Forget Me Not (15 page)

“I tried, but I could never forget you, Jesse.”

Glazed eyes inspect my face. I try to predict how he’s going to react, what he’s going to do or say, but when his lips find mine and he crushes me to him, I’m shocked. The air shifts and the tension adapts, leaving me on the receiving end of Jesse’s hot assault. I acclimatize to the sudden aggression and match it immediately.

His mouth is desperate against mine, but between each kiss he whispers murmurings of, “I’m sorry for leaving, I’m so sorry. I will never leave you again.” His words alone break my heart but when I feel his warm tears mix with my own against our cheeks I almost convulse with grief. I’m torn between caring for this fucked up, beautiful man, and fucking him up, so I work tirelessly to combine the two.

Clutching him impossibly close, I push out my hips, needing to both give and receive friction. Jesse reads my mind, lifting me effortlessly onto the counter and pulling me directly onto his clothed excitement. His lean hips are between my legs and his strong hands are gripping my thighs, pulling me closer to grind to a steady beat. I can feel how much he wants me, how much he needs me, and I more than equal his desire. My insides are throbbing, my body begging for him when my words can’t.

I remove his sweater, he removes mine. He eases me out of my jeans, and I rid him of his. He slips his fingers into my panties while I stroke him over his boxers, bringing us to the brink before we desperately remove them. His hands are everywhere, turning every part of my body on individually.

When I can’t stand the wait anymore, he takes me, impaling me in one movement. I stifle a moan as the fullness conquers me, knowing that we’re not alone in this house. The awareness is shared by Jesse as he bites down hard on my shoulder to hide his own appreciation.

Slow but firm, Jesse sinks into me repeatedly, his hips just as relentless as his hungry mouth. Soft lips meander up my shoulder, each kiss weakening my body until gentle teeth reach my ear and I collapse against him, already so close to that heavenly release.

We continue to move like two parts of the same being, our minds in tune and our bodies as one. My legs tighten around him, needing him closer and he obliges, lifting me so that I am no longer relying on the counter for support, but Jesse’s strong, talented hands. He fills me deeper than I ever thought possible and within seconds I am a ticking bomb in his arms.

“God, Jesse!” I smother a scream into the hot skin of his shoulder.

“I know, baby.”

The pounding intensifies, each more merciless than the last. One final thrust and I explode around him. Digging my fingers into his damp skin, my body clings onto reality as my mind lingers in heaven. Jesse follows my lead, finding his warm release somewhere deep in my pulsating sex.

As the pleasurable waves calm we both fall to the floor, our arms binding us together as we come down from extraordinary heights. We slowly rock together for some time, comforting with intimacy.

Chapter 16

Kisses flutter their way from my bare shoulder, along the curve of my neck and up to my hyper-sensitive earlobe. I’m so relaxed that I gasp when in one swift movement Jesse manages to stand, me still in his arms with my legs around his waist. Still locked together. He leans me back against the counter, finally pulling away so that he can reach down for our underwear.

Handing me my panties, he smiles. It doesn’t quite ignite his eyes though. “As much as I’d like to carry you to bed right now, perhaps we should cover up first.” He looks upstairs, gesturing to Benji’s room.

“You could really carry me up the stairs after all that?” I ask, slipping into my panties.

“Of course.”

“You’re so strong,” I say, giving my best pin-up girl pout as I shimmy into my sweater.

He’s pulled on his boxers but now he’s stood there, looking at me pensively. “No, I’m not strong. I’m weak. Weak in every sense of the word. I didn’t realize…leaving you to deal with all of that… it was cowardly…”
              “No…” I step closer, slipping my hands around his waist.

“Yes. I should have found another way. I-I should have found
any other way
. And then to stay away for all these years?” He shakes his head, looking over me rather than at me. “I thought I was being strong, but really I was just hiding. Hiding from you because I knew that to be with you would mean being here. It was…I was pathetic.”

I place my fingers over his lips, ignoring how this simple touch heats my skin.

“Stop talking like this. It wasn’t weak to leave. It was an incredibly brave thing for you to do. I don’t begrudge you for running away, Jesse. I just wish you’d taken me with you.”

He takes my hand, kissing every part of it between his words. “I should have...I tried to...I came for you.”

“What?” My hand locks in position, with his lips against my palm.

Dropping my hand, he proceeds to hold it between us, circling my knuckles with his thumbs. The tension in his face is telling. He’s nervous. But, for some reason I don’t think it’s for his sake.

“The night I left, well, the morning. I was on my way to your house when Joanna pulled up in her car.” He pauses. I squeeze his hands, pleading with him to carry on. He does, but with his eyes down. “I was caked in blood, my eye was swollen shut. I…I was pretty bust up.”

