CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The light shone on Mari’s eyelids, turning them red from the inside. But she didn’t open her eyes. It was morning. The last day of vacation. In an hour, she’d be on her way to the airport. In an hour, she’d be alone again.
She couldn’t make herself open her eyes, not even when Jay nuzzled into the warm crook of her neck. Mari couldn’t help but stiffen against him. And of course Jay noticed immediately.
“You alright, baby?” he asked, one of his hands whisking over her naked hip, his stroke rough and tight, just like always. God, she loved that. For as gentle a soul as he was, he was a rough lover.
Mari still didn’t open her eyes. She needed to stay in this warm cocoon for another minute. At least one more minute.
“Mmhmm,” she answered vaguely.
Jay pulled back from her just enough to roll her onto her back, lean over her. “Mari baby.”
His voice was gentle and stern and had her finally opening her eyes.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m just sad that… vacation… is over.” Her words were stilted and she was acutely aware of the lie. She hated lying. And she was bad at it. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth. That she was really sad that she and Jay were over. That they had to be.
His Sinatra blues searched hers and Mari made herself stay loose. She had to keep things together, pack, and get in a cab. That’s all she had to do right now. She wasn’t going to solve her life this very second in bed. But she could potentially tank the damn thing if she didn’t get it together and get to the damn airport.
Jay’s eyes narrowed, like he knew that she wasn’t telling the whole truth but he nodded and looked up at the clock. “Oh! We gotta get going if we’re gonna get to the airport on time.”
Mari sat up and watched as Jay rolled out of bed, pulled some boxers on.
“What do you mean? I thought your flight was at five tonight?”
Jay stretched that beautiful golden back and scratched at his hair. “I changed my flight.”
She narrowed her eyes. “To my flight?”
He turned back, sensing her mood. “Yeah?”
Mari kept her eyes on him, suspiciously, like he was a wild animal that she thought might get spooked. She slid off the bed and skirted around him, heading toward the bathroom.
Jay watched her back, a little confused smile on his face. His girl was such a mystery sometimes. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it. She was his mystery.
Jay followed her into the bathroom, watching her slim, naked back as she twiddled the shower knobs, stepped in. He shucked off the underwear he’d just put on and stepped in behind her.
He wasn’t going to push her. They both knew it. Mari sighed as she felt the inevitable pull of his tide. His undertow, his… God, unfightable lure. She wetted her hair, raked her hands over her face and turned to him.
He watched her patiently.
“Why?” she asked in a voice sharper than she’d planned on.
“Why what?” he returned, reaching over her for the shampoo that he dumped onto her head and then his own. He scrubbed at her scalp with the pads of his fingers as she scowled up at him.
“Why did you change your flight?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “So that we could fly together. And drive home together.”
Mari groaned and dropped her forehead onto his shoulder. Either he was playing dense or he really didn’t understand what they were up against here. But either way he was gonna make her completely spell this out.
“Jay, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why?” He gently tipped her chin up and let the spray of the shower wash her shampoo down the drain.
“Because!” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. “Well, for starters, I don’t even have a frickin’ home to go to!”
Jay blinked. Tread carefully. He knew what he wanted to say and he could sense that that was really not the right thing to say now. If he told her that she could live with him, she would make him eat his words. “Right, well, Eli mentioned the other day that you’re welcome to stay in his and Tia’s guest room while you figure out another place to live. And one of my mom’s best friends is a real estate agent, so we can find a place for you really quick.” He cleared his throat. “You’re also, of course, welcome to stay with me as long as you want. As long as you don’t leave the toilet seat up.”
She blinked at him. Not even registering his joke. Mari’s eyes were wide and unseeing. She looked to the heavens. “What. The. Fuck.”
“What?” He furrowed his brow.
Mari grabbed the hotel bar soap and roughly dragged it over her skin. “Jay, I really didn’t want to have to spell this out for you, letter by letter. But I guess I’m gonna have to. I’m a fucking mess!”
