Home is Where the Heart is (13 page)

Jordan looked at her with one of his cheeky grins. “I guess that’s why I play football instead of dancing. It's a good thing I've never been asked to participate in
Dancing with the Stars.
" Jordan laughed at himself then changed the subject. "I’ll take y’all home, if you’d like?” His voice was raised slightly so he could be heard over the music.

“Are you sure? You don’t have to. Gabby can give us a ride; she’s used to doing it anyway.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind…” Jordan trailed off, glancing over to where Nick was dancing with the leggy blonde-haired beauty “…besides, I don’t think I will be expecting Nick home anytime soon, so it will be nice to have some time to myself for a little while. It gives me time to think, and we
do
have cookies to bake. I didn’t forget I promised to help you since I got you into it in the first place.”

Cassie looked torn. She didn’t know how much more time she could spend with the guy before she realized she wouldn’t be able to control those returning feelings she once felt for Jordan, despite knowing they would never really work anymore. It was proving to be more of a struggle than she initially thought.

They made their way over to where Jake was laying on an oversized lawn chair with Mitch and Hazel.

“We’re going to go now and get this little boy home to bed,” she said with a smile. “It’s getting late, and it’s past Jake’s bedtime.”

Mitch and Hazel understood, both nodding their heads and returning smiles.

“Do you need a lift home?” Mitch asked her.

Cassie shook her head. “No, it’s okay. Jordan has already offered to take us home, but thanks anyways.” She meant it; they did enough for her already by including them as part of their family, and had since the day she moved into their house at the beginning of her senior year of high school, just so Cassie wouldn’t have to move and change schools following Cassie’s parents’ departure from town. Mitch and Hazel acted like surrogate parents for Cassie, and now Jake, stepping in when her own parents couldn’t, or lived too far away to do so.

“I’ll see you next weekend at Jake’s game,” she added. They also attended every one of Jake’s baseball games, acting as his surrogate grandparents, and despite the fact they weren’t blood-related, she knew they loved being able to spoil him as if he were their own grandchild. Gabby was an only child, and it didn’t look like she was ready to settle down anytime soon.

Hazel got up from her chair and wrapped her arms around Cassie in a strong embrace to say goodbye as Jordan lifted their son into his arms. Jake rested his sleepy little head on his shoulder.

Hazel whispered into Cassie’s ear, telling her to be careful. Cassie knew too well what she meant by the comment. At the time of her break-up with Jordan, Hazel and Mitch, along with Nick and Gabby, had helped pick up the pieces of her broken heart, and then with the unexpected pregnancy. They were familiar with how much Cassie had struggled to make a life for her and Jake. They didn’t want to see Jordan come crashing her party, destroying everything she had built. She didn’t want that either. She knew how hard she’d worked to get to the place she was now. Life was good to her. She couldn’t and wouldn’t let something like Jordan’s return stir up old feelings from her past, making her question everything she had worked for.

“I will,” Cassie whispered softly. “Thank you,” she said again, tears almost falling from her eyes, but she carefully held them back, not wanting to smudge the little mascara she had on or give people more of a reason to talk about her personal life. Enough was enough. She couldn’t be talked about more than she already was. Her life was just that—
her
life. She was determined to keep it that way, without people prying into her personal life wondering whether she and Jordan were getting back together or not, and for Cassie, if there were music playing in the background of her mind, it would be Taylor Swift singing about how they were never ever getting back together.

Forty-five minutes after arriving home from the fair, Cassie generously accepted Jordan’s offer to carry their very tired little boy to bed while she rummaged through the cupboards in her kitchen, grabbing utensils, bowls, and pans, along with all the ingredients needed to bake cookies from scratch. Cassie did not believe in using a packet mix when they were so much more scrumptious with an actual recipe.

Cassie and Jordan had both decided on chocolate chip cookies, knowing they would definitely be a crowd favorite at school. When he finished putting Jake to bed, he entered Cassie’s kitchen rolling up the sleeves of his light blue tailored shirt—which she thought he looked amazing in and really made his eyes pop—ready to get to work.

Jordan clapped his hands together, indicating he was ready to start the process. “All right! What do you want me to do?”

“You can plug in the KitchenAid,” said Cassie.

“Where’s that?” he asked, and Cassie didn’t look shocked by his question.

She laughed and answered, “It’s over in the corner next to the stove.” Cassie pointed to the dusty, pink cooking device. “You obviously don’t do a lot of baking in Miami.”

Jordan pulled the mixer out from the corner and plugged the power cord into the wall socket.

“Between games, training, and the gym, I don’t get a lot of time to cook, but I’m not that clueless in the kitchen; I know a little bit,” he said. “So what’s next?”

Cassie cocked one eyebrow. “That’s funny. I just assumed you would use the microwave most of the time.” She gave him a playful shove.

Jordan gently pushed her back. “Well, I do that too, but I can cook some meals. I’m not completely incompetent when it comes to using a kitchen wisely.”

“We’ll see about that,” Cassie murmured to herself, then said aloud, “We simply pour some flour, eggs, oil, chocolate chips, butter, and a little bit of milk into the mixer and let it work its magic. My KitchenAid is a real lifesaver; it does almost all of the hard work for me.”

Together, Cassie and Jordan combined the ingredients into the mixer and then turned it on, waiting until it was combined into a doughy ball so they could make smaller balls of the concoction. Cassie sprinkled some flour across two colorful cutting boards on the island countertop, while Jordan whipped the dough out of the mixer. Then he placed the two large mounds of the mixture in equal proportions onto the cutting boards.

Before getting started with her half, she tied her hair loosely into a ponytail and a flowery-printed apron around her middle while watching Jordan dive straight into rolling the dough out, proving to be good with his hands…like she remembered.

