Right as I join Bliss in the car, the wind starts howling. “Shit,” I mutter. The second storm is coming in faster than was predicted. “Would you mind if we ate at home? The weather’s getting worse again.”
“No,” she says.
By the time I come to the turn that leads to my bridge, I’m driving at a snail’s pace. It’s raining so hard that I can barely see a couple of feet from the hood. The radio is tuned in to one of the local stations, as it gives a minute-by-minute weather update.
“Thank goodness,” Bliss whispers.
I want to take her hand and say it’ll be okay, but with the rain and the wind shoving my Range Rover around like a kid playing with a matchbox car, I can’t. The vehicle is one that I keep at the island just for weather like this, and to go four-wheeling on the beach.
“Almost home.” I turn down the drive, trying not to let my shock show over how much the tide has risen on the Sound side when we drive over the wooden bridge.
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to come back here, I think as the garage door opens, and I park inside. Maybe we should have—there’s a loud crack and I look up into the rearview just in time to see the bridge wash away.
“Is there another way out of here?”
I grimace. “There was, but my boat is in the shop to get it ready for summer.”
“Oh.”
Bliss gets out of the truck, shutting her door and trudging up the stairs. I do the same, but race after her, catching her arm.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay.”
She tips up her chin, the lenses of her glasses a little foggy. Her lips are so close that if I dip my head, I could kiss them. I want to kiss them. I want to kiss her, to taste her again, and make sure that what I felt before, what I tasted before, was real and just as sweet.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“I’m not so bad,” I tease, fight to keep my head on straight. The last thing I need to do is get involved with her physically. My brain knows that, but it’s the other parts that are not in agreement. They’re all for exploring Bliss and making her mine.
She sighs one of her familiar sighs, and then says, “Maybe so, but you make me want to be bad… with you.”
Chapter Eight
Bliss
In any other circumstance, trapped on a secluded island with the man who’s dominated your every waking thought and dreams seems like the most perfect thing to ever happen during a spring storm.
But these aren’t any other circumstance.
While he was gone, I had time to think, and though I suspect Jackson thinks Cameron influenced my decision to stick around, he didn’t. I want to be here.
No matter what Violet, what Everett, or what anyone else says about the man I married, I think there’s more to Jackson Morgan, the man, and not Jaxon Hunter, the performer.
Violet probably glimpsed that part of him, and I think he still loves her, for what she reminds him of—I think he equates her with happier times, without his dad’s interference.
As for his dad, I know for a fact Everett used Jackson as a shield, but why Jackson went with it…? I have no clue. And as strong willed as Jackson is, I never dreamed he’d be the fall guy for his dad’s affairs with young girls, to let himself be accused of cheating on Violet, the woman that not even last week he was trying to get back.
What would that be like, to be wanted so fiercely that nothing would stand in the way of us being together? Only Jackson had given her up, and I’m pretty sure he helped Cole.
The lights go out suddenly, and I jump, reaching for what, I’m not sure.
One thing for sure: I hate the dark—what I can’t see and not knowing what I’m touching. The dark is when all sorts of things happen to girls on the street. Honest to God, I don’t know how I wasn’t one of those girls.
Dejar angeles te cuide. My mami would whisper that to me, right before she and my dad would kiss me good night.
That’s the worst thing about being homeless, the memories of a warm house, a full belly, laughter, love, and the safety of my parents’ embrace.
Foster care certainly hadn’t helped. Being shuffled from home to home every couple of months because I wasn’t … enough has shot my self-worth all to pieces. But I’m not naïve enough to think that I’ll find my worth in Jackson or any other man.
Still, to be wanted like that…
“Generators will kick on after ten minutes,” he says as he strums a song on his guitar. My eyes adjust to the firelight in the room.
I nod. “That’s good.”
Jackson starts singing one of his songs, a slow one talking about love lost and then found in the person he never expected. I love listening to him sing, especially this one. In the most secret part of my heart, I wish it were me he was singing to, but I know it’ll never happen.