Sierra laughed at Madi’s enthusiasm, but she still looked unsure. As Madi tossed her arm around Sierra’s shoulder and they went to the next station, Jordan silently congratulated herself for pairing these two up. Sierra needed Madi’s confidence, and Madi needed to see she had something to offer. Every now and then, these kids reminded Jordan she knew what she was doing.
“Madi has talked her into it already, hasn’t she?” Ali said, wiping down the pads with the spray bottle and a towel.
“Likely. Sierra’s pretty determined, but she’s got a long history of self-sabotage. I’m hopeful Madi can keep an eye out for the signs and intervene if she needs to.”
Ali tossed the towel into one of the bins scattered around the room. Her expression was thoughtful, and Jordan waited for the questions she could sense forming. Jordan had always loved Ali’s curiosity, her desire to know.
The cool-down music signaled the end of another gym night. Jordan and Ali stood together and watched the teenagers drop and stretch, groaning about the low and slow music or the stupidity of the routine. Jordan was just about to comment when an odd buzzing and jangling sound emanated from the front of the gym. Everyone stopped and looked up. The sound was coming from the phone rack, where twenty or so stacked and charging phones were all signaling and chiming and buzzing and blaring at the same time. Then they petered out and stopped, the softly drifting cool-down music the only sound in the gym.
“Leave it alone, guys,” Madi called from the far side of the gym. “Five more minutes of cool-down. Don’t make Jordan threaten to take away the ranch dip again.”
A few kids laughed as they followed Madi’s lead and continued the cool-down. But every one of them stole glances at one another, muttering in low whispers. A few glanced up at Jordan and Ali, then quickly away.
“What the hell just happened?” Ali said.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Jordan said. Her tone was detached, not calm. Now was not the time for calm.
Ali looked at Jordan sharply, but Jordan continued to stare at the kids.
“Later?” Ali said. “Can we talk about this later?”
“Yes, please.”
Ali touched her fingers to the inside of Jordan’s wrist. It was a quiet, comforting touch, but it was also an intimacy of knowing. Jordan could find no room in her heart to reject it, and her senses flooded with the want for more.
“God,” Jordan gasped quietly. She touched Ali lightly on the shoulder even as she stepped away, the conflict of closeness. “Let me get these guys sorted,” she said.
The kids crowded around the food as usual, some leaving as soon as they’d grabbed handfuls of crackers and apple slices. As Jordan set up for the evening class coming in, she noticed the kids leaving in small groups, with furtive glances at their phones and glares for silence. Something organized, Jordan thought. Those had been Rachel’s words weeks ago. That’s what this felt like.
By the time the last kid had left, shepherded out by an overly cheerful Madi, anger and fear had built a wall in Jordan’s chest. Every muscle was tight, and she wanted to question the kids until she had answers. But she couldn’t, not yet. Secrets needed somewhere safe to surface. The kids needed reminders that Jordan was safety and would not reject them for anything. As the anger and fear and confusion chased each other through her head, Jordan knew with absolute certainty she could not provide that today.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Jordan looked up to meet Ali’s calm, blue-grey eyes. Ali was certainty, Ali was calm and a safe place to surface.
“Yes. Okay.”
They walked outside in silence, the cold night air heavy with the threat of more rain. Jordan felt Ali’s nearness, her physical proximity matching her presence in Jordan’s head. In my life, Jordan thought. She did not allow the thought to scare her.
“Where to?” Jordan said as they rounded the corner of the building.
“Wherever you find it easiest to talk.”
Jordan looked up at the stairs to her apartment for a moment, then indicated they’d go in her car. They were quiet as they got in, and Jordan retraced her route to the harbour.
Ali looked up at the cranes as soon as she got out of the car. “I should have known,” she murmured, her words nearly lost to Jordan in the wind.
“I’m predictable, I guess,” Jordan tried to joke. She didn’t feel like joking. Everything was too heavy.
“No. You’re grounded. There’s a difference. As someone’s who has been feeling lost lately, grounded is good.”
Jordan led Ali to the corner of the building, climbing over the barriers and edging along the narrow strip of concrete along the harbour wall. Ali held on to one of the moorings and leaned over the water farther than Jordan would have liked.
