beautiful ranch. In this adorable town. Yes, she could imagine that. More than that. She wanted it.
She loved him, she realized.
The thought was terrifying. Enough that she sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the covers to her chest, breathing hard.
She had fallen in love with him.
It had been nothing like her previous experience with love. It had just...happened. And it wasn’t as simple as wanting companionship. Wasn’t as simple as wanting to live in the same house and build a life that looked a certain way. It was something deep and terrifying. She would live with him with no wedding ring, it wouldn’t matter. Whether he was her lover, boyfriend, fiancé, husband. All that mattered was that it was him.
What she wanted went deep. An ache in her soul she didn’t know she’d ever find the cure for. She suddenly felt terrified, panicky, like she would never have enough of him.
She wanted it all. All and everything. This man. This life. This baby she had grown to love with everything inside of herself.
All of her life she had kept walls up around her heart. Her parents had placed her at a distance, and she had wandered around the world doing the same to other people ever since. She had learned to carry everything she needed in her chest, self-contained and protected, and never wounded by the people around her. Because they could never get inside.
Not even Darren.
But in Jackson’s house, in his bed, she had found intimacy. The reason that people couldn’t get enough of each other’s bodies. She had discovered the meaning of sex. And what it meant when two people found pleasure together.
It wasn’t just nice to be close.
An orgasm wasn’t nice. It wrenched down your defenses. Made you scream, contorted your face into expressions that would be humiliating if you weren’t sharing it, glorying in it together.
She’d had sex with one man for five years and it hadn’t made her love him. But sex with this man...
Oh, it had made her love him.
The sex, the closeness. That it made her understand making love. The way he was with Lily. The way he was with his family. The ranch. Her.
She loved him.
It was novel. New and terrifying. She didn’t want it. But she needed it.
She brushed her fingertips over his bicep and he moved slightly.
“You’re not a slave, either, are you?” she asked softly.
“No,” he said.
If she’d been on the outside looking in she would have thought it was insane. To fall for another man less than a year after her divorce would have been insane. If she’d ever really fallen for her husband in the first place.
The fact of the matter was, she was falling for the first time.
With Jackson. Only with Jackson.
“I...” She cleared her throat. “Jackson.”
He turned over, and she couldn’t see his face in the dimly lit room. “You sound serious,” he said.
“I feel serious.”
He shifted. “I’m not sure you really want to have the conversation you think you do.”
She flashed back to that moment in the kitchen at his brother’s house. To the things that Chloe had said. And the way that he’d denied them.
She knew that he had been avoiding talking to her after that. That his kiss had been to shut her up, to distract her. To reroute her. But that was okay. It didn’t scare her. Well. It did. But at this point, it all did.
“Don’t tell me what I want,” she said. “I spent too many years telling myself what I wanted, instead of just letting myself want it. I’m not going to let anyone else tell me a damn thing.”
“Savannah...”
“I love you,” she said. “I do. This whole life. Living here with you. With Lily. I love you.”
She felt him get stiff beside her. “No,” he said firmly. “You love what you just said. The life. But eventually, honey, that’s gonna wear off. And it’s not going to be fun for you. When it quits feeling like playing house, you’re not going to like it anymore.”
“What is it you think of me?” She adjusted so that she could see him better. “Have I ever acted like a person who just gets tired of her responsibilities? Do you think that I’m someone who says that I love someone else? I’ve told you about my life. About my marriage.”
“And I already know that you’re willing to walk away from a marriage.”
“That’s not fair. You know how awful all that was for me. You know that he wasn’t a good husband.”
“I wouldn’t be a good husband. It’s why I never plan on being one. My father wasn’t a very good husband. I can tell you that for a damned fact. If he were, he wouldn’t have had to try with so many different women.”
“Why did your stepmother stay married to him?”
“She had grit. More grit than desire to be happy every day, I guess.”
“You just don’t think anyone could possibly be happy with you? Because I’m happy, Jackson.”
“Honey,” he said. “That’s the sex talking.”
“That is the most insulting, ridiculous thing you could’ve said.”
“We both know you don’t have experience with this kind of thing. Not with anyone else.”
“Jackson...”
“I am not crazy enough, I don’t hate myself enough, and I sure as hell don’t hate my daughter enough, to sign her up for the kind of life that I had growing up. I won’t do it. The only reason I ever started anything with you, Savannah, is that I knew you were temporary. I already knew you were going to leave. Move on to your real life. I’m not going to promise Lily a mother and then let her lose it.”
“That’s what you think I would do?”
“It’s maybe not what you think now, but nobody starts serious relationships thinking they’re going to end. I think you know that.”
“No. I know that who you’re with matters. How do you not see that?” She rolled over, the sheets and blankets rustling. “Staying married is not the be-all and end-all. You have to compromise, make yourself vulnerable. Expose parts of yourself you wish you didn’t have to. That was where I failed in my marriage, Jackson. I never let Darren know who I was. That’s not what this is.”
“No.” Jackson shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, honey. You might not believe it, but you have made me into an ideal. If you hadn’t, then you wouldn’t be trying to get me to change my mind right now. You don’t want me. You want the husband you think you could make me. But I’m not built for it.”
“You didn’t think you were built for being a father, either. And look at you.”
“Yeah. So I could marry you, Savannah. I can make this little arrangement permanent. Pretty damned convenient for me, don’t you think? And how would you ever be sure it was real?” He reached over, grabbing her arm, squeezing her tight. “How? I didn’t want any of this, and here I am, doing it. Is that why you want a man to marry you? Because he wants a permanent nanny?”
She took a deep breath, sliding out of the bed. “I’m not your nanny, Jackson. I never have been. What I want from you has nothing to do with that.”
She started to collect her clothes, her hand shaking. Then she stopped, turned to look at him. “Tell me you don’t love me.”
“I don’t love you,” he returned. Easily. Lightly. As if it cost him nothing to say it.
She nodded, her heart splintering in her chest. She stood out in his living room for a long time after that, debating going in and kissing Lily on the cheek. Lily felt like part of her. A part of her heart. As necessary as air to her existence. What would she do when she couldn’t start her day by picking her up from her crib and feeling that precious weight against her chest? Resting her cheek against that soft, downy head.
She couldn’t go back in there.
She would fall to her knees and howl over the loss and never get back up.
It occurred to her, when she walked on numb feet back to her bedroom and began to pack the minimal things she had brought with her, that she had never once asked Darren if he loved her.
Because she hadn’t cared about the answer. Not in the end.
This was love. This was what it meant to be vulnerable to another person. What it meant to open herself up.
It was terrible.
It hurt.
But she had a feeling that in the end this would be the only way she would ever heal. From the life she had been born into that she ultimately couldn’t control. This was her taking control. She wasn’t going to let the way other people treated her determine what she could have. Not anymore.
Not even him.
She walked out the front door, tears pouring down her cheeks. The thought that echoed in her mind as she got into her car and drove away from Jackson’s house was that the worst part about all of this was that Lily could have been hers. Jackson could have been hers.
And now they wouldn’t be.
Now she was alone. Again.