She shoved the bar soap into his hand and glared up at him, hands on her hips, from beneath the pounding shower.
“My life just got turned completely upside down. I’m homeless in a place I’ve only lived for like three months. All my crap is at my ex-boyfriend’s house.” She started listing points on her fingers. “I have zero family. I have PTSD from the hurricane. I just took an unpaid week of vacation from my job because I’m losing my mind. And I have no idea what comes next. Just absolutely no idea!”
She grabbed the bar of soap from his unmoving hand and started dragging it over his chest and shoulders, somehow incensed that he was just watching her, not saying a word or washing himself. “And you’re just out here trying to plan my ride home from the airport? Jay, that’s like trying to put frosting on a cake that’s still just a bag of flour! A ride home from the airport?! Like I’m just a normal girl and you’re just my normal boyfriend or something?! We’re not normal, Jay! We met in a goddamn hurricane. I didn’t know if you were still alive for five years! We’re—we’re vacation fuck buddies. And you switch your flight to give me a ride home from the airport?”
Jay stilled her hands that were roughly running over his arms.
“Mari,” he kept his voice low. But it was hard, considering his pulse was currently trying to drown out the entire world. Her words echoed in his head like a jack hammer. Jay opened his mouth to speak, found he couldn’t and slammed it shut.
“See!” she bellowed, tossed her hands up in the air and ripping the shower curtain aside. “You know I’m right!”
She was halfway across the bedroom when Jay caught up with her. The conservationist in him hadn’t let him get out of the shower without turning it off. But he was behind her in a second, picking up her soaking wet body and tossing her on the bed like she weighed twenty pounds.
“Hey!” Mari screeched, but Jay didn’t slow his roll. He bounded onto the bed, just as naked and wet as she was. He crouched over her on all fours, caging her in.
“Now I’m going to spell something out for you, Mari. I’ve been vague about it because you’ve been through a lot and I thought I could ease you in. But apparently not. So here goes.”
She tried to sit up but he nudged her back down onto her back, sitting fully on her legs when she thrashed them.
“Mari. You are the love of my fucking life.” He held her eyes and let his burn into hers. He didn’t care if he was being too intense, or showing all of his cards, or even if he was pushing her. She’d shown him just now how little she understood about how he felt about her, and he couldn’t stand to have it be that far off the mark. “I have never loved anyone, in my entire existence, as much as I love you. I loved you on the island, I loved you in the five years since, and I love you now. I loved you when you were sleeping next to that douche bag. I would have loved you if you married him. Had kids with him. Died alongside him. I’m going to love you for the rest of my life.”
She’d grown very still. Statue still. Only the drops of water on her skin trembled, skittered over her. Her eyes were wide and so green Jay was almost distracted. She was the color of the jungle that had grown and torn around them when they were in the hurricane. She was
the color of the earth. She was his entire world.
He already had both feet in so he figured he might as well hold his breath and dive. “Yes, I’m giving you a goddamn ride from the airport. I would literally give my life for you.”
Finally, Mari moved. Unfortunately, it was to squirm and dash tears out of her eyes. He released her and she slid across the bed, not all the way away from him, but enough to get a little breathing room. Each tear that slid out of her beautiful eyes was like a dagger of ice into his heart. These were not happy tears. He wasn’t exactly sure what they were, but he knew without a doubt that they were not happy.
“Just because you feel that way,” she said as her chin trembled. “Doesn’t mean that I owe you anything.”
Jay blinked in confusion. “Of course you don’t owe me anything. Mari, it,” he pressed a hand to his chest, “comes for free. There’s no cost or trick.”
She pressed her lips together. “I get to do what’s best for me, no matter what.” Her chin came up and he recognized the pose as combative. He blinked again.
“Of course,” he repeated. “I wouldn’t want you to make a decision that was bad for you.”