He realized she was watching him intently, and he paused mid-roll with a questioning look on his face. “Am I doing something wrong?” he asked her.

Cassie shook her head, biting down on her bottom lip. “No, you can’t really make a mistake rolling cookie dough. You’re doing fine. I was just thinking I should probably take a picture of you actually doing some form of cooking as proof that you can actually do it,” she said teasingly, letting out a little laugh.

Jordan forgot how good it felt to hear his former girlfriend laugh. She was always so gorgeous when she was laughing, despite not being very funny at the moment.

“Ha. You think you’re so funny,” Jordan stated sarcastically. “You’re laughing at me.”

Cassie stuck out her tongue. “Oh, but I think I am. I’m hilarious. This situation is funny.”

She had him there, and Jordan liked that they were learning to relax in each other’s company again. It reminded him of the old times they shared together six years ago. He missed that the most about Cassie, and despite the regrets and everything else that had happened since then, Jordan could not forget everything good about his past spent with her. After all, she did give him a wonderful and kind-hearted little boy. He had to thank her for raising their son as best as she could on her own. She was doing an admirable job as a single parent.

He nudged her light-heartedly in her side. “I like this.”

Cassie rolled up the sleeves of her button down shirt. “You like what? When I tease you? I like that too. See? I told you; I’m hilarious.”

Jordan gave her a grin, rolling his eyes. “You did always think your jokes were a ball of laughter. I think you were the only one too, but I like being able to be myself around you.”

“You mean up until now, you weren’t being yourself? I’m utterly shocked,” she joked, grabbing bits of dough and rolling them into balls, and then placing them on a prepared baking tray. She suddenly turned serious. “But I do know what you mean. I like it too. It is a good feeling.”

“It’s like nothing’s really changed between us.”

“Except that it has,” Cassie could not help but say. She knew she couldn’t be the only one thinking it. There was definitely a presence of an elephant in the room now. Things had changed between them, their whole dynamic. They went from being a high school couple to parents of a five-year-old boy. They were not together, and Cassie needed to make sure Jordan knew they could not go back to the way they were, even if they could still have fun together. “And right now, we’re baking cookies for our son’s school. Things have changed, and I don’t think we can really go back to the Jordan and Cassie we and everybody else knew six years ago. It’s like another lifetime ago, and we’re not the same people anymore. We’re two very different people who live different lives.”

Cassie didn’t mean to break the mood of happy moments between them, but she couldn’t go on without speaking the truth, and Jordan knew deep down she was right. She had a point. Yes, Jordan and Cassie could recall the old times they shared together, but they were now leading separate lives away from each other.

Making the next few batches of cookies was spent in silence, with the only sounds coming from the kitchen being the KitchenAid making noise, the sound of the oven going off, or the rolling pins on the cutting board. You could’ve heard a pin drop otherwise.

Jordan and Cassie would occasionally bump into each other in passing, but even standing inside the same traditional-style kitchen, you’d think they didn’t even know each other. How astonishing to see the mood change so quickly. Cassie blew a stray piece of hair out of her eyes as she used the cuff of her shirt to dab at her forehead.

Jordan took the opportunity to look over at her, finally making eye contact with her for the first time since she’d stated the changes in each of their lives.

Cassie felt herself blush slightly. Why was he looking at her like that? Did she do something wrong?

“What?” she asked him, splaying her hands in the air. “Do I have something on my face?” Her right hand automatically went to her to brush off whatever he was staring at. He was making her feel self-conscious, and she didn’t like the feeling one bit.

“Well, actually, you’ve got some flour on your face.”

Cassie dabbed at her cheekbone. “Did I get it?”

Jordan wiped his flour-covered hands on the red and white striped dish towel sitting on the counter, then before Cassie knew what he was doing, his finger was softly grazing at the spot of flour on her left cheek. Cassie couldn’t help but lean in toward his touch. His fingers felt good against the smoothness of her skin—like old times.

Shit! There she went again.

Stop tormenting yourself, Cassie,
she thought to herself
. No matter how good it feels to be touched by him again, you can’t give into the handsome man standing in front of you. He’s not worth all the heartbreak he put you through.

“There,” Jordan lowered his voice to an almost-whisper, “I got it for you.” His eyes never once left Cassie’s angelic face.

“Thanks,” she finally mustered together. Even though the flour was gone from her cheek, Cassie could still feel his fingers gently grazing against her cheekbone, and she had to admit, it felt good to feel his touch on her skin again. So good, she didn’t want him to stop. She remembered how she used to feel every time he touched her this way when they were dating. She’d always been vulnerable to his touch.

All her emotions came rushing straight back to her. Feelings she wasn’t expecting or hoping to feel for him again were suddenly present all over again. She didn’t know if she had the courage to turn him away right now, and even if she did, did she really want to? Maybe Gabby could be right this time; there was a first for everything. Maybe all she needed was one last time of physically being with Jordan to get these feelings completely out of her system. Then she would know for sure if her feelings were the real deal or just nostalgia over the good times they had once shared.

Cassie went weak in the knees, like she might topple over at any given moment. Would he catch her if she did?

Her hand reached out to grip the countertop as Jordan ran his fingers down her neck and shoulder, sending shivers down her spine. They shouldn’t be doing this; they couldn’t be doing this, but she also didn’t want it to stop.

Jordan leaned in closer until his lips were brushing against Cassie’s in the most delicate way, and softly and tenderly, their mouths joined together in a kiss.

Cassie's eyes fluttered shut, and she had the urge to sweep her hands through his short hair. Before she knew what she was doing, she was looping her arms around his neck, pulling their bodies even closer together.