Jackson: A Sexy Bastard Novel (13 page)

A
week later
, I’m standing on a street corner, tapping on heel and cursing Jackson’s name.

He did tell me he might be late, but, I swear, if I see one more construction worker come around this corner who is not Jackson, I might rip down all the caution tape and go in there and drag him out.

I hate to admit it to myself, but I’ve been looking forward to seeing him all week, and while “grabbing a bite” wasn’t quite what I had in mind for our Thursday night date, I do understand being busy at work and needing to lie low for a little while. Jackson said that this Norcross Mall project has been hitting some snags, which is why they called him back in. I don’t really get how anything that still looks like a plot of dirt with some random concrete pillars and wooden beams can already be “snagging,” but I don’t really care. I just want to see Jackson.

After another ten minutes of leaning against a partially constructed wall and watching short Hispanic men wander past, I compromise with myself and pull out my phone.

Get your ass out here
, I type,
or I’m taking myself to dinner.

After a beat, his reply comes through.

Be there ASAP.

Five minutes later, I see the door of a trailer in the distance crack open and Jackson steps out. His brow is furrowed, and he’s holding a clipboard, both of which make him look unbelievably cute. But as he strides across the site, muscular arms rippling, I’m quickly reminded of what I’ve actually been longing for all week—and it’s not a cuddle session.

“Hey you,” he says when he reaches me, wrapping his free arm around my waist. “Sorry that took so long.”

“Well you’re here now.” We kiss, and then I rap my knuckles against his bright yellow hardhat. “Protecting valuable goods in there?”

“Someone thinks so,” he jokes and then looks back at the construction site. The sun has started to set, illuminating the red soil with a soft orange glow. “Any interest in a brief tour? There’s not much to see yet, but I can try and talk you through what it’ll look like when it’s done.”

“A tour of an invisible mall? Designed by you? Lead the way.” I untangle myself but then look at his hardhat and place my hands on my hips. “Hold on, what about my valuables?”

At first, Jackson looks confused, but when I tap my forehead, a grin of recognition spreads across his face. Without hesitation, he removes his hardhat and places it on my head.

“There.” He pats it softly. “Safe and sound.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine.” He takes my hand. “I know this site inside and out.”

Hand in hand, we walk around a deep dirt pit.

“When I start a design for any building, I start with the absolute basics.” Jackson leads me to the edge of the pit. “What does the client need? What do they want? And most importantly: who are they? That last question matters most of all, because if I’m going to design something that makes a person happy, I need to know them inside and out. I need to know them so well that I can anticipate wants and needs they didn’t even know they had.”

He’s looking at me in a way that is starting to make me uncomfortable. Is he implying that we still don’t know each other well enough? Because that’s ludicrous.

“Okay, so you get to know the client.”

“Right.” Jackson nods and turns to look out over the work site. “Then, together, we decide on what will make this project unique. Because I don’t do cookie-cutter.”

“What makes this mall unique?”

“Slow down, speedy,” he laughs. “We’ll get there. First, let’s start with the foundation.” Jackson points down into the pit, where piles of dirt and slabs and columns of concrete make up an elaborate maze. “Everything that this mall will eventually be comes from this.”

“So then it must be pretty important to get it right,” I hedge.

“Exactly. Foundations are really important.” He’s looking at me, and again I have the fleeting notion that we might not be talking about architecture. But really? He wants to have this conversation now?

Quickly, I look back at the pit. Several yards away, the dirt canyon abruptly stops at a wall of concrete.

“What’s over there?”

“That’s the part of the foundation that has already been laid.”

Together we circle the perimeter and approach the concrete wall. Behind it, steel beams of varying heights sprout like giant weeds.

“This part of the site is very much underway.” He gestures around at the steel structures. “These beams make up what is essentially the ribcage of the retail space. And then . . . .”

He steps around the wall and leads me farther into the site, where the ground changes from concrete back to dirt. Wooden scaffolding stretches above us like a giant toothpick sculpture.

“This part here is going to be three stories of apartments.”

“Apartments?” I stop, confused. “I thought you were designing a mall.”