She stood up off the bed now, found that she needed to pace. Her heart was racing and her hands were shaking. If she could have shed her skin to fly away, she would have. “If I wanna move back to Boston, I’ll move to Boston.”
“Ok,” Jay said, maddeningly calm. “I like Boston.”
Now she was the one who was blinking in confusion. “Are—are you saying that you’d move to Boston too?”
Jay sighed and ripped a hand through his wet hair. “At the risk of piling more unwanted declarations on your shoulders, yes, I’d move to Boston. Nothing has changed for me since the island.”
Now she took a full step back from him. “What do you mean? You wanted to move to Boston when we were on the island?”
Jay weighed his head from side to side. “Well, I didn’t know we were talking about Boston in particular, but yeah, I was ready to move wherever you lived. I’m not crazy about long distance.”
Two more stumbling steps backwards had Jay pursing his lips. She looked like he’d hit her with a cloud of mace.
“You wanted to keep dating after the island?” Her voice was somehow dead quiet and screaming at the same time. Her chin still trembled and water streamed from her soaking hair, slicked back from her face.
Jay’s mouth dropped flat open. “Are you kidding?”
She stared at him. Apparently she wasn’t kidding.
Jay shook his head. “Mari. Yes. I wanted to keep dating after we left the island. I wanted to go with you to Grand Bahama and make love to you in a clean hotel. I wanted to tell you how I felt, ask if I could follow you. I still want all those things.” He paused for a second, something sticky and cold forming in his stomach. “I take it from your face that you didn’t feel the same way.”
Her words echoed in his head again. Vacation fuck buddies. He thought she’d just been fired up. But was she actually serious? She really felt that way? No wonder she was so upset and lost. She’d just broken off her engagement over someone she just viewed as, what, an occasional sex partner?
Jay tried to ignore the feelings ripping through him. She suddenly looked so small standing across the room from him.
She lifted one hand to cover her mouth and spoke through her fingers. “It just, honestly, never occurred to me that you’d want that. I thought, here’s this perfect, gorgeous world class surfer. It’ll be a nice moment in time. Two ships. And you were so good to me and I was so grateful. I just never thought you’d want to continue.”
Jay cleared his throat and asked the question he desperately needed answered. “Did you want to continue with me?”
Mari dropped her eyes before she dragged them to the window of Jay’s hotel bedroom. There was the thin, sparkling smile of the ocean laughing at her out there, the deep green of the jungle at every turn. It was almost too easy for her to hear the roar of the hurricane in her memory. She could feel the shake and tremble of the abandoned hotel around them almost as clearly as she’d felt it five years ago. She could smell the acrid, mildewed scent of the world after the flood. And most of all, she could feel Jay’s arms around her as he held her through the entire thing. Did she want to continue with him? Mari wondered what it would cost her to continue lying to herself. She knew now that she’d lied to herself on the island to save herself. To save herself from the heartbreak that would have been him leaving her. She looked up at Jay, but she didn’t see his face. Instead she saw the helicopter that had flown him up and out of her life.
“Yes,” she whispered. But she took a step back as she did it.
He watched Mari step away from him. That was okay. She’d said yes. That meant that there was hope. It sure didn’t seem like she was ready for him right this second, but there was hope. She wanted him. She just needed to accept that she wanted him.
“Mari.” He raked his hands through his soaking wet hair. “Let me go home with you. Hold your hand on the damn plane. And give you a ride to wherever you choose to sleep tonight. Just let me.”
Mari’s shoulders came back and her chin rose up again. Jay could have thanked God. She wasn’t shrinking in fear and confusion again. She was back in battle position. He was so damn grateful he wanted to drop to his knees.
“I know what you’re doing,” Mari snapped as she stalked past him and dragged her suitcase out of the closet. She quickly stepped into underwear and a bra before she started gathering up the rest of her things, jamming them into her bag.
Jay stepped up beside her and quickly began folding the things she was jamming in there before he set them carefully back.