“What had happened?” I murmur, fighting the sickness that came with the image of Jesse so badly beaten. He looks at me, and his mask briefly slips back into place. He shakes his head in a way that tells me, “another time.”

“She persuaded me to go with her and get cleaned up, and I did. She let me shower and then stitched up my eye. She said she’d take me to you but…she didn’t.”

My stomach is knotting so tight that I feel the need to hold it, as if I can ease the tension building in my gut. I feel cold. It moves over my skin like a tornado, leaving harsh goose-bumps in its wake. I bite my tongue, literally bite my tongue, knowing that I need to let Jesse finish.

“She drove me to the train station, telling me that if I felt anything for you then I should leave and not come back. She said that I needed to let you live your life and that me breaking your heart now would be less painful than dragging you through all my shit.” He reaches for my hands again, tearing them away from my stomach and bringing them to his chest. “I left on that train believing everything she said. I thought I was doing best by you.”

Hot tears pour down my face, through anger, for a lost love, a found love. I don’t know. But, I can’t stop them.

“I can’t believe it…” I say, my voice breathy with shock.

“I knew she wouldn’t tell you. But, I think she genuinely thought she was helping.”

“But she watched me! She sat by and watched me die inside knowing that she was the one who stuck in the knife.”

“You can’t blame her…”
he insists, almost completely genuinely.

“Hell yes, I can,” I refute, angered to the core.

“No, essentially it was my decision. And besides…I didn’t come back.”

“I understand why you didn’t. I don’t blame you.”

“I blame me,” he asserts, locking his concentrated blues on me. “What I did to you, what I put you through? It’s inexcusable. But how you handled it? How you handled everything, me, Sebastian, Benjamin? It amazes me.
You
are the strong one, sweets.”

If I wasn’t so tense I’d laugh. The very notion of me being emotionally strong is ridiculous. “I’m not. I’m weak. I need you, I’m addicted to you. I can’t think straight without you.  That’s not strong, Jesse.”

I’m momentarily confused when he smiles. A big smile, all toothy and honest. His face floods with what I can only describe as relief. “No,” he says, “that’s love.”

With a hand on either side of my face, Jesse guides me to his mouth. He kisses me gently, cautiously, as if I’m breakable. I feel breakable. My knees feel weak, from the revelation as well as Jesse’s tender lips.

Pulling away, but leaving his hands on my face, he strokes away the tears left on my cheeks. “I love you so much, sweets. You consume by every waking thought, hell, my sleeping ones too. It’s dangerous how much I love you.” He kisses my nose and wipes a tear from my cheek. “And, nobody,
nobody
has ever affected me the way that you do. I’ve been yours forever, baby. ” He touches his forehead to mine and looks into my eyes, waiting for a reply, or perhaps, acceptance.

My response is lost beneath the emotion lodged in my throat. I can’t do anything but kiss him, so I kiss him with every bit of love I have.

Monday mornings are normally spent trying to establish some enthusiasm for the working week ahead. I love my job, the photography side at least, but the business side of what I do is where I tend to lack motivation. Although I’m not entirely happy at being back at work after the most glorious weekend of my life, I don’t have to snooze my alarm a hundred times and I practically skip to my office. The reason for my overt happiness is my clear head. Jesse and I worked so much out last night. Demon’s were shown and slaughtered and our souls were bared.

It’s dramatic, but true.

I’m now starting to truly believe that we can make this work. Obviously there are job and location issues to resolve, but that’s just semantics when I think of what we have overcome so far.

What little misery I have falls on Joanna’s shoulders. After Jesse’s revelation last night I know that a confrontation with my sister is imminent, but I’m hesitant to explore my contempt with her when I’m in such a happy place right now. Soon though.

Both Jesse and Benjamin pleaded with me not to go to work this morning, but after the exhibition last week I have a mountain of correspondence that needs to be done. I contemplated working from home but I knew damn well that I wouldn’t get anything done with Jesse around. 

It’s almost midday and I’m taking a well earned coffee break. I’m still only half way through replying to all emails and voicemails. Most of the messages are just congratulatory, but a large majority are sales orientated, which I forward to Davis, and some are even offers of work. I’m both ecstatic and overwhelmed by the response, happy at the prospect of working my way down different paths, but nervous about the possible changes that may be needed. I don’t know how much longer I can realistically continue to work from here, this office, this town. The road I need to travel in order to be where I want to be does not circle Starling. I guess I need to reassess a few things.

