Wild Wind: A Chaos Novella (Chaos #6.6)(26)

She wasn’t fifteen.

He had to chill.

Still.

She took over his hand, pressed her thumb in the center of his palm and remarked, “They rent Harleys pretty much everywhere, you know.”

He had his other arm resting on her midriff, but when she said that, he moved it to wrap it around her upper chest and then used it to tuck her closer.

She pressed harder into his palm and said, “I want you to spend the night, but I don’t wanna fuck. I just want you beside me. And I want to wake up next to you. Will you stay?”

“Fuck yes.”

She curled her fingers around his hand and held on.

“What you said about me being your person—” he started.

She cut him off.

“It just is, Jagger, no pressure. Seriously. It just is and you can just let it be that. It’s cool.”

“No, it’s that…I think you’re my person too.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Being yours feels good. And I know it’s fucked, because it doesn’t make sense, but I think you being mine freaks me.”

“I get that.”

He was surprised, because he did not.

“You do?”

She adjusted, letting his hand go but wrapping the fingers of both of hers around his forearm at her chest and tipping her head way back to catch his eyes.

He helped by tucking his chin in to catch hers.

“Our disconnect, seeing you around, but you didn’t come to me, and you were mine, you know? That hurt. It hurt a lot. And I didn’t get it at first. I mean, I didn’t even know you. Why did it hurt so much? But it did. And that freaked me too.”

Fuck.

He slid his free hand up her cheekbone, gliding his fingers over her hair at the side of her head.

“Okay, maybe I was being a baby,” he admitted.

“We both were,” she replied. “This is big, and we know it. It makes it scary, and we understand that. You can’t have this and lose it. You can’t get it and then fuck it up. So our response was to back away from it at every opportunity.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, because they for sure did that.

He felt the big breath she took.

And then she said, “I’m glad you quit backing away.”

“I’m sorry it took so long.”

“You shouldn’t apologize. I didn’t take that step, you did. So, I’ll amend. I’m glad you quit backing away and I’m glad you made me quit doing it too.”

In response, he swept his thumb along her cheekbone.

“Do you want to go to Iceland?” she asked.

“Sure,” he answered.

“Zambia?”

“Definitely.”

She smiled up at him, twisted and fit herself to him so she was lying sideways on his chest, her arms around him, cheek to his shirt, cuddled in.

“It feels better, being freaked with you here,” she whispered. “Rather than freaked and not knowing where you were and who you were with.”

He again agreed, “Yeah,” because that was the God’s honest truth.

“I like your brother, he’s protective of you and it’s sweet.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And Georgie is rad.”

“She really is.”

“And I don’t know what Carolyn’s gig was, but she’s obviously pulling it together and she loves her sister, and cares enough about you to change where you guys are.”

That had become apparent as the night wore on.

“I think we’ll get there,” he said.

“Yeah. That says a lot about you, you know, that you’d be willing to get past that for her and for your family.”

He wasn’t sure what to say about that except, “Well, it’s family.”

They got quiet again.

Archie broke it.

“I felt, like, locked.”

Jag didn’t know what that meant, so he asked, “Sorry, baby?”

“In my grief. Like, I was with Dad, and he was lost. And Elijah was a mess, but he was there physically. They were going through the same thing I was. But I was locked in my grief. I had all these people around me, but I felt totally alone. And I couldn’t get out of that feeling, because I didn’t think anyone would get it, where I was at. Not even Dad and Elijah.”

He curved both arms around her and held her tight.

She continued.

“And then I was at the funeral. I looked across the cemetery and you were sitting there with your dad, and this opening started forming.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“And you came in,” she went on.

“Honey,” he murmured.

“And I wasn’t alone in there anymore.”

Jag turned his head and put his cheek to her hair.

“I haven’t made up my mind about fate and destiny, what god there is, if there is one,” she stated. “I just know that day, however it happened, you were put there for me. And that might not be true in someone else’s reality. But it is in mine.”

“It’s true,” he confirmed.

“Okay.”

“I’ve never sat quiet and talked with a woman like this before,” he told her.

“It’s good to be quiet,” she replied.