“The client really wanted something that wasn’t just about retail, so we incorporated living spaces.”

“So, the apartments are going to be next to, like, Macy’s?”

“Basically. We’re planning a Whole Foods that will serve as a gentle transition between food court and neighborhood grocery store.”

I stare at the wooden beams, trying to envision what the apartments will look like. At this point I can’t even tell where one ends and another begins. And to think: he has to envision this whole thing out of nothing. I can’t even imagine.

“Do you like designing retail spaces better, or residential?” I ask.

Jackson’s response is almost immediate.

“Residential. I like imagining the future. There’s no future in malls, but in apartments? Houses? Those are made precisely
for
the future.”

“So you enjoy projects like your house.”

He nods. “Right. In fact, I already have the plans drawn up for my next house.”

“Your next house?” I stop abruptly. “What’s wrong with the house you have?”

“Oh it’s fine, for now.” He looks off toward the setting sun and then back at me. “But I’m talking about the house I want to live in when I get married and have kids.”

My heart feels as though an icy hand has reached into my chest and grabbed it.

“But what if you don’t get married? What if you don’t have kids?”

“Well, that’s my plan. Don’t you see yourself getting married and having kids?

“No.” My response is immediate. Abrupt.

“Okay.” He draws the word out slowly. “Then what do you see in your future?”

“I don’t see anything.” This isn’t entirely true; when I try and envision it, my future stretches out like a big, blank white canvas. Or the wall of a hospital room.

“Skylar.” His manner is calm, but his voice is tight. “How are we supposed to talk about our relationship without talking about the future?”

I knew it. This wasn’t ever about architecture or his stupid mall—it was about “us.” Our “relationship.” The future.

“My future is one big open possibility,” I shoot back. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to restrict it to spoon-fed domestic bliss.”

Now he looks annoyed. “If you don’t want a house and kids, fine. But I do. So if we’re going to keep seeing each other, then that’s something we really need to address.”

He doesn’t understand at all. It’s not that I don’t want the house, the kids, the white picket fence. I do. What I don’t want is to lose them—and I will. I lose everything I care about.

How exactly do I explain that to him without sounding crazy or damaged?

The tears are building behind my eyes, and I don’t know how to stop them. I don’t want to cry. Not here. Not now. Not in front of him, about this.

“You have to start planning for
something
, Skylar.” Jackson’s voice is gentle again, yet I can hear frustration behind it. “You can’t just wait tables and teach yoga forever.”

I thought he understood. When we sat on my bed, drinking mugs of wine, I thought he saw the world the way I see it. But now I realize he doesn’t see anything. He wants something I can’t give.

“There’s no point planning for the future, Jackson. Don’t you get it?” I clench my fists, trying desperately to keep my voice steady. “You can make all the plans in the world, but the universe doesn’t give a shit about your plans. It just does whatever the fuck it wants, and in the end you’re left with absolutely nothing.”

The tears are coming now, pouring down my face unchecked, so I do the only thing I can think to do: I run. I bolt past Jackson, hurdle over piles of dirt, and head for the front of the work site. It’s only as I duck beneath a wooden beam and knock the hardhat askew that I realize I am completely stranded. Jackson was going to drive us to dinner, so I took the bus here. There’s literally nowhere to run.

At that realization, I start sobbing so hard that my legs go weak and I stumble. The hardhat tumbles from my head, and I totter at the edge of the foundation ditch, watching the hat bounce its way to the bottom.

“Skylar!”

The moment Jackson reaches me, he immediately grabs me around the waist and pulls me back from the side of the pit. The next thing I know, I’m pressed against one of the concrete walls, his hands gripping me fiercely.

“Skylar, please. Stop. I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.”

I can’t speak, my whole body still shaking with sobs. His future is playing on repeat in my head, like a distorted Technicolor slideshow: Jackson, standing inside his white picket fence. Jackson, putting his arms around his beautiful, perfect wife. Jackson, surrounded by cherubic children frolicking in the green grass of a perfectly manicured lawn. And me . . . nowhere. Gone. Not even a thought in his head.