Doing what I do best, I push difficult decisions to the back of my mind and start to pick at my lunch. I text my parents to check how Benjamin is getting on and to confirm that they’re taking him to soccer practice this afternoon. All is well, and better still, my mom doesn’t have her Jesse-hating hat on. I suspect that Benji has been singing his praises all day, slowly melting away some of the abhorrence my parents feel for him.

Jesse was planning on spending some time reconnecting with Starling today. He was clearly apprehensive, but did his best to hide it. I have wanted to check up on him every five minutes since we departed company this morning, but I’ve battled the urge to mother him and won, until now. I call his mobile and he answers almost immediately.

“Hi, I was just about to call you," he says. Even through the phone I can tell that he’s smiling.

“Well, I saved you the trouble.”

“Oh, it would be no trouble at all. I’d bug you all day if I didn’t think it would interfere with your work.”

“Oh, interfere away, Mr. Jenner. I’m worn out already.” I lean back in my chair, allowing the conversation to transport me far away from this cramped office.

“I hope you’re not working too hard. What time are you planning on finishing?”

“I need to pick Benji up at three from soccer practice.”

“Can you get off any earlier? Ask the boss,” he insists, teasingly.

“The boss would need a good reason.” I twist my hair around my finger, scoffing silently at the cliché that I’ve become.

“I was thinking of going to see my family.”

“Y-your family?”

“At the cemetery,” he explains, his voice suddenly much quieter.

His mother and brother’s graves lay side by side at the local church. It would make sense that he’d want to see them now that he’s finally found it in him to come back.

“I’ll be there. I can finish at two.” 

“I’ll pick you up.”

“I have my car here,” I remind him.

“Yes, but it’s not a Mustang. I’m sure Benjamin would appreciate the Batmobile picking him up in front of his friends.”

“Are you searching for brownie points?” I smile, happy at the much milder topic.

“Depends if you think I need them?”

“Not at all.”

“Really?” Jesse asks, genuinely sounding surprised.

“Seriously? I’m actually wondering who loves you more, me or him,” I joke, shocked that he needs reassurance. Benji idolizes Jesse, and the reminder makes me melt further into my seat. He has great taste, just like his mom.

He chuckles into the mouthpiece. “He’s such a great kid.”

“I know.”

I could talk to Jesse all day, but I’m disrupted by my office phone ringing.

“Sorry, I have a call coming through.”

“Two? At Gina’s?”

“That’s me. See you, then.”

“See you, then.”

Taking a deep breath in and out and straightening my clothes, I try to flick the mental switch back into work mode.

Answering the phone I adopt my professional voice. “Hello, Michaela Cole.”

“Ms. Cole, I have Mr. Dean Fuller on the line for you,” a young woman with a strong Brooklyn accent tells me.

“Oh, okay.” I rack my brain trying to remember where I know that name from.

“Ms. Cole?” An assertive British voice beams down the line at me before I can place the name. I hope it’s not an existing client. I start fanning through my contacts book in the hope of stumbling across some helpful information.

“Please, call me Michaela. Mr. Fuller, how can I help?”

It’s almost two o’clock, so I turn the computer off and waltz down the stairs, keen to tell the whole world about my exciting news. Well, my small world at least; my parents, Benjamin, Emma, Joanna, but firstly, Jesse. Maybe he won’t realize how much this means to me because he hasn’t been here to witness how hard I have worked, but I know that he’ll be pleased for me regardless.

I wave goodbye to Gina and the girls before shimmying through the door. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about work. The exhibition was a big deal, but it was a lot of effort and money with potentially little reward. To have it pay out like this is so much better than any outcome I could have conceived.

The Mustang sits further on up the road. It looks completely out of place. It’s sleek, powerful and looks worlds apart from its dainty New England surroundings, much like its owner. As I walk towards the car, the driver door opens and Jesse ambles around to meet me on the sidewalk. Once upon a time Jesse blended in with Starling, and the people within it, but now he seems like a diamond amongst the dirt. Maybe he was always a diamond, he was to me, and now that he has been polished and looked after he has come back, prepared to get dirty again.

Standing there, in front of his beast of a car with his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans and his loose fitting grey sweater being molded to his ripped torso by the wind, he looks like a dream. A dream that is smiling and welcoming me as I approach.

“You look very happy for someone who’s been at work all day,” he says, holding one arm out, invitingly.

“I have a lot to be happy about.” I place my hand in his and he pulls me gently to him, kissing my cheek like a true gentlemen. “I’ve just had the most amazing news.”

He leans down to open the door for me then walks around to slide in behind the wheel. “Are you going to tell me?” he queries as he turns and faces me, looking all amused and expectant.

“I’ve been approached to shoot an album cover,” I announce, letting my words hang and allowing the grin on my face to say the rest.