Jack
I startedmy run over an hour ago with no plan in mind other than to run and sweat. When I’m not working or spending time with Benny, then I’m punishing my body by running, lifting, or climbing. Anything to numb out the anger and shame I feel for not seeing what was happening to my sister, what I’m doing by pushing Everly away, the carelessness in which I didn’t pay enough attention so that my nephew was left with too much adulting when he should have been enjoying being a kid. It’s a repeated spiral of guilt that I can’t seem to stop.
Today was no different, but I got lost in my thoughts and without even realizing where I was going, I ran right to her.What have I been doing?I’m so fucked up by what’s been happening with my family that I’ve completely fucked over the best woman to come into my life. I’m punishing myself. I don’t deserve to be with someone like her, and she shouldn’t want to be with someone like me. Broken, useless, and chuck-full of baggage that just won’t go away.
But I’m here now and as soon as her beautiful hazel eyes meet mine, I move so quickly it doesn’t give her any time to overthink. My mouth collides with hers and though I know she’s upset with me, she doesn’t push me away. How could kissing her feel so good?
It’s familiar and comfortable, mixed with a levity that pulls a measure of stress right from my shoulders. I move my lips across her jaw and back, and she pulls my bottom lip into her mouth. What was urgent and riddled with purpose turns into a vehement battle of our tongues. Messy, angry, and I don’t think anymore, I just need to feel her.
My hands wrap around her waist, and I hold her flush against my body. If I move too far away, I’m afraid she’ll never want me back. I glide my hands down and scoop her up from under her thighs. A small yelp escapes her, clearly not expecting me to hoist her up in my arms. She wraps her legs around my hips, arms around my neck, never stopping her lips from working soothingly over mine, and everything I’ve been beating myself up over, the worry and anger, they fall away, and I feel like everything is as it should be. Me here, with her.
I’ve craved this incredible woman every moment of every day that I’ve stayed away. Right now, my reasons seem irrelevant. I’m not about to unpack any of it, because nothing else matters than feeling her. The way she’s moving, I’m not sure if she wants me or hates that she wants me, but neither of us is stopping.
She moves her hands down my body with intention, into my sweatpants, and pushes them down enough to pull my cock from out of my briefs. We have the same plan, fuck each other, and forget about everything other than how our bodies feel when we’re together, the release we’ve been longing for, the warmth.
Her skirt makes it easy on me, and I push it up her hips, tugging her wet panties aside, and the feel of that alone makes me ache. She drags my cock through her wetness, up and down, mixing our arousal. With abandon, she lifts her legs, using them to pull me closer, and claws at my shoulders to move faster. She thrusts her hips forward, and I impale her in one fast movement, pinning her into the wall we’ve moved toward. I’m buried to the hilt, immediately dizzy with my desire for her, never wanting to stop. But I pull back to stare at her, making sure this is what she wants.
“Don’t look at me like you have things to say. I’m not interested in talking right now, Jack. I only want to feel you. Nothing else.”
So, instead of words, I move my hips slowly and press into her even deeper, punishing her for being as cold to me as I have been to her. Once she starts moaning, I know I’m hitting her exactly where she wants. I reach my hand around and grab her jaw, pulling her mouth to mine.
“Fuck.” I pull back to look at her. There’s only passion there, no forgiveness. She bit my lip, and I can taste copper.
“Don’t fucking tease me right now. I want you to fuck me, Jack.”
I kiss her again and do as she says, pulling back almost completely out of her and thrusting back into her again, hard. It shoves her body against the wall, closing any space that’s left open between us. It’s the most in control I’ve felt in days. She’s giving that to me. Over and over, I push into her, drawing out screams and moans from both of us. Nothing is loving or sensual about this, but it’s exactly what we both need from the other. A punishment, not to her, but only to myself. I don’t get to make love to her right now. I’ve lost that privilege. With a sheen of sweat on her face and neck, I lick down, while keeping pace.
“Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop, Jack,” she says between breaths.
Within moments, she clenches around me as her orgasm takes over. She moans so loudly in my ear that a warmed chill cuts through my body, and I follow her over the edge. I come so hard, I lose any inhibitions and yell, “No! Fuck, you feel so good.” I have no control over what I’m saying, so I stifle the animal that she draws out of me and quiet the love that is simmering just beneath the surface. Afraid of letting it bubble over, I sink my teeth into her shoulder. It’s not hard enough to hurt her or draw blood, but just enough to feel as much of her as I can. Claim her.