“Let me go!” My fury unleashes itself and I pummel him with my fists. “Just let me go.” I’m crying, shouting, and trying to get those images out of my head: of him with another woman. Because it’s painful, but what would be worse is standing there inside that white picket fence with him, holding those children . . . and then having it all fall apart. Maybe he dies or maybe I die. Maybe one of our children gets cancer. This is what the universe does. And I don’t want any part of it.

“Skylar, look at me.” He gently pins my arms to my sides. “Look at me. Please.”

I snarl into his face, “I don’t fit into your perfect life. You know it. I know it. So that’s it. Just leave me be.”

“Skylar, stop. Listen to me. I think you’re amazing. I don’t know why I said any of that. I don’t care what if you wait tables or teach yoga. I don’t care if you never work a day in your life, or if you want kids or—”

“Yes you do!” The more I struggle to escape him, the more he presses his body against mine, anchoring me to the wall. “You have a perfect life, with a perfect future and—”

In the second it takes me to draw a breath, his mouth is on mine. My body responds, my lips drinking him in, even as the last angry tears drip down my face.

“Skylar,” he mutters, his lips hovering over my mouth. “The last thing I want is to hurt you.”

I know this. In my heart, I know what he’s said is true. He doesn’t want to hurt me, and he doesn’t want to see me hurt. The strip club, the fight club—so many times he’s proven this. Yet what we want from life is just so different. He wants the structured plan. The timeline. The checkboxes. I just want life itself—as much as I can squeeze out, as fast as I can squeeze it.

As he raises his head, I grab his earlobe in my teeth and pull. He jerks in surprise, and then leans into me.

“Skylar?”

I just want to feel something right now other than what I’m feeling—this horrible uncertainty. This inevitable loss.

“I want you,” I tell him. “I want every bit of you, every last molecule, right now, in this moment. I want to live.”

Reaching down, I fumble for the zipper on his pants. Before I can go further, he sucks in a breath and grabs my wrist.

“Are you sure?” His mouth is taut with desire, but he holds onto my wrist firmly. “We don’t have to do this. We can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.” I shove his hand away and unzip his pants, gripping his erection in my hand, letting my nails sink in ever so lightly.

“Fuck,” he groans. Then he grabs me by my waist and hoists me up against the wall. My legs instinctively wrap around him as our mouths crash together. Yes. Yes, this is what I want. I want to be ravaged. I want the heat of the moment, to be filled up, totally alive. I want to lose myself inside someone else’s skin for five minutes, ten minutes, twenty. Jackson’s perfect fucking skin.

Holding me with one arm, he reaches up my skirt and wrenches the fabric of my underwear aside. Then he enters me, and both of us exhale at the same time.

“Yes,” I hiss into his ear. “Yes, yes, yes.”

He thrusts into me, and I squeeze my legs tighter, willing him farther and farther in. His eyes are smoldering as he grips my ass harder, his fingers embedding themselves in my flesh. I dig my fingernails into his shoulders and arch my back.

“Harder,” I tell him. “Fuck me harder.”

And he does. We’re slamming against the wall, raw skin to rough concrete, the surface rubbing my tailbone raw, but I don’t care. He has my shirt up, bra shoved aside, and he bites each nipple until fireworks are exploding inside me.

Fuck me harder Jackson. Push deeper and send me to that place where I no longer see the house, the wife, the kids.

I squint my eyes shut, willing my body to feel nothing but the pressure of his cock deep inside me, pressing my forbidden place over and over again. Finally, the pain-laced sweetness is too much. I cry out, clutching him and coming uncontrollably. My body shakes as my mind finally empties itself, releasing me into the blank black void of the now.

As I come floating back to earth, Jackson strokes my hair.

“I know what that was,” he whispers in my ear. I jerk back to look at him but he just shakes his head.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I mean I know that you needed an escape. I can be that for you, baby. I can be whatever you need whenever you need it. You just need to give me the chance.”

I swallow hard, then nod.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

I smile at him. “Yeah. Okay—I will try to remember that you can be those things. You just need to remember that I might not always be able to believe it.”