“And what’s that?”
“You’re luring me again. Don’t worry Mari, it’s just a kiss. It’s just one week together on vacation. It’s just a ride to the airport. Next you’re gonna be telling me it’s just a piece of jewelry. It’s just the rest of our lives together.”
Jay rolled his eyes and pursed his lips. “Slow your roll, Miss Thing. We’re not there yet.”
He’d said it to make her laugh and it worked, however unwilling she might have been, a small, surprised chuckle came out of her mouth. “Fine. I’m just saying, you’re a persuasive motherfucker.”
Jay finished organizing her things in her suitcase before he turned to her, clasping his hands to her shoulders. She was wearing shorts and a t-shirt now and he was still stark naked. His hands gripped her shoulders as tight as he always did. He was tempted to give her the tiniest little shake. “I wouldn’t have to be if you’d just see what’s right in front of you already.”
She blinked at him for a second before she stepped into the circle of his arms and kissed him fiercely. There was nothing tender about it. It was almost a punishment. She tore her lips away and shoved him backwards, out of her way. “I can see it, Jay. I just don’t see it the way you do.”
Jay smiled at her back as she started rolling her bag across the floor of the hotel room.
“I’m just saying, there’s a direct correlation between my persuasiveness and your stubbornness.”
She stuck her tongue out over her shoulder.
***
“That stewardess needs to put her eyes back in her head,” Mari grumbled, her arms crossed over her chest and one knee bouncing in the air a mile a minute. “And her boobs back into her shirt.”
Jay laid his warm palm over her leg to calm it. He’d learned two things about Mari in the last hour and both had charmed the hell out of him. One, she was a nervous flier. Which he’d liked because it meant she’d squeezed the life out of his hand on take off and jammed her face into his shoulder. And two, Mari was jealous. Which he liked even more.
“I think the correct term is flight attendant,” Jay said, his tongue firmly in his cheek. He was prepared for the glare that Mari shot his way. He knew he was baiting her, he couldn’t help it. It was true that the flight attendant had been making eyes at Jay for pre
tty much the entire plane ride so far. And when she’d leaned across Jay to give Mari her refreshment, Jay had come up close and personal with a part of a woman’s anatomy that he’d spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about as a teenager.
“Besides,” Jay continued, unable to keep from teasing Mari. “You have nothing to worry about. She’s very well endowed and,” Jay glanced pointedly at Mari’s chest, “I’m much more partial to itty bitty ti—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Mari cut him off, flicking the end of his nose and scowling.
“I’ll let you make your own assumptions then,” Jay replied, settling back in his seat and letting his eyes drop closed like he didn’t have a care in the world. And right now, he kind of didn’t. After their blow up in the hotel room this morning, Mari had been much calmer. She’d hugged the crap out of Eli and Marcus, who were still flying later in the day. And her eyes had teared up when their cab had steered them away from the ocean. But other than that, she’d given every indication that she was fine with heading back to Ocean City with Jay.
He knew that she was skeptical. Part of the reason she was being so calm about everything was that she didn’t really believe that this was going to continue on. It bothered Jay that Mari assumed that at some point he’d get tired of her or of all of her baggage. But he figured the only way to prove to her that that wasn’t going to happen was to continue living his life beside her.
“I think New Zealand next,” Jay spoke first and opened his eyes second. Mari turned from where she’d been thoughtfully looking out the window of the plane.
“Hmm?”
“I think New Zealand should be our next surfing trip.”
Mari lowered her chin, raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry, are you a secret millionaire or something? I don’t know about you, but I seriously drained the bank account for this one.”
Jay internally winced. There would have been no way in hell he could have paid for a last-minute resort vacation in Hawaii if it weren’t for Eli’s generosity. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t save up and afford another vacation within the year. “I’ve got a lot of frequent flier miles from my job. So I’ve got our flights.”
Bachelors In Love Page 46
