Blood and bone, p.28
Blood and Bone, page 28
When Jack finally pulled up outside his beach house in Venice, he noticed someone sitting on the steps. It was nearly dusk and the porch light had not come on yet. He did not have the patience to deal with an overzealous fan who figured out where he lived or a stalker for that matter. Jack slammed the car door causing the person to stand up abruptly.
It was then that he realized the silhouette on his front porch was one he would know anywhere.
Mia.
He had not expected to see her again after their trip to Payson, especially at his house. He’d thought when they parted ways, it was for good and he wouldn’t allow himself to think of her. Instead, he’d thrown himself back into work, staying at the studio for as long as he could because he didn’t like coming home to an empty house.
Jack walked up to the porch and saw that she had been crying.
“Mia?” He grabbed her arms to steady her. “What’s wrong?”
“He hates me, Jack.” She sobbed. “I ruined his life and he hates me.”
He surmised that she was talking about Cash. He wondered what it had cost her to come on that trip with him or if things had already been bad. Either way, it did not warm him to know that he was the cause of her heartache.
“Come inside.” He pulled Mia with him into the cozy beach house.
Jack flipped on the lights. “It’s ok.” He whispered to her, touching her face, wiping her tears. He did not like to see her in such turmoil but he’d be dishonest if he said he was unhappy that she was here.
“It’s ok.” He said again trying to soothe her. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Mia searched his face as if remembering every scar, every line, every dimple. He’d hoped that he would see her again, not wanting to exist in a world where he couldn’t touch her. Their relationship had always caused others’ heartache because no one was meant to penetrate the bubble that was Jack and Mia. Anyone who did was collateral damage, as Amber had once said. Maybe their relationship was destructive, but he would burn down a whole city just to be with her again. It had taken Jack a long time to understand and comprehend what it meant to truly love someone.
Mia reached up and ran her hand through his hair as if she had never felt it before. His body instinctively arced in the direction of her touch. “What is it about you, Jack, that makes it so hard to hate you?” She said to him, tracing the stubble along his jawline.
Her hand moved to his neck, tracing the tattoo that peaked above his collar. Jack could feel his heart push against her hand. She stood on her toes to reach upwards brushing her lips against his as if to make sure he wanted her. For Jack, there was no hesitation and there never would be. He would take her any way he could get her. Let the whole world burn around him if he could have just one kiss.
Jack opened his lips to hers, gently tasting the salt of her tears. It felt as if he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, letting her take the lead. She deepened the kiss and he backed her up against the kitchen counter, moving his hand over her back to rest on her hips momentarily. The feel of her made him heady. All of the adrenaline from the ride over, seeping out of his body with each stroke of his fingers against her skin. She looked at him with green eyes pleading for him to take her.
Slowly he lifted her onto the counter, trailing kisses down to her neck. She tilted her head, letting a small moan escape her lips. Slowly and deliberately he unbuttoned her shirt, running his finger down the seam and then pulling it down her shoulders. His lips touched the tattoo that peeked over her shoulder and he relished in rediscovering her, so much he missed over these last years. Her breathing became uneven and heavy. Slowly he kissed around her collarbone, moving her bra strap aside. She moaned loudly when he brushed his thumb against the fabric of her bra, arching her back. Wrapping her legs around him, he lifted her off the counter, carrying her into his bedroom.
Mia laid back onto the bed, her fingers digging into the sheets as he gazed at her, as he pulled her jeans down over her knees, kissing her feet as he pulled each one free. He was treated to a shrill giggle as he did. Noticing for the first time the jeans she was wearing, he thought he might be dreaming. His fingers traced the familiar sharpie writing and it was as if a piece of him was suddenly found.
“Where did you get these?” He asked. “How?” Looking down at her in wonder. What a miraculous treat she had given him.
Mia leaned up on her elbows and smiled at him. “My assistant found them on eBay.” She said. “Somehow they ended up in a thrift store in Santa Monica and someone realized what they were.” She laughed. “Crazy huh?”
“Your assistant?” He grabbed onto her hips and she squealed.
Mia nodded, laughing.
“You have an assistant?” He teased again, kissing between her breasts suddenly becoming serious again.
He threw the jeans onto the floor because all he cared about was this woman in his bed and how much he wanted to be inside her. Jack pulled Mia across the bed towards him and leaned over her, pressing his pelvis into hers. He kissed her lips and then down her neck, flicking her nipple with his tongue.
“How much did you pay for them?” He asked.
She inhaled sharply and arched her back as he kissed across her stomach. Slowly he pulled her panties down her legs, feeling her soft skin along the way.
“Stop talking.” She squirmed under his touch. “Ah God, Jack.” She was panting now. Her thighs quivered with each stroke of his tongue and she gripped the sheets beside her.
