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I was still feeling the adrenaline of being whisked away, and of sailing through the nighttime sky with her. There was so much I didn’t know about this woman! This amazing, even somewhat reckless woman who was about to carry our children for us.
Child, not children.
Yeah, well… we could cross that bridge when we came to it.
“Thanks for this,” I said happily. “After a sixty-hour work week, I kinda needed it.”
The smile she returned from the other side of the car was bright and beautiful. “I’m glad you were up for it,” she said. “But it’s not over yet.”
And then suddenly, perhaps without even thinking, she leaned into my shoulder…
.. and slipped one delicate hand into mine.
Ten
JORDYN
To say our time at Mohegan Sun was amazing would be an understatement, and that was all because of Connor. He was the one who made it special for the both of us, and in ways I never could’ve expected.
I’d dined with him, sipped coffee with him, played blackjack with him. Pulled an hour’s worth of slot machines side by side with him, beside the gentle roar of a beautiful, indoor waterfall. Between Connor’s good nature and his constantly cracking jokes, there was never a dull moment. It was all just so much… fun.
Best of all, he spent most of the night with one arm draped around me. From the moment I’d held his hand on a whim he’d taken to interlacing his fingers and squeezing mine back, letting me know a little contact was okay. We were more than friends, more than just acquaintances. I was doing something genuinelygoodfor Connor and his partners. Something that went so far beyond the act of simple friendship, that a little platonic camaraderie meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Or at least, that’s what I convinced myself anyway.
Even as midnight came and went there were still people everywhere.We walked the cute little shops together, stopping here and there to pull whichever slot machines happened to call out to us. I geeked out a lot too, gawking at all the beautiful artwork tucked into every corner of the vast casino complex and pulling him along with me to read about each one.
And then we finally came upon it: the single reason I’d always wanted to come here in the first place.
“Holy shit,” I swore under my breath.
The ten-thousand pound glass sculpture dominated the lower floor, as we glided down the escalator towards it. It was lit up from beneath, all vibrant purple and cobalt blue. The piece was a dizzying array of inferred motion made up of thousands of glass streamers, shaped to form a swirling fountain of water.
“What the hell isthat,”Connor asked.
“That,” I paused breathlessly, “isRiver Blue.”
“River Blu—”
“Twenty-five hundred hand-blown pieces,” I went on, “sculpted by master glass artist Dale Patrick Chihuly. And the old bastard did the whole thing with only one eye.”
Connor let out a low whistle as we exited the escalator. Still holding hands, I pulled him forward until we were standing before it.
“What happened to his other eye?”
“Car accident,” I said, feeling that sour, familiar taste in the pit of my stomach. I pushed it down. “Launched through a windshield. 1976.”
“He’s a glass artist who lost half his sight due toglass?”asked Connor.
“I guess so, yeah.” My gaze dropped. “Shit. I never thought of it that way.”
Connor’s hand slipped from mine. Gently, he touched my chin and raised my gaze back to the magnificent sculpture that towered thirty feet above us.
“So this is what you do, love?” he asked softly.
“No,” I answered honestly. “Right now I teach intro to glassblowing classes to tourists as they make fist-sized marbles and shatter practically everything they touch.” I sighed wistfully. “But this is what Iaspireto do.”
Staring together, side by side, Connor shrugged. “So then do it.”