“Easy there, Clarke,” Jordan said. “Cold night for a swim.”
Ali looked back and grinned, the wind whipping her hair around her face, her eyes dancing. But she pulled herself back and sat with her legs dangling over the edge, far above the dark waterline. Jordan sat beside her, tucking her hands between her thighs for warmth.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
The dam burst, a torrent of words and fear. “Part of me is convinced the kids are involved in this Unharm protest group. I’m thinking that’s what the simultaneous texts were about, some kind of message. They’re connected to it somehow, caught up in it.” Ali nodded and Jordan was reassured that Ali had come to the same conclusion. “I’m worried Madi is involved.”
“Why do you think that? What’s your evidence?”
“She lied the other night about the meeting. She’s angry about me being on the task force. Things have just been…weird between us.”
“For how long?”
Jordan tried to remember when tension didn’t exist for them. She couldn’t, really. But she could measure this new intensity of silence.
“Six weeks maybe? Two months, tops.”
Ali shifted until she was sitting on her hands. Jordan wished she’d brought a blanket.
“Do you think it has anything to do with me showing up?”
Jordan wanted to reassure Ali and say no, but Ali would hate being placated. “I think that’s part of it. I don’t think Madi was expecting to like you so much. She wasn’t expecting to have you matter.”
Jordan checked Ali’s expression. She was nodding slowly and staring off across the dark harbour.
“So maybe some of her behaviour is about that?” Ali said. “Whatever she finds difficult about our mentorship.”
“Friendship,” Jordan corrected gently. “If it was just a mentorship, she wouldn’t be struggling.”
“I don’t want Madi to struggle because of me.”
“Productive struggle,” Jordan said. “Sometimes valuable learning only comes through discomfort and failure.”
Ali’s gaze was sharp and questioning. “Huh. I’m going to have to think about that. But we’re off topic. Madi, the kids, street protest group.”
Jordan sighed. “I don’t have any evidence, I guess. A gut feeling.”
“Do you think your kids are behind it? The whole thing. The graffiti, the needles, the notes.”
Jordan was shaking her head before Ali had finished speaking. “No. It’s bigger than that. It’s deeper.” She let out a short breath and ran her fingers through her short hair. “I’m not trying to diminish my kids or their intelligence or their drive. But this protest group seems…” Jordan growled, frustrated she couldn’t find the words.
“It’s got a wider field of view,” Ali said, her voice reflective. “It reaches beyond the scope of their influence.”
“Yes. Exactly. What’s happening with this group has more history than a bunch of teenagers could possibly bring to the table. I’m not thinking they’re leading it, but Jesus I’m scared they’re tangled up in it.”
“Have you talked to Rachel about it?”
“No. Not yet.” Was she protecting her kids by talking to Rachel? Or putting them i
n danger?
“I think you know your next step,” Ali said.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Talk to Rachel, talk to the kids. Pay attention to the feeling in her gut, the pressure on her chest.
The wind shifted suddenly, gusting with a surprising strength.
“It’s going to rain soon,” Ali said.
“You can take the girl out of the Maritimes, but you can’t take the Maritimes out of the girl,” Jordan murmured.
Ali shoved Jordan with her shoulder. Jordan laughed and was about to respond when the sound of rain on water made them both peer into the dark harbour. The rain hit seconds later, and they both scrambled to their feet, Ali laughing as Jordan vaulted the concrete barrier, unlocking the car as they ran.
They slammed the car doors as the rain beat down in a heavy, pervasive staccato. Their breath was fogging the windows, so Jordan turned on the car, angling the vents to clear the windshield.
“Well, I was right,” Ali said, wiping rain from her face on the inside of her shirt. Wet hair clung to the side of Ali’s neck. Jordan could almost feel the heat of Ali’s skin, the iciness of her own fingers against the skin of Ali’s neck as she imagined lifting that lock of hair and tucking it back behind Ali’s ear. The rain ratcheted up another impossible notch, the sound drowning out thought and reason. Jordan’s fingers burned with imagined heat. She held still, transfixed and conflicted.
