Wish Come True (The Blogger Diaries Trilogy Book 3) (5 page)

I think I’m about to completely lose it, and then my text message tone goes off, and I let loose with an all-out scream inside my rental car. I look around to make sure no one heard me as my face heats at my ridiculousness. I shake my head and look down at my phone.
 

Jason:
I’m here. Meet you at the door.

Oh, shit. Oh, God. I can’t do this! I have to do this. Holy fucking hell. I can’t even get my seat belt off! Okay, it’s off. Open your door. Where’s the goddamn handle? Oh, my God, it’s like that Dane Cook comedy skit, where the girl gives him a blow job and then can’t find the handle to spit it out. Fuck! Oh, there it is.
Stand up, Kayla.
Close the door.
Wait!
You forgot your purse. Open the door. Lean in, but don’t hit your head. That’s the last thing you need, a big fucking bruised knot on your head. That would be a lovely first sight of you in two and a half years.
Fucking… strap… hooked on… buckle.
Come here, you fucker!
Got it.
Okay, shut the door. Lock it with the remote. Now… the hard part. Walk. Through the darkness, lit only by a few streetlamps scattered throughout the parking lot, I see a tall, masculine figure making its way toward the door from a few rows over from where I’ve parked. All the emotions swirling around inside me are becoming overpowering, and unbidden, my eyes well up with tears. I’m about thirty feet away from where the manly silhouette has stopped, leaning against the side of the building next to the entrance. I press my lips together and take a deep breath, because I know, not by sight, but because my soul is telling me, reaching greedily for its other half it’s missed so much, that it is Jason waiting for me.
 

That’s when every other feeling aside from love, comfort, and
home
evaporates from inside me, and I’m filled to the brim with happiness. The last ten feet are closed in a heartbeat and I’m in his arms. I’m surrounded in his familiar scent. My face is buried in that perfect place between his shoulder and his neck. I’m enveloped in the only arms I’ve ever dreamed of being wrapped in. My wish has come true. My Jason is here, and he’s finally mine.

We stand like that for… I don’t even know how long. I can’t pull away, and it feels like he’s experiencing the same urge to never let go. Without removing me, he whispers, “Do you feel that?”

“Yeah,” I breathe.

I feel him nod, the short scruff on his face tickling my cheek, setting off intimate memories of other places I’ve felt it against and I shudder. He pulls back then and looks down at me, his dark eyes swallowing me up. The whole world has disappeared from around us. All that exists is the two of us, and the feeling is both wonderful and overwhelming. I don’t even know what to say, and as always, he rescues me before I panic.

“How about we go get a drink before the movie? There’s another showing that starts in about forty-five minutes. This is… intense. I could really go for a Seven and Seven.” He chuckles and puts his palms on the upper part of my arms, sliding them down, up, then all the way down to hold both of my hands. He brings them up to his perfect lips, and I feel them gently press against my knuckles, and it’s like a defibrillator to my very soul. They send lightning bolts up through the blue veins in my hands, up my arms, and down into my chest, where they kick the once dead parts of my heart back to life. Just a few short minutes in his presence, and I’m fully alive again.

“That sounds perfect,” I agree, and he keeps hold of one of my hands as he leads me across the parking lot. When we reach a fern-green Nissan Altima, we cut between it and the truck it’s parked beside, but instead of him opening the passenger-side door like I expect, I suddenly find myself pressed against it. I have the fleeting thought of ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’ before I’m surrounded once again, cloaked in all things Jason. His black Henley’s sleeves pushed up to his elbows, he rests his tattooed forearms where the top of the door meets the hood of the car on either side of me, caging me with his tall, sculpted body. He’s close enough I can see that his eyes are dark chocolate, not pitch-black like most people think, and my breath hitches in my chest as he closes the gap.

Time stands still when his lips press to mine, and I whimper. I could cry it feels so wonderful to touch him once again. He’s
here
, actually touching me, awakening things inside me I thought I would never feel again. This isn’t one of the fantasies I’ve played out in my head over and over for the past thirty-one months. This is truly happening. With that realization, I deepen the kiss, pressing forward against him, trying to force every square inch of my front to make contact with his.
 

