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“It’s your turn. Maybe you should move up to Boston. You've thought about it before, and that was before you and Jane got together.”
“I haven't told her yet, but that's my plan eventually.” I decided to be blunt with my brother.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t talked to her about it yet. I want to get through this whole legal case so that I can make some changes business-wise. I can’t do that until the legal mess is done. If I try while it’s still going on, too many questions will come up from my partners.”
“Makes sense, so you’ll have to wait. We'd love it if you were up here.”
“I'd love to be there,” I said, meaning it.
My two brothers, my sister, and I had always been close. But we'd grown apart some after our mother died. She’d been the touchstone for the whole family. And then our father obliterated what little respect we had for him. He’d been cold, distant, and occasionally cruel when we were kids. Then he’d committed massive financial fraud and landed himself in jail. In the reverberations of that, my siblings and I had pulled closer again. The idea of being in Boston with them had been blipping on my radar for a while now. Jane’s presence only sweetened the idea.
I waited outside the train station. Whenever I came here to meet Jane, I often felt like a restless little boy. Impatience spurred me as people filtered off the train, and I peered around to catch a glimpse of her honey-gold hair. The second I saw her adjusting her backpack on her shoulders with her eyes down as she stepped off the train, my heart gave a rounding kick, and anticipation sizzled through me. What had started as pure attraction was tangling like a vine within emotion. I didn't think the two could be separated anymore.
Oh, to be sure, IwantedJane. Fiercely. But it was more than that, so much more. I missed her when she wasn't here, and seeing her elicited an unfamiliar sense of joy inside. I watched, waiting for the second she would lift her head. When she did, she glanced around before pressing her glasses up on her nose, a habit that made my heart twist with a sweet ache. Her eyes arced about the area before her gaze landed on mine. Her lips curled into a smile. I was moving swiftly, threading through the crowd, until I reached her.
“Hey—” she began, her voice muffled as I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her close.
I needed to touch her. As much as she stirred deep waters inside me, only she could help me feel anchored and not set adrift on the tumult of my own stormy emotions. I breathed in the scent of her that had become familiar, a little musky with a subtle floral hint from her soap. When I lifted my head, she peered up at me.
“I missed you,” she said immediately.
I brushed her hair away from her face. “I missed you too,” I said gruffly.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes searching mine.
I took a breath. I was, and I wasn't. I wanted to tell her everything, the bundle of stress of the last seven months or so, all of it tangled up in work and the bitterness and cynicism that I tried to avoid. I wanted to tell her it hurt me to keep this from her—even though I knew I had to until it was okay not to—yet I couldn't say any of that.
I simply answered, “I am now,” because that was entirely true.
Jane was here, and we had the whole weekend together. I was getting greedy, though, and I wanted more. She leaned up and pressed a kiss along the edge of my jaw. I angled down, catching her lips with mine. Right there in the train station with people surrounding us, I fit my mouth over hers and got lost in a fiery hot kiss. I held her close and took deep sips from her mouth. The sound of someone calling something snapped through my awareness, and we broke apart.
Jane’s cheeks were tinged pink, and her eyes bashful. “Wow,” she said.
“I did say I missed you,” I offered with a grin. “Want me to carry your bag?”
She shook her head. “It's a backpack, and I'm already wearing it.”
We turned, and I caught her hand, lacing my fingers through hers. Once we started walking, I prompted, “Tell me how your week was.” I'd grown to love this time when we were connected. These moments were mundane, but I loved just catching up. The time was sweetened because I didn't have her all week, so it was nice. I thought about my conversation with Dallas.
Even though there were things I couldn't tell her, I wanted to share with her my eventual plan to move to Boston. I told myself I would when the time was right. A few minutes later, we were in the car, and Jane said, “Let’s get takeout and just stay in tonight.”
I slid my gaze to hers as I waited at a stoplight. “Yeah?”
Her teeth snagged her bottom lip, and she nodded quickly. “Do you want to call now?”
“What do you want for takeout?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know me. I’m easy when it comes to food. What doyouwant?”
She grinned. “How about Indian food? That place we went to a few weeks ago.”
“Sounds good. You can order for me.”
I drove while she called in our order, and we picked it up on the way to my place. The weekend started out good,reallygood. For some reason, I held back on mentioning my plan to move to Boston because I didn't know when. The “when” of it was important. If this legal case dragged on too long, I might need to be down here longer than I hoped. Maybe I could just say fuck it and leave, but I wasn’t ready to consider that yet. Everything was good up until late Saturday afternoon.
Then I got a call from the investigator. Jane was grading papers, so I took the call in the room I used for an office in my condo when I wanted to work from home. “What's up?” I asked by way of greeting.