It took Jordan a moment to understand Ali was speaking. Her words were drowned out by the rain and the hazy warmth of Jordan’s desire to touch Ali. She didn’t know what had been said, and she blinked in confusion as Ali faced Jordan. Then Ali ran her hand along the side of Jordan’s neck. Jordan shivered as Ali mirrored the movement in her imagination. Heat and cold merged in a chaos of sensation as Ali curled her fingers into Jordan’s hair and tugged her closer.
Their kiss was heat and ice. Jordan tasted rainwater and Ali, faint saltiness on her tongue as Jordan sank into their kiss. She brought her hand up to rest against Ali’s collarbone and felt the vibration of Ali’s groan through her palm. Jordan shivered as Ali pulled back just enough to break the kiss. The rain began to ease.
“God, Ali.”
Jordan didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t have the words or the courage to say what she wanted.
“Before you tell me this is a bad idea again, hear me out,” Ali said.
Jordan nodded. The nearness of Ali made it hard to think.
“I want to be in your life again. No matter what happens, I want to be in your life. For you to be in mine.”
Ali had always shone golden, the strength and bravery of a lion. Jordan swallowed the words that struggled to the surface, the ones that would reveal she was still not good enough for Ali Clarke.
“Jordan?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve forgotten how to talk.”
“You kissed away all my words.”
Jordan felt Ali laugh through her fingertips. Instead of answering, she kissed Ali’s smile. In that moment, they were all the words she needed.
Jordan eventually surfaced from the kiss into the hazy damp warmth of the car and their closeness. Ali smiled, and happiness seeped through Jordan’s pores and swept through her chest.
“The rain has stopped,” Jordan said, without looking away from Ali.
“The snow has started.” The temperature had dropped enough that snow had replaced rain—nearly silent flakes danced and whipped their away around the car. The harbour was invisible through a wall of white.
“Maybe that’s our sign we should stop making out in the car like teenagers,” Jordan said and Ali laughed as they leaned back in their seats. “I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
“Sure,” Ali said, reaching back to pull on her seat belt. “But only if you come in with me.”
Jordan froze with her hand on the stick shift.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Jordan drove through the quiet squall of snow, the flurries whipping around her car. As she shifted gears, she reached out and touched Ali’s leg. Ali stroked the back of Jordan’s hand, comforting and exciting. Connected.
The squall was furious by the time Jordan had parked, but she and Ali laughed as they ran through the snow, both covered in melting flakes by the time they hit the warm hotel lobby. The front desk staff welcomed Ali by name, and the murmur of laughter and voices and music intruded from the bar down the hall. Jordan wanted everyone and everything to go away. She wanted to be alone with Ali, wanted her touch, wanted that look in Ali’s eyes to be just for her. The way it had been once before. The way it could be again.
Jordan’s stomach dropped as the elevator doors closed, and the ground shifted beneath her feet.
“Okay?” Ali said, facing Jordan.
“Yes,” Jordan breathed out. She wasn’t, not really. They were racing toward something, either an ending or a beginning. Whatever it was, it was long awaited.
“Jordan, stop thinking,” Ali whispered, running her lips along Jordan’s jawline.
Jordan shivered and closed her eyes. “I can’t,” Jordan whispered back.
Ali stepped away as the elevator dinged their arrival on the eleventh floor and the doors opened. Jordan followed Ali down the short, ornate hallway to her door. Jordan didn’t notice anything about Ali’s hotel room other than a large space, opulent furniture, and a view through the window of the harbour. Then Ali’s nearness, tugging at the zipper of Jordan’s jacket, melted snow on their hands, in their hair. Heat surfacing in Jordan’s core, in her cheeks.
Then everything stopped. Ali had stepped back, standing in front of Jordan with her hands in her back pockets. Her body language—hip cocked, chin up, eyes bright—was a challenge. Jordan understood this dance, this fight. Hers was the next move.
“I want you,” Jordan said.
“Yes.” Ali accepted the rules of this match. There was more.
“I never stopped.”