We lean against one another, breathing heavily, fighting ourselves to savor this and hold back from returning to this moment, the room, whatever awaits us next. I can’t bring myself to move out of her. I’m afraid of what that all just meant. I’m unraveling. I’m not okay, and I’m not about to drag her down with me.
When we let go of one another, that’ll be it. We both know it. I don’t know how to tell her to wait for me. Maybe after all of this with my family, when it smooths over, I’ll be ready for her. How do you tell someone youmightbe ready for them later? And how do you do it without a timetable? She deserves more than that. More than me, and my fucked up perspective. The shit cards I’ve been shuffling around for my whole life.
I steady myself for what I’m about to say. “I came here to give you closure. To give me closure, because I don’t have enough right now to focus on you and what we could be together.” She leans back to look me in the eye. She’s trying to understand, but if I can’t understand it, how on earth can I expect her to get me? “My nephew and my sister are the ones who need me, and I need to pay attention now. I’ve pushed them to the sidelines for long enough and now after everything that has happened...Kathryn’s is a recovery program a state away while Benny has to be in therapy, and I need to make sure that kid finishes school and doesn’t fall down the same holes I’ve fallen down. I am supposed to be responsible for her, and I fucked up. I didn’t see what was going on right in front of me.”
We finish untangling from each other. I tuck myself back into my pants while she moves her skirt down and over her thighs. She grabs a towel to clean herself up, and after a minute, with so much silence in the air, she looks up at me and smiles. “I love you, you know.” My heart feels like it stops before picking up its speed.
What? After that, she’s going to tell me she loves me?
She tilts her head, studying my movements, and there aren’t any. She’s left me in a paralyzed state by her words. “You’re not to blame for anything that’s happened, Jack. What matters is how you deal with it. You can’t prevent people from making choices and choosing the wrong thing, even if you did know what was happening with her. There’s nothing you could have done to change her decisions. That’s not how life works. It happened, and now, just like her, you deal with it. You’re a good man, so don’t start believing that you’re not.” She looks down, and I’m so overwhelmed, desperate to say something but not sure what, when she looks back up at me. “Be there for them.”
I have no idea how to navigate this. I was preparing for goodbye, not a confession of love and support.
She continues. “By the scowl on your face, I’m going to guess that you weren’t prepared for me to say that.” She pauses and moves over to the sink, washing her hands and drying them.
As she leans on the counter, she looks at me, and I watch her completely gain control of the situation.There she is, my boss, my fighter. Shit, how I’ve fallen for this woman. Hard.
“Be there for them, Jack. I just wish you could have realized that it never had to be a choice. Me or them. Shame on you for thinking it had to be and not respecting the honesty we had.”
So that’s what it feels like to be put in my place. Shown how I should have handled a situation I’ve been failing to figure out. It sounds so simple now that she’s said it. Fuck. I bite my cheek to keep my chin from shaking. I bite harder to keep the blur and threat of tears behind my quickly crumbling stoic veil.
Less than a beat later, she says, “I’m leaving.” That knocks me back into reality and out of my head. “I’m going to be spending some time in New York, getting my business off the ground.”
“Wait, what? The apparel?” I ask, sounding accusatory and panicked for not knowing.
She nods and smiles. “You missed a lot when you decided to ice me out.”
“I didn’t mean-” She cuts me off, holding up her hand.
“I’ve lived most of my life hoping something like us would happen, but I never thought it would break me the way that it has. And the worst part is that you barely did anything. You treated me as if I was nothing more than a good fuck. Even after we said things to each other. Things that, to me, meant it was so much more than sex. I started to think that…” She stops herself from saying more. “I don’t know what I am to you, at this moment…I don’t have it in me to care.”
I’m not processing any of this right now. It’s too much. Too many emotions I don’t know how to navigate like a damn adult. I can’t understand why she isn’t angry and pushing me out the door. I’m better with anger. I understand it. This, I don’t understand. “What was that just now, then?”
“That!? Jack, you and I both know that if you have to ask.” She smirks at herself and shakes her head. Then she looks up, as if something in the universe is going to help to not let this all just disintegrate around us. And it makes me feel sick. “That was the end. You said it yourself, it was closure. So let it be closure. That was us saying goodbye. Just like you wanted.”