“A very good thing,” he answered. He kissed her forehead.
She angled her body toward his. The caramel-gold flecks in her eyes glowed in the dimmed overhead lights.
“Jamie, in my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be someone you’d want. I’m, like, a regular-ass girl with more neuroses than Larry David. And you’re like?—”
He clasped her shoulders with both hands.
“Honey, you’re everything I want. You got courage, even when you’re scared. You care about kindness, even when carrying your own weight. You got sense enough to know right from wrong, and you don’t waver. I want all of that. Brinton, I wantyou.”
Tipping her chin upward, he softly leaned his lips against hers. Tingly flashes of anticipation warmed his entire body as her tongue slowly looped around his.
She was the best fucking kiss of his life, and each time, it only got better.
Eventually, Brinton passed him a claw hair clip. “It’ll be easier if you go in small sections, starting from the bottom up.”
“Don’t worry, Bee. I got this,” he said, sectioning her hair like she asked. He squirted a rivulet of oil in the partings along her nape, then gently massaged it with his index finger.
“You got a bonnet or a scarf so I can tie it up later?”
Brinton giggled. “We’ll see if you unlock that level ofBlack Girl Magic after you’re done. Now, stop stalling and tell me why I’m crazy enough to let you do this.”
He couldn’t see her face but almostfelther smile, warm and insistent in his chest. It made him smile.
Brinton letting him care for her in such an intimate way was a big deal. He wanted to take care of her because he recognized the signs: she was healing.
Hopefully, in the same way he was.
“Growing up, I had the biggest crush on Cory’s sister, Callie,” Jamie began, still diligently working.
“She’s a year older. Of course, she wanted nothing to do with her kid brother’s scrawny little friend. I was always at their house because my dad recorded most nights in Nashville. But one day, after football practice, I walked past her room while she did her hair. It was like this choreographed dance. She parted it with a long, skinny comb. She dipped her fingers into this little pot of stuff that smelled like herbs and flowers and coconuts, then quickly rubbed it in.
Callie asked me to help part the back so she could put that herb stuff in, so I did. She had cut off her straight hair and had all these soft curls. Every so often, when Cory was late getting home, and I was bored, she’d let me part her hair or massage everything in while we watchedLove & Basketballor re-runs ofLiving Single. It felt nice to do that for her. Anyway, one night, a few weeks before she left for undergrad at Stanford, she took pity on me.”
As he worked, Jamie laughed, thinking back to that simpler time. All it took was a stiff breeze to get him going.
With Brinton’s shoulders nudging his groin, not much had changed.
Jamie cleared his throat for good measure.
“You can’t leave me hanging,” Brinton whined. “What happened next?”
“She…let me touch her boob.”
“Excuse me?” Brinton shrieked.
He rolled his eyes and smiled. How was she this cute while giving him shit?
“Now, don’t get carried away. I was sixteen. Her clothes were on, and it was five seconds, max. She had on one of those oversized T-shirts. But I could tell she wasn’t wearing anything but cheer shorts underneath.”
In a bit of déjà vu, from his vantage point, he could see right down Brinton’s top. Her velvety skin and how her chest bounced when she laughed, talked, or breathed.
It’d be his undoing if he looked too long, so he forced his eyes back up and on the job. He cleared his throat again. A signal to his wild imagination to calm the fuck down.
They were taking it slow. It washisidea.
“It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Well, until now.” He bit his bottom lip, delighted to find her grinning up at him. “I think she caught me staring.”
“Oh my God—what did you do?”
