Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) (20 page)

My mother took it the hardest.

“I’m just a train ride away,” I reminded her as we waited for my train to arrive.

“I know,” she said, fighting tears with a smile. “It was just so nice to spend time with you again.”

“It was,” I agreed. “We needed that.”

With glassy brown eyes she looked me up and down, as if she were taking a mental snapshot before I left. In the distance, the rumbling and groaning of my train grew closer.

“I’ll be back,” I said, wrapping my arms around her as train brakes screeched behind us. I let go and fished in my pocket, making sure my ticket was still there before giving them one final wave and heading back to the city. The weekend wasn’t perfect, but it was certainly a step in the right direction.

My stomach fluttered at the thought of seeing Jamison in an hour, and I could already taste him on my lips.

SOPHIE

“What’s this?” Sophie asked as she shuffled down the hallway to her apartment.

I sat against her door, surrounded by packed boxes.

“I’m looking for a place to live,” I said, smile on my lips. “Know of anyone looking for a roommate?”

“What?” she asked, eyes scrunched as she tried to process what was going on.

I stood up, pulling her into me and pressing my mouth onto hers. I’d been dying to kiss her all weekend, counting down the minutes until I knew she’d return home. Our lips danced with a feverish desire, one I wasn’t sure would ever be quenched, until she came up for air.

“You’re moving in with me?” she asked.

“I am,” I said, not asking. A weekend without her told me the one thing I’d already suspected: I couldn’t live without her. I hoisted her bag over my shoulder as she slipped her key into the lock. “I turned down the job at Mayo.”

“You what?!” She turned back toward me with eyes round as saucers. She knew just as well as I did that I’d done the unthinkable. No one turned down a job from Mayo. Ever.

“I was offered a job at a hospital in Brooklyn,” I said. “It’ll be a bit of a commute from here, but I’ll manage.” I set her bag on the floor and pulled her back into my arms, breathing in her sweet scent.

“So why do you need to live with me?” she asked, adding, “Not that I’m opposed, or anything…”

“I sublet my apartment already,” I said. “I didn’t accept the job until yesterday.”

“Lucky me,” she replied, unable to fight the smile consuming her face.

“God, I missed you.” I buried my face in the crook of her neck as we stumbled into her living room. I tugged her chunky sweater up, pulling it off and disheveling her long hair while she worked on my pants.

“I’m on the pill now. Forgot to tell you,” she whispered, the words like music to my ears and eliciting a smile from my wanting mouth. She tugged her pants off and I hoisted her up, her legs gripping around me as we fell backwards onto the sofa. She lowered herself onto me, surrounding my throbbing cock with her tight warmth and sending shivers down my spine.

Bracing her hands on my shoulders, she nibbled her lip as her eyes held my gaze and her hair fell into her face.

“You’re the only thing I need in this world,” I whispered to her, my hands holding her grinding hips. “No one but you.”

***

“Morning, handsome,” Sophie said to me as she stood in nothing but a t-shirt at the side of the bed. She held out a steaming mug. “Coffee?”

I sat up and took the cup from her hands as she crawled up on the bed and climbed over me, back to her side. We’d been living together almost two weeks as of that morning, and I never got tired of waking up next to her.

“You need to get in the shower,” she said, leaning over kissing my cheek. “Today’s your first day at Brooklyn General.”

She didn’t have to remind me. I’d been counting down the days, and not necessarily in a good way. I was grateful to have found a job and to have been able to stay in the city with Sophie, but Brooklyn General was a far cry from the prestigious Mercy Grace Hospital. And going back to work meant less time lying around with Sophie, screwing each other senseless, and watching her paint and listening to the whimsical thoughts that constantly left her pretty lips.

“Are you excited?” she asked with the wide-eyed optimism I’d always found refreshing.

I shot her a smirk. “You have way too much pep for six o’clock on a Monday morning.”

“I’m just excited for you.” She shrugged. “I know Brooklyn General wasn’t your first choice, and it’s no Mayo Clinic, but I want you to know I appreciate you sticking around for me.”

I sipped my coffee. “The alternative was dragging you kicking and screaming to Rochester.”

I’d have never left her. The chips just happened to fall in her favor this time, allowing us to stay in Manhattan.

“You think I’m joking. That’s what’s funny.” I sauntered to the shower, Sophie skipping behind me and rambling on about planning a double date with Mia and some guy she was seeing named Evan.

“I’m not big on double dates,” I called from behind the shower curtain. “But I could make an exception, if you ask nicely.”

She popped her head into the shower, nearly causing me to drop the soap. “You’ll do what I say, when I say.”

“Yeah? And what makes you think you call the shots?”

“Because you’re utterly and completely in love with me,” she teased. “And you’ll do just about anything to put a smile on my face. That’s all.”

She closed the curtain and stepped back to her vanity where she combed and twisted her wild hair into submission. She continued gabbing about Mia and Evan and how Mia never dated, but she thought Evan might be the one and why it was so important that we go on this double date so we could give her our unfiltered opinions on her new guy.

“Don’t forget about your appointment today,” I said, cutting off her detailed analytics of Mia’s personal life. Since I’d left Mercy Grace they’d been scrambling to cover my backlog of double-booked appointments with what doctors remained, and in doing so, Sophie’s follow up got pushed out a couple weeks.

