Page 126 of Just One More Thing
He kisses me with patience and complete attention. And my brain—my loud, crowded, overthinking brain—finally goes satisfyingly, mercifully quiet.
“Jake,” I whisper against his mouth.
“Mo.”
“I didn’t just come over to talk.”
He pulls back just far enough to look at me, that familiar expression already there. The one I spent years running from and now want to drown in.
He reaches behind me and clicks off the kitchen light.
His bedroom faces the bay. The windows are cracked open, and the sound of the rocking water under the dock comes through the screens.
He turns toward me.
I’ve seen Jake in a lot of different stages of life and a lot of different ways. Sweaty and sunburned on a dock. In a football uniform. Half asleep in Tall Tales, waiting on an Americano. Shirtless like tonight.
None of it prepared me for this.
For him looking at me like this in a quiet room at the edge of the water with nothing between us but a lifetime of history and about eight inches… of air.
I take a second to just look at him. Broad tanned shoulders. The clean line of his collarbone. The faint scar along his ribs I don’t know the story behind yet.
And suddenly I realize something surprising.
I’m not nervous.
I thought I would be. I’ve been in my head about this for weeks in the way I get in my head about everything. But standing here with him, I’m not nervous at all.
I reach for the hem of my shirt.
His hands cover mine. “Hey,” he says quietly. “We don’t have to?—“
“Jake.”
“I just want?—“
“Jake.” I look up at him. “I came to you.”
He pauses. Then he smiles. The one with the dimple. The one that has been making me stupid since I was a teenager and apparently hasn’t lost its potency in the intervening decade.
“You did,” he agrees.
“So stop being careful with me.”
He steps closer and finishes what I started, pulling my shirt up and over my head in one smooth motion before tossing it somewhere behind him.
His hands glide slowly over my bare skin.
I inhale sharply.
His mouth moves to my jaw. My neck. The sensitive spot just below my ear, which turns out to be deeply relevant information about myself I’ll be revisiting later.
His hands find the clasp of my bra. He undoes it without fumbling, his fingers sliding the straps down my shoulders slowly enough to make me ache with it.
Now he’s the one inhaling sharply.
His palms cup my breasts, his thumb brushing over one peaked nipple.
