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“How are you not uncomfortable talking to me about this?”
“I’m not uncomfortable because I have nothing to hide. All I want is for the past to be in the past and us to move into the future—as a family.” He places a chaste kiss on my lips.
I close my eyes briefly and take in the feel of him.
“Okay, what else?” he says.
I swallow hard and ask the most difficult question. “Does any part of you still love her?”
I hold my breath when he considers his answer to this question longer than the others. He drags me to him so that I’m straddling him and we’re face to face.
“The answer to your question is no. But there’s something else you should know.” He brushes his knuckles over my cheek. “I never loved Adelaide like I loved you. Ever. Even when I proposed, I knew it was different, and I thought long and hard about whether I should even propose because of that. In the end, I decided that a person probably only ever gets to experience the kind of love we had once in their lives and that I’d have to settle for something that wasn’t as all-consuming as what we shared. I think there are different kinds of love and what we have trumps them all.”
My eyes well with tears, not just because his words are so poetic but because they match my own feelings for him. “Jimmy, you’ve always been my person. That never changed. I wish there was another word for love because sometimes I feel like it doesn’t sum up what we have.”
His lips meet mine in a soul-consuming kiss, and we both pour our love into it. His hands snake into my wet hair, and I almost cry from how precious and loved he makes me feel.
He pulls back, and our gazes lock. “Just so you know… if Adelaide had asked me the same question about you, I wouldn’t have been able to say that I didn’t still love you. A part of me always carried you with me.”
I smile and run my hands over his face, over his stubble, just to feel him.
“Is there anything you want to ask me about our time apart?” I figure we should do this now and check that box.
He grimaces. “Fuck no. I don’t want to know anything about you with anyone else.”
“Well, that would be a pretty boring story anyway, as you know. There basically has been no one else since you.”
“I’m not gonna lie, that makes me happy.” He gives me a chaste kiss.
“There is one more thing I was wondering…”
“What is it?” he asks, adjusting me on his lap as his cock grows underneath me.
“What happened to your mom? Did you ever hear from her again?”
A sigh leaves his lips. “She died a couple of years ago.”
My hand flies up to my mouth. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
Jimmy shrugs. “I had someone keep an eye on her after I paid her to go away. That’s the only way I know. I mean, she was basically already dead to me after everything she did. Still, I paid to have her buried in Virginia and have a gravestone mark her spot. Figured it’s the least I could do, seeing that she gave me life, even if she made it difficult in a lot of ways.”
“How did she die?” I ask.
“Lung cancer. Apparently, she was still smoking up a storm until the end, if you can believe it.”
I don’t know what to say, so I’m silent.
“Anything else?”
I shake my head. I feel lighter now without the lingering doubts plaguing my mind. “Nope. That’s it.”
“Good, because now I think it’s time for us to christen this deck.” His hand slips around my neck, and he undoes the strings of my bathing suit. “What do you say?”
With a smile, I shed the robe and we end up making love under the stars like we did years before, although we’re two different people now. Better people.
Chapter Seventy-six
JIMMY