His response doesn’t disappoint. With his right hand, he cups the back of my neck before he slides his spread fingers into my hair then tightens his grip on my scalp. I couldn’t move away if I tried, but I never would. There is no better feeling in this entire world than Jason Robichaux going primal on me, possessing me as his tongue finally dips between my lips, and when it swirls gracefully around the tip of mine, I’m a goner.
 

But as suddenly as it began, the kiss ends, and he’s pulling me away from the car so he can open the door. I sit and pull my legs in without using any conscious part of my brain, reaching up to run the pads of my fingers along my swollen lips as he closes the door, walks around the back of the car, and gets into his side.
 

“There’s an Olive Garden across the street,” he says in a voice that definitely sounds affected by our first kiss as a real couple. I’m just impressed he can speak at all, because the only thing I can do is nod in reply.
 

It takes no time crossing over FM1960, and we pull into the parking lot just as a light drizzle starts to come down. We rush inside, knowing a Texas raincloud can show up in the middle of a perfectly sunny day and flood an entire neighborhood without the sky even darkening before it’s gone again moments later. It reminds me of movies I’ve seen where people dump their full pots out their windows several floors above the street. Comes out of nowhere. Hopefully it’ll be over before we leave again. I don’t want to sit in a cold-ass theater when I’ve just been rained on.

We tell the hostess we’d like to sit in the bar area, so we don’t have to wait with the couples and families standing inside the entrance who are waiting for a table in the main restaurant. We slide onto the high barstools, and immediately order our drinks, him a Seven and Seven—whatever that is—and me a glass of the Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling my friend Katie turned me onto last time we went to the Olive Garden in Fayetteville a few months ago.

“What's this drink you’re having?” I ask him as I watch the bartender pour dark liquid over ice in a tumbler, and then tops it off with carbonated clear liquid.

“It’s Seagram’s Seven, which is a whiskey, and 7-Up. Nice and smooth. You should try it.” He looks at me like he knows there’s no way in hell I’m putting whiskey anywhere near my taste buds… unless it’s coming directly off his.

“I’ll pass, thanks. I can’t even stand the smell of Jack Daniels, if you recall.”

“Oh, I remember.”

There are a few moments of silence as I sip on my glass of white wine. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s tension-filled.
 

“I don’t know what to say. We don’t really have any catching up to do, because we talk literally every night.” I let out a nervous laugh. “How ‘bout them Yankees?” I blurt.
 

I’ve never watched a baseball game in my life.

He chuckles, shaking his head, and then leans forward on his stool where he’s facing me, whispering in my ear, “We have a lot of catching up to do, but none of it involves talking.” His cool, whiskey-scented breath sends a chill down my neck, along with the images that immediately pop into my gutter-residing mind. I cross my legs to soothe the ache that began building between them the moment I spotted him crossing the mall parking lot.
 

He notices, and when his eyes lift from my dark jeans and meet mine, there’s an almost wicked gleam in their depths before he winks at me. God, I had forgotten how easily he affected me. One bat of those ridiculously long, black eyelashes of his and I’m a puddle.
Do with me what you will!
my lady bits scream, and I clench my thighs more tightly together to shut the tramp up.
 

He glances down into his drink with a smirk pulling at his lips, giving me a brief reprieve before I embarrass myself by pouncing on him in the middle of a busy restaurant.
 

“So what’s this movie we’re going to see? I don't really care what you picked, as long as I got to see it with you,” he tells me sweetly.

“
Enchanted
? Oh, it’s… well, I’m not sure either. I know it’s a princess fairy tale, but it has McDreamy in it from
Grey’s Anatomy
. That’s really the whole reason I wanted to see it. I’m obsessed with that show,” I declare.
 

“I know you are. You still believe they’re your imaginary friends?” He grins.

“Drop the ‘imaginary’ part and you bet your sweet ass I do! Have you still not watched it?” I chide.

“Nah, I don’t really like hospital shows.”

I gasp dramatically and look him in the eye as I implore, “It is
not
just a hospital show! You… I can’t… ugh! Just freakin’ watch it. I can’t even explain. Just trust me.”

