Of Being Yours[another way 2] (19 page)

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ARA
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number lighting up my phone was something that still brought a smile to my face, no matter what had happened between Will and me. With my own mother being so distant—both physically and emotionally—the warm, easy relationship with Will’s mom was something that I had grown to cherish.

“Jesse,” she said in greeting. “I’ve got good news.”

“Yeah? I could do with some,” I said. She knew that Will and I were having troubles, of course, but had managed to stay relatively impartial.

“Are you busy tomorrow morning? I could stop by before I go to meet the girls at the mall.”

I had no plans for my Saturday, so it suited me just fine. After agreeing to meet for coffee and bagels, I hung up feeling slightly lighter.

The arrangement for Will to sleep in the guest room continued—an unspoken agreement that it would remain this way until we were ready to make the next step. I still felt his betrayal deeply. It was more than losing my Dom, more even than losing my partner. I was finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that I had almost lost my best friend.

That wasn’t to say we weren’t making steps forward. At Dr. Smith’s suggestion, we had gone out on a few dates. Nothing special—once to the movies, another time a friend at work had football tickets that he couldn’t use and offered them to me. And we went out for coffee or to a bar after work.

We had never dated like this the first time round. I had started as his submissive and nothing else. He was there to pick up the pieces after Laura had to let me go. Our need for each other was mutual; we each fulfilled in the other something that we couldn’t get elsewhere. The little sparks of lust built over time. The warm, deep, fulfilling glow of love developed even slower.

Until I reached a point where it was impossible to consider my life without him.

Even at the worst point in our relationship, I still couldn’t consider my life without him.

When Cara arrived, Will was still sleeping. I’d decided not to wake him; he’d had a restless night, and I didn’t want to disturb him. How I knew that he’d had trouble sleeping I wasn’t quite sure. We had slept in different rooms again. But I knew anyway.

Will’s mother was an elegant woman at the best of times, and even in casual attire of slacks and a pale-blue shirt, she seemed to pull off an air of class. She had made a fuss over turning fifty the previous summer but seemed to carry her age as something to be proud of rather than something to be ashamed of.

“Mm, it smells good in here,” Cara said as she pulled out of my embrace. I’d set coffee to brew when I’d received her text saying she was on her way over. She held up a white paper deli bag. “I brought extra so you’ve got some for tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. “Do you want me to toast them? I’ve got eggs ready to go too.”

“Sounds good to me.”

We chatted easily about work and friends as I cooked and Cara perched on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, doodling as she finished off yesterday’s crossword in the newspaper. I could never complete them, but she had a better way with words than I did.

With breakfast piled high on two plates, I sat down opposite her to dig in, stopping occasionally to sip at coffee, bitter and black.

“So,” she said when I was about half done. “This good news.”

“It was more than just gracing me with your presence?” I teased, earning myself a flick round the ear.

“Yes. This came in the mail for you.” She fished something out of her handbag, then slid an envelope across the bar. “It’s from the insurance company.”

Since Cara had been in charge of most of the insurance crap from the accident, it had made sense to have everything delivered to her home office. She worked as an independent financial advisor, and although dealing with the claims we had going through was slightly above and beyond her responsibilities, she’d taken it on when both Will and I had fallen into such a mess.

I quickly ripped the envelope open and read through the letter. “They’ve finalized the claim.”

“Excellent,” she said and took the last bite of her eggs. Sitting back on the stool, she rubbed her hand over her stomach. “I won’t eat again for a week. That was really good, Jesse.”

“No problem.”

We turned at the same time at the familiar sound of Will padding down the stairs, and then he came through the door. He appeared, sleep ruffled and disoriented, wearing just a pair of jogging pants that rode dangerously low on his hips.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, his voice rough. Then: “Coffee.”

“It’s in the pot, you lazy goose,” Cara said with a smile.

He pouted at her, scratched his head, and walked around us to the counter, yawning widely.

“How did you sleep?” I asked.

“Not great,” he muttered. Shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

Sometimes I felt so out of touch with the easy relationship Will shared with his mother. There was a silent communication between them; then he moved seamlessly into her embrace and rested his head on her shoulder as he cradled his mug in his hands.

“Come on,” she told him after a moment. “If you go have a shower and get dressed, you can take Jesse out shopping for a new car.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “Did the claim go through?”

“We just had a letter this morning,” I said. “I don’t even know what I want.”

For the previous few months, I’d been partly car sharing with Will and partly taking the bus. At first I’d hated being without my own car, but the Golf had been totaled in the accident, and I couldn’t afford to replace it until the insurance had gone through.

As a reckless sort of treat for myself, I’d bought an iPad when I started taking the bus to work in the mornings. After some fiddling around, I’d loaded several books on there, plus my music and games and some movies. I could e-mail reports or documents to read during the journey, too, saving me some time at the office if I was swamped.

In a way, I was sort of nervous about taking the step to have my own car again. Even though I hadn’t been driving when the accident happened, I still had a feeling that I was cursed when it came to cars. I’d crashed the first car I drove (which happened to belong to my parents) just a week after passing my driving test, and my track record since then hadn’t been much better.

“I have to get going anyway,” Cara said. Will took our dishes to the sink but came back to me this time.

