Page 79 of Speak from the Heart

“You have so much more to offer than you realize. Family. Katie.” I swallow. “Grace is all the way down in Georgia where she has a husband and five children. Well, almost five. And I have only me. Here.” Alone.

“You kept saying you were going to leave,” he says quietly.

“You didn’t tell me you wanted me to stay.”

We stare at one another. It’s the most honest we’ve been with each other, and it scares me to death.

“I can’t ask you to come back with me, but I also can’t seem to give you up.”

Why? I want to plead. Why can’t he ask me? But I’ve just heard all his reasons, and if he doesn’t want to ask, I’m not going to beg.

“Emily.” He reaches for the tear rolling down my cheek, and I close my eyes.

I shake my head. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

Jess moves closer to me and pulls me into his chest. I bury my face in my hands against him as his fingers stroke my back. The silent tears fall while I fight the sob so desperate to escape.

“We won’t say goodbye,” he whispers, but we both know it’s already happened. Despite his presence here, we’ve already let each other go.

+ + +

Jess and I wake early. His arms are wrapped securely over my back as I inhale his scent. He smells of pine, fresh air, and me.

“How did you get here?” I whisper into his warm skin. The real question I want to ask is if he came for me, but based on what we’ve already discussed, he isn’t here to ask me to follow him.

“I had a meeting in Grand Rapids about the radio. I figured I was already halfway here, so I called Tricia to watch Katie overnight for me. I needed to see you.” He exhales and tugs me tighter to him, but I move my head to look up at his face. His scruff is a little deeper. His hair spills back.

“What are we going to do?” I ask, feeling the all-too-familiar lump in my throat.

“I’m going to go home, and you’re going to stay here, and I’m going to think of you every day.” He hugs me tighter, a tease in his tone, but I don’t find any peace in this suggestion. I nod against him. Home. Here. Those two words war with each other, and I wish it didn’t feel so impossible.

“I just didn’t want us to part without an understanding. Without you understanding how I feel.”

“And how do you feel?” I pull back from him. I want to see his eyes when he answers.

“Well, my fairy-tale woman . . .” He brushes back my hair as he begins. “In a garden of a thousand roses, I’d pick you.” He looks from my forehead to my chin and then to each eye, like compass points on a map. “I’d recognize you as the most precious one.”

The Beast and his rose. It’s the metaphor I used. I could cry, but I don’t. I tip my face up to kiss him. Tenderness turns to tantalizing within seconds, and Jess has me on my back in no time. Our mouths hardly part as his body cascades over mine, parts my thighs, and settles where he fits me best. He slips into me and pauses our kisses to lean back and look down at me. He brushes my hair over my ear, and his mouth falls open, then shuts. There aren’t any more words to speak. Our bodies talk instead.

You are who I want most.

Yet it still feels so hopeless. This is the way of things for me, but I don’t concentrate on that. I focus on Jess. The feel of him buried inside me. The movement of his hips against mine. The drag of his thickness to the edge of my core and the plunge back into the depths. This is how we work best, pushing and pulling against one another.

“Again,” I groan when he moves a certain way.

Again and again and again, I want to sing. Not only like this, not only with sex but as us. I want us, again and again and again.

“Again,” I mutter, and a grin graces his lips as my eyes roll back.

“It shouldn’t keep getting better.” He shifts his eyes to watch where he enters me.

It shouldn’t, but it does, and I’ll never be the same.

+ + +

Eventually, we shower. We explore one another the way we did the first time we showered together, and it ends in quite the same way with our mouths hungry for body parts once again. When we finish, Jess demands food.

“I want the Chicago experience.”