Ali made a strangled sound. Jordan needed to confess, but Ali clearly didn’t know how to take it. Jordan stepped into Ali’s space and ducked her head to kiss along Ali’s jaw. She tugged Ali’s earlobe gently with her teeth. She needed Ali to accept this before anything else.
“I said, I never stopped wanting you.”
Jordan traced her fingers along one side of Ali’s jaw even as she kissed her way up the other. Ali reached for her, hands on Jordan’s hips, tugging her closer.
“I know. Jordan, I know. Please…”
Ali’s words fueled Jordan’s desire, heat that burned in her chest, her fingertips. Heat that tightened the muscles in her thighs as Ali took Jordan’s mouth in a long kiss that threatened to pull them both under.
It nearly did. Jordan felt her knees start to buckle as Ali abruptly backed away. She pulled her sweater over her head, her undershirt framing the muscles of her shoulders and arms. Jordan fixed her eyes on the points of Ali’s collarbone, which seemed to shine in the muted lamplight.
They tugged at each other’s clothes, wrestling with zippers and snaps and buckles. All the barriers that kept them apart, the clothing and time and regret all fell away as Ali, naked and perfect and confident, flung the covers back on the bed, taking Jordan with her.
Heat, so much heat. Ali’s skin against hers, warmed through to the blood and sinew. Warmed into her heart as Jordan kissed Ali’s swollen lips, then lowered her head to lick the hard rise of her collarbone. Jordan could hear every expulsion of air as she explored the ridges and bones, then rubbed her cheek along Ali’s breast, finally dragging her lips over Ali’s nipple. Ali gave a cry and a command as she anchored Jordan’s head there, her hand in Jordan’s hair, her neck muscles straining. Jordan sucked Ali’s warm, pebbled flesh into her mouth as Ali arched against her and groaned deep in her chest.
Ali only let her explore for so long. Jordan nearly smiled when Ali trapped Jordan between her legs, knees clamped around her hips. Jordan used the angle to thrust against Ali, slowly at first, then harder as th
e movement rocketed through her body. Ali cried out and loosened her grip as she lifted herself to meet each of Jordan’s thrusts. This synchronicity of body and breath was nearly too much. It threatened to destroy her completely. Then Ali tightened her legs around Jordan’s hips and whispered in her ear.
“Stop distracting me.”
Jordan smiled, and Ali bit down on the muscle in Jordan’s neck. She wanted to pull away from the pain and sink into it all at once. She hesitated long enough for Ali to make her move. Ali planted her feet, lifted her hips, and flipped Jordan onto her back. Jordan didn’t even consider resisting. She couldn’t. Her body was a series of live wires and frayed nerve endings that wanted nothing more than to coalesce into a burning, bright whole.
Jordan focused her eyes on Ali, smiling triumphantly above her. Ali’s hair shone golden in the muted lamplight, her skin suffused with heated blood and victory. She was beautiful and strong and Jordan loved her. Jordan needed her.
“Ali…”
Ali’s kiss silenced the rest of her words. Jordan closed her eyes and ran her hands up Ali’s back, smooth skin over muscles and bone. Jordan opened her eyes as Ali sat up, straddling one of Jordan’s thighs. Jordan heard a strangled sound escape her own throat as Ali ran her fingers up the inside of her thigh, but all she could do was look down between them as Ali teased her way higher until she found Jordan’s very centre. Jordan sighed, closing her eyes in surrender as Ali took complete command of her body. Every sweet stroke broke a new wave of sensation deep in her core, and she could do nothing but take it.
As the waves built, as Ali pushed her toward the ultimate triumph of this sweet battle, Jordan felt a new desire take hold. She needed to know and claim Ali’s body the way Ali was claiming hers. She pressed her leg up into Ali, feeling heat as Ali gasped and her eyes went hazy. Then Jordan reached up and cupped her hand around the back of Ali’s neck, pulling her down and kissing her hard. Ali groaned into Jordan’s mouth, and her touch faltered, the rhythm and connection briefly broken. Jordan let out a breath at the loss, then felt the shared sensation of entering Ali as Ali repositioned herself to take Jordan inside, then claimed Jordan again.
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