It was still unusual for us to be openly affectionate with each other, something that was killing me inside, but I knew it was necessary for our relationship not to rush things. So it was somewhat risky for me to rest my hand on his bare lower back—an innocent gesture, but a loaded one—when he paused next to my seat. He seemed to unconsciously lean into my touch, affirming that it was the right thing to do.

If Cara noticed, she was discreet enough not to say anything, and too soon the moment was broken as Will walked her to the door. There was a flicker of something as he reached past me for his half-finished coffee; then he murmured something about a shower and left.

Within the hour we were ready to leave the house. It was one of those early spring mornings when the air outside was still freezing but the sky was bright and clear. My favorite time of year.

Will had been growing out some sort of scruffy beard, and it suited him, a gentle fuzz that spread across his jaw. He looked good, too good, in a long-sleeved T-shirt and thick knitted cardigan, with sunglasses to protect against the glare on the road. As his hand rested gently on the gear stick, I found it harder and harder not to just reach across and tangle my fingers with his.

Once, something like that would have been so natural for us.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked as we headed out of the city toward the dealerships. “Volkswagen?”

“I’ve been thinking about getting an SUV, actually,” I said.

“A soccer mom car?”

He was teasing. I frowned at him, then poked my elbow in his ribs.

“No, not a soccer mom car, you dick. Something with more room so we can fit our boarding stuff in the back rather than needing another roof rack.”

It was a touchy subject and one we hadn’t really discussed yet. “Do you want to go boarding again?” he asked, taking the first step toward the difficult conversation.

“Yeah,” I said with what I hoped was a degree of confidence. “It’s something we both enjoy, so there’s no reason not to. I mean, if it’s weird we can always try and get a bus or a train or something up to Vancouver, but it’ll be a pain in the ass.”

“I know,” he said quietly as he watched the road. “I already looked into it.”

“So you want to go again too?”

He gave me a halfhearted sort of shrug. “Yeah, I suppose so. The snow season will be over soon, though. We might have to wait until November.”

“We could always go up and go biking or something,” I said. “There would be less chance of bad weather then too.”

A tiny muscle in his jaw twitched.

“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice quiet.

Silently, he signaled and pulled over to the side of the road. Once the engine was off, he put his head down on his hands, which were still gripping the wheel.

“Will?”

“I’m so fucking sorry, Jess.”

I reached for his hair and ran my fingers through it, comforting us both. “Hey,” I said, softly scratching his scalp. “You know you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

His response was a deep sigh.

“Let’s not do this here,” I said, and he nodded, then turned his face against my hand to nuzzle into it. I let my palm rest on his cheek for a few moments, then pulled away.

“So, Audi dealership first, then?” he asked.

Suddenly everything was normal again. Getting used to massive changes in his mood was just part of living with the new post-accident Will.

“SUVs, huh,” he said as we parked and walked around the lot first before we headed into the showroom. “Is this a good time to bring up children again?”

He was joking, sort of, but I knew he wanted an answer.

“You know Maddie’s pregnant,” I said.

“Laura did say. I haven’t seen her in a long time. She always seems to be busy with the girls.”

“It’s crazy.”

“It’s… I don’t want to say fucked up because it clearly works for them, but I don’t know how it’s going to work. What about Carrigan and Sawyer? Are they going to try and raise the new baby as their brother or sister?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Maddie didn’t want to even keep the baby at one point. She talked about us adopting it.”

He stopped short and stared at me. “What?”

“Don’t worry, I said no.”

“That’s not the point, Jesse,” he said, frowning. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I stopped to look at a Q7. “Because it was when you were staying at your mom’s.”

He was quiet for a moment; then he nodded. “Okay. Can we talk about this more later?”

“Of course.”

This was definitely new. It was okay, apart from the fact I felt like I was living a textbook-perfect relationship. I wanted him to lose control again. Preferably when I was caught up in a net of ropes.

“Hey, guys,” the salesman said with a winning smile as we headed into the showroom. “Any idea of what you’re looking for?”

I had taken him in and assessed him within seconds. Young, broad shoulders, probably not long out of college. He had the build of a sportsman, maybe baseball but more likely football. Clean-cut, all-American.

I shot a quick look at Will, wondering if the guy who liked to tease and have fun was still in there. His hand was in mine before I had the chance to make a decision.

“We’re looking for a family vehicle,” he announced.

The winning smile dropped, just by a fraction.

Behind a large desk, a woman more our age hid a snigger behind her hand.

After careful consideration, I decided there wasn’t a car that appealed to me that day, but that didn’t matter so much as the progress I’d made in getting our relationship back.

“Do you want to go grab something to eat?” I asked as we left. It was my turn to drive, which meant I could choose where we went. It was definitely a strategic move on my part.

“Sure,” he said easily.

For fairly obvious reasons, cars were slightly tense territory for us both. We hadn’t both been in a car many times since Will’s leg had healed, but the lack of my own vehicle meant I was used to driving his now.

I decided on a diner downtown that served enough of a variety that it wouldn’t be too difficult to find something that suited us both.

We hit up another dealership on the way home—a used car place this time—but I still couldn’t find anything that made me delirious about spending several thousand dollars on four wheels, metal, and leather.

Back home we hesitated at the door, not sure what the procedure was anymore. For the past few months, our routine had been for us to split our different ways, him to his part of the house, me to mine. I didn’t want that anymore, though. Despite having spent most of the day with him, I wasn’t ready to be apart from him just yet.