Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75474 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75474 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I scream. The water is freezing. I can barely catch my breath.
“Told you,” the man of my dreams says, standing on the deck in nothing but shorts and his sunglasses. He slips them off and jumps in after me.
Breaking the waterline, he blows out a sharp breath and shakes his head. Then he grabs my hips and pulls me close, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist.
“Fuck, it’s cold,” he grumbles.
“You didn’t have to follow me in,” I say between the sweet, closed-mouth kisses he keeps placing on my lips.
“I’d follow you anywhere,” he whispers back.
And just when I think I can’t fall any harder for him, that I couldn’t love him more than I already do, he makes a liar out of me.
“Jordan…” I finally scare up the courage to speak. He’s doing something with the boat, adjusting lines or preparing sails or something.
“Hmm.”
“What happened with Lainey and Eli? Between the three of you.”
Jordan drops the ropes and walks to the head of the boat, looking out at the horizon like he’s searching for something. He exhales and pushes his sunglasses to the top of his head, squints at me.
“I was fourteen when I got sick. Do you know what’s on the mind of a boy that age?”
“Girls?”
“Girls.” He smiles. “Laine and I had something in common––cancer. The disease we were both fighting. It’s like going to war. The experience binds you…She turned it into something romantic. Too many Jane Austen books.”
He sits down next to me.
“She was beautiful and funny and…I was a boy with no hair, no social life, a handful of friends who never came to visit. She paid attention to me, made me feel…seen.” He shrugs.
“I fell for her hard. But Eli was always around, visiting daily. I convinced myself I could win her over. And for a few years, she made me believe I had. We were both going to get better so we could be together…at least, that’s what she made me believe. I did everything the doctors asked of me, never gave up because I was doing it for Laine.
“She told me to keep it a secret because she didn’t want to hurt Eli’s feelings. She told me to wait until we went to Harvard––we’d both gotten in. Eli was heading to Yale…For years, she kept stringing me along. Until our freshman year at Harvard. I pushed her and that’s when she admitted she was in love with Eli…I transferred to MIT next semester.”
I can hear my heart breaking one piece at a time. For him, for me. That empathy thing again. My chest aches for the boy with so much working against him. But I also send up a silent prayer of gratitude to Lainey. She gave him a reason to live, a reason to fight, and for that I thank her. She probably saved his life by giving him hope, false or otherwise.
“And you stayed friends?”
“Lainey…” He smiles softly. “I couldn’t stay mad at her.”
“And Eli?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“You never told him.”
He shakes his head. “What for? To make him as miserable as I was? I wouldn’t do that to her.”
I get up and walk over to him, throw my arms around his waist, and sink my face into his neck. He feels so solid and warm and…present. I never feel like his mind is somewhere else or with someone else when we’re together.
“Is this real?” I whisper.
Jordan squeezes me tighter. Kisses my cheek, my forehead. “This is real,” he whispers back.
16
Chapter Sixteen
Jordan
“I envy you.”
Eli’s rocky voice rips my attention off the football game we’re watching. Pats are shutting out Miami, but I’m barely paying attention. My mind is on the woman in the kitchen.
“Me? Why me?”
He chuckles dryly, no humor in it, and glances at the door that leads to the kitchen. Eli cooked a feast fit for ten and Riley offered to clean up.
“Because your best years are ahead of you while mine are long gone.”
At thirty-four, I doubt it, but it’s too soon to talk about moving on. He’s not ready to hear it and it may be some time before he is.
“You’re wrong, but you won’t listen now, so I’ll save the speech for later.”
Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived a hundred years and none of them good. None with the exception of the last three months that is. It’s been so long I’d forgotten what feeling good feels like. Content, at peace, whatever you want to call it. Happy.
Images from yesterday flood my mind and I have to stop myself from going to her, from wrapping my arms around her from behind, and sinking my face in her neck. Nose to skin. Hips to hips.
I can’t get enough of her. Of the way she moves, the way she feels, the way she smells. There’s something about the scent of a woman that transcends physical attraction. A person can be your type, check all the right boxes, but if her scent is off, it won’t work. Riley even smells like mine.