“I hate starting shows in the middle of a series. Didn’t you say you have all the seasons so far on DVD?”

“Yep,” I reply, popping the P.

“Well, whenever I come to see you, I promise to watch at least the first episode of the first season. We’ll see how it goes from there,” he tells me.

My heart thuds at the thought of him coming to see me in North Carolina and my eyes widen at his proclamation.

“What? You didn’t think I’d come visit you or something? I told you I’m in it for real this time, babe. You’ve come to see me, and next time, it’s my turn. I’ve already set aside the gas money for spring break.” The more he talks, the more my head feels like it’s going to explode. Is this really happening? Or have I dozed off after my Thanksgiving meal in a tryptophan-induced coma and just dreamt up the happenings of the past two months? God, how devastating would
that
be?

He snaps me out of my nightmarish thoughts by running his fingertip along my jawline, lifting my chin so I’m looking him in the eyes again. “I’m not going anywhere. I told you, there’s no getting rid of me now.” He smiles gently and then kisses me briefly on the lips before taking another sip of his drink. He changes the subject, pulling me out from under the cloud I was beginning to soak under. “So I have a few things planned for us to do while you’re here. When do I get to see you this week?”

“Well, my mom has offered to be my babysitter for basically the whole week, so whenever you want,” I reply.

“But you’ll bring Josalyn with you sometime too, right?” he asks, and he looks so worried over the thought of me not bringing her along that it makes my chest swell.
 

“If you want me to. I didn’t know if you were ready for that or not. And… I was being sorta cautious… because, uh… I didn’t know if I was going to get here and you’d be like, ‘Oh, J-K. I just wanted to bang you again.’” The hurt I see on his face makes me immediately regret my words, but when I go to take them back, he stops me.

“No, I totally deserved that. It was absolutely fucked up what I did to you the last time I saw you. I mean, who sets up a nice, intimate dinner and makes love to a girl the night he plans on dumping her? I deserve a lot worse than your doubts about what I’m telling you. And then add to that the times I up and disappeared on you after you moved. I’d find it strange if you completely trusted me after all I’ve done to you. But, I fully plan on earning it all back. It’ll have to be through my actions, but you’ll see eventually that I’m all in, babe.”

An overwhelming urge to comfort him consumes me. Before I’m aware of what I’m doing, I’m pulling him to me by the unbuttoned neckline of his black Henley, hooking my thin arm around the back of his neck, and sealing my lips to his, kissing the hell out of him until my breath is coming out in short pants and he’s laughing against my lips. The laugh makes me want to hear more of it, because it fills me with pride that I can make this normally broody guy sound so spirited, changing what was supposed to be a passionate, loving kiss into a mischievous one. So I lock my arm more tightly around him and move my head in a sideways figure-8 over and over again, my lips still pressed against his, letting out a theatrical moan that has me grinning when he starts to laugh heartily, gently pushing against me to break the playful embrace.
 

“Down, woman! Save that for later,” he cajoles through his chuckles. I flirtatiously use my knuckle to clean up the gloss around my lips, intimating it’s something else entirely. “There’s my girl.” He leans forward to peck me on the lips and catches my wrist before I can lock it around him again, tutting at me with a sexy smile. “Nice try.”

And just like that, we’re the old Jason and Kayla. The tension that had been surrounding me has lifted, replaced with a feeling of rightness. It had felt strange being anxious around him, especially when he’s the one person I’ve always been able to be completely open and free with. A little piece of that shattered part of me reconnects itself, locking back into place like a jigsaw puzzle.
 

“Well, I feel better. You ready to head back to the movie?” he asks, shaking his glass a little to rearrange the ice cubes, finishing off the last little bit of liquid left.

I down the rest of my wine in one gulp and grab my purse, hopping down off the stool as he signs the receipt for our drinks. “Yep, I hope it stopped raining. I don’t want to freeze in the theater. Thank you for the wine.”

“Of course. I’ll pull the car around if it hasn’t, and you know I’m good at keeping ya warm during movies,” he teases with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “Just the tip… just to see how it feels,” he whispers in my ear as he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me against his side.