“I haven’t forgotten,” she said, all enthusiasm in her voice dissipating into the humid thickness of the fogged bathroom air. “Believe me, just because I never talk about that doesn’t mean it isn’t always in the back of my mind. It’s always there.”

“Call me when you leave and let me know what they say,” I said as I toweled off. I glanced at the clock, which gave me precisely fifteen minutes to get myself dressed and out the door to catch the train. I slipped my clothes on and wrapped my arms around her waist for a final morning kiss. “I had fun with you these last couple weeks.”

Her face lit up sweetly and she smiled. “I did too.”

“Maybe tonight we can sit down and pick out some dates for Paris?”

She nodded, kissing me again before slipping my tie around my neck and tying a simple knot. “You sure know how to make a girl happy, Jamison.”

I had to tear myself away from her, my body not wanting to go and my mind not yet prepared for spending most of my days away from her again. As I walked to work, I stopped in front of a jewelry store just outside my subway station. Sparkling diamonds in an elaborate window display glinted in the early morning light, and I honed in on a classic round with a halo set in platinum that would look beautiful on her dainty hand.

I’d never thought much about marrying, and I’d never considered myself the marrying type. Daphne had dropped hints left and right, each one becoming progressively less of a hint and more of an overt “you need to propose to me now” demand than the one before. I ignored them all.

The idea of spending my life with one person, forever, felt constricting when I was with Daphne. But I couldn’t imagine a lifetime without Sophie. Not for one second. I was going to marry that girl, even if I had to drag her kicking and screaming to the altar.

Someday
.

***

A long and tiring first week at Brooklyn General was met with a peaceful weekend, Sophie by my side.

“What are you looking at over there?” Sophie asked from her corner of the apartment where she deeply engaged with her latest masterpiece. “Awful quiet today.”

“I’m always quiet,” I laughed. “Looking up hotels in Paris.”

“
Oui, oui, monsieur,
” she said. “Carry on.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out only to reveal an unknown number.

“Hello?”

“Yes, uh, Jamison?” The man’s voice held the same qualities as mine, and immediately, I knew.

“Jude?”

Sophie’s attention whipped in my direction and as her brush froze against her canvas.

“Yeah,” he said. My heart leapt a little, for good reasons and for bad. It’d been years since we last spoke, and we hadn’t exactly left things on good terms. But Sophie had been asking about him a lot lately, gently encouraging a reunion at some point in the near future. She didn’t push me half as hard as I pushed her to fix things with her family, but I knew she had a point.

“How you been?” I asked, knowing full well there was a legitimate reason as to why he was calling me up out of nowhere.

“Mom died.”

Silence. I didn’t know what to say. Childhood memories, good mixed with bad, flooded my mind, beginning with my youngest years. Birthday parties with clowns and ponies. The way her brilliant smile lit up her face. The way she kept me close, always holding my hand. The way she’d wipe my tears and bandage my scrapes when I’d taken a tumble.

And then I remembered everything else. The day my father left. The day she stopped tucking me in at night. The day the kisses and hugs and comforting words vanished into thin air. The way she kept me tucked away from everyone else, particularly my little brothers. I left for college at eighteen, still barely knowing Jude and Julian and them barely knowing me.

We could’ve been a family. Instead, we were compartmentalized. Dysfunctional. Separate, and definitely not equal.

Jude got the brunt of it. He and Julian were only a couple years apart, and with Julian being sick, Jude’s needs almost always went untended to. I never could blame him for hightailing it out of there at eighteen like I did and never looking back.

He had reached out to me once, about five years ago. He asked me to invest in his start-up, promising he’d double my money within two years. Fully underestimating how intelligent he was, I had declined. At the time, I was appalled that he’d come to me asking for money. I figured he was just broke and that Mom had cut him off. Sometime later, I saw his picture in an article showcasing the top ten entrepreneurs under twenty-five in Forbes magazine. I hated myself for judging him when I barely knew him. And then I hated myself barely knowing him.

“You still there?” Jude asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, raking my fingers through my hair and sinking back into the couch. Sophie trekked across the apartment, slipping in next to me and studying my face. I’d barely said more than a few words, and already she knew I needed her. “What am I supposed to say?”

Jude let out a frustrated sigh. “I know what you mean.”

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel sad, or what.”

“Funeral’s Tuesday,” Jude said. “In Halverford. Burial in the family cemetery.”

“You going?”

“I don’t want to,” Jude said. “But Evie says I should go. Closure or forgiveness, or some shit like that.”

“Evie?”

“My fiancée,” Jude said.

“How’d Mom pass?”

“Breast cancer,” he said. “Apparently, she’d been fighting it for a while.”

My body felt numb, as if a small piece of me had been hacked off and thrown in the garbage, a piece that could never fully be repaired and had become useless anyway, like a damaged spleen. I’d given up hope that our relationship could ever be repaired years ago, but I’d always silently hoped she’d come around. Underneath all the lies and manipulations and self-serving bullshit, she was still my mother. She’d been a wonderful mother once, and I’d always wondered if she was still in there somewhere looking for a chance to come back.

My brothers never knew her before the “ice storm” hit. They only ever knew one version of her.

“You coming to the funeral?” Jude asked. “If anything, it’d be nice to see you again.”