She looks like a beautiful mess.
She looks like mine, like magic. Like everything I want in life, she looks like hope and possibility.
She looks like the chapter I wasn't expecting to read, one that walked right into my life, ran into it, really.
“Layla and Spencer died in a car accident. About five years ago, Layla and I were 25. Spencer was just six. I'm 30 now,” I tell her. I can tell she’s doing the math in her head. I exhale. “It was awful,” I say. “I was at work, and she was picking Spencer up from school. There was a hit and run and they were gone.”
“Oh my God,” Juniper says, “I'm so sorry.”
“Me too,” I tell her. “You know, life never goes how you plan.”
“No,” Juniper says. “It doesn't.”
“That how your life is?” I ask her.
“It’s been a different kind of tragic,” Juniper admits. “I grew up in foster care. Lemon was my family, is my family. When I aged out of the system, I didn't have anybody. So my family became my fictional characters. Later, it became my fans.”
She shakes her head. “I never expected a fan to turn on me like this.” Tears fill her eyes again. “Sorry. I shouldn't make it about me after you just shared so much about you.”
I wrap my arms around her. “Don't apologize. It's all a lot.” I wrap my arms around her, and she wraps her arms back around me.
This woman I just met knows more about me than anybody else in Alaska. And I know that it's no small thing. “My friend Lemon, her brother Reuben lost his wife in a car crash too. He’s a single dad now, to his little girl Plum.” She presses her lips together, tears in her eyes, and I see a depth to her, an understanding of pain, that draws me to her in a way that I never anticipated. A way I need. “Life is so precious,” she whispers. “Each day is a gift. Today …” she shakes her head. “If I hadn’t escaped …”
“I know,” I say, kissing her cheeks, holding her tight. Thankful in ways words cannot express. She is here. We are here. Together. “Come here,” I say, taking her hand and leading her through the house to my bedroom.
I tell her to sit on my bed. “I'll be right back.” And then I go into my garage and I grab my tin snips. “Look,” I tell her when I come back inside, “this might be a little uncomfortable.”
She nods, looking around my bedroom, taking it all in. “Did they live here with you?”
I shake my head. “No, we lived in Oregon together. I moved up here after. I needed a new start.”
“You've been here all alone? All this time.”
“Yes. What about you? Do you live alone?”
“I live all alone too, Jacob, and I'm really lonely. Are you?”
I nod. “More than I’ve ever admitted before.”
She lifts her sweater past her belly, revealing this revolting piece of metal to me. She lies back on the bed. She closes her eyes. “Please get this off of me.”
“You know, when I take it off, you're going to be—”
Her eyes open, meet mine. “I know,” she says. “I'll be very, very naked.” She twists her lips. “I know I should be traumatized by what happened today, but is it weird that the idea of being naked with you is the only thing I want?”
My cock – it aches at that thought. I take the wire cutters in my fist. “No, Juniper, there's nothing wrong with that. I know we just met, but that's all I want too.”
8
JUNIPER
The belt is ridiculously uncomfortable, grinding into my hips and against my most tender places. I want it off me in a way I have never had to fathom before. But there is something soothing, something nearly hypnotic about Jacob being the one removing it from me right now.
The walls of the cabin are pinewood. Everything smells delicious and earthy, like a man. The bed is big. The mattress is soft. There are lots and lots of pillows and the sheets smell clean like sandalwood and cedar. There's a dresser in the room and the lights are low. And whoever this man is – this man I've just met whose heart is tender and has been broken, and who's healed himself and is here for me, who is now touching me with such tenderness, such grace, such sacredness – he is a man who really knows what he is doing. It makes me feel beautiful, which is remarkable all things considered.
I was taken against my will today. Now I am being reveled in my will today. Relished, delighted, desired.
I know it by the way Jacob looks at me, touches me, by the way his hands so carefully ease those metal cutters against my skin. Whispering his words to me, he says, “I'm sorry. I hope this doesn't hurt. I got you.”