Jack woke up in the darkness of his bedroom. The other side of his bed was empty and for a second he thought he must have dreamt Mia being there. He slid out, pulling on his briefs as he walked into the living room to find her. The curtains gently fluttered and the sound of the ocean came through his patio door. He found Mia standing on the balcony, wearing one of his T-shirts that unfortunately was long enough to cover her ass.
“I thought maybe I dreamt you.” He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to him.
Mia laughed against his chest.
“You ok?” He asked.
Mia shook her head. “Yes. I mean I don’t know. I shouldn’t be.”
“Doesn’t sound like Cash took it well.” Jack made a lot of assumptions mostly because he wanted this to be permanent. Most of their relationship had been the subject of poor timing. He did not want this to be the case as well.
“I loved him.” She explained. Her statement didn’t hurt him, he understood because he knew it was possible to love two people at the same time and in different ways.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head and looked sad.
“It’s ok.” He tried to reassure her.
She pressed her palm to his cheek. Just the nearness of her heightened his senses. “I just…” She trailed off staring at him, “didn’t love him the way that I love you.”
Mia closed her eyes. “I am not a good person.”
“It doesn’t make you a bad person just because you didn’t love someone enough.” Jack knew this intimately. He was constantly rationalizing this in his head. Was he a bad person because he couldn’t love Amber the way she loved him? It made him selfish, yes, but not a bad person.
“I married him for all the wrong reasons. I needed a barrier between us, something to stop me from making the same mistakes with you.” Mia looked sad.
“You don’t have to explain,” Jack said.
“I need to.” The sadness in her eyes told him everything he needed to know but if this is what she needed, then he would listen.
“Even after everything, Cash forgave me. I think he understood because in many ways, we were the same, just repeating the same mistake but with different people,” Mia explained. “We were happy for a long time until we weren’t.” Mia placed her hand against Jack’s chest. “There was a little piece of you,” her hand balled into a fist, “in every song I wrote. The more songs I wrote, the farther away Cash became.”
She pushed a fist against his chest, eyes teary, “Then you had to go and call me, Jack.” She said. “One fucking call and my life gets blown up.”
He stared at her outline in the darkness of the night, only the moon to illuminate her face. If he hadn’t called her, she wouldn’t be here right and he wouldn’t ever be sorry about that.
“You didn’t have to answer.” He didn’t want her to fuck up her life just because of him.
“Of course I did.” She said. “I’ll always answer. How fucked up is that?” She scoffed. Maybe she was right.
“Shit.” He muttered, leaning his forehead against hers. As he smoothed down her hair, inside he was reeling. He wanted her. No matter how it happened. He didn’t care if it hurt Cash. Jack was not a noble person. It wasn’t in him to be, not when it came to getting what he wanted and he wanted Mia. He always wanted Mia even if it burned down everything in his fucking way, he would never stop wanting her.
“Jack?” Mia pulled away enough to look at him.
“Hmmm.” He felt drunk with the scent of her.
“I don’t have anywhere to live at the moment.” Her face was so innocent that he almost wanted to laugh.
“You’re not going anywhere.” He smiled. “Even if I have to tie you to the bed.” He said darkly.
“Promise?” She lifted her eyebrows at him and smiled against his mouth as she kissed him.
“Don’t ever leave me again.” Jack wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her hair. “I promise, I will be a better man for you.” He whispered into her ear. He meant it.
Every time he touched her, he felt as if he were being dragged underwater, pulled to a place that was so deep, the sunlight never reached. His fingers lingered just at the bottom of her tee-shirt, feeling the softness of her skin.
The more he kissed her, the more aroused he got until he devoured her. Her hands clutched at his chest, rounding his shoulders and pulling him to her. She kissed him deeply, running her tongue along his slowly and purposefully. Backing her into the house, once they hit the kitchen table, he lifted her up. Slowly she spread her legs, giving him access to press his erection against her. As he did, she moaned, taking his mouth again, running her hands down his back to grab onto his ass. Desperately she pulled at his briefs releasing his cock, the tip teasing the entrance of her wetness.
“Fuck you are so beautiful.” He cupped her face, staring into her eyes completely lost. She was more beautiful to him now than she was all those years ago. How did he ever survive without her in his life?
“I’m not as young as I used to be.” She whispered to him.
“When you are 90, I will still want you just as much as I do now.” He slowly lowered himself to his knees in front of her as if to pray at an altar, pressing kisses to her bare skin in worship. “Because you are a goddess and you deserve to be treated like one.” Repeating the words he said to her so long ago.
“Can this be good for us?” She asked.
“Does it matter?”
Mia shook her head, already lost to him. “I just want you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“You have me, body and soul, blood and bone.” He whispered.
Mia ran her hands through his hair, gently tugging at him, a moan escaping her lips as he pressed a kiss to her sex. While his tongue explored, he relished in the effect it had, her soft moans making way to more urgent cries and moving her pelvis to his rhythm. She urged him for more and he complied, causing her to cry out louder, pushing a glass bowl off the table and onto the floor, shattering.
“Holy shit.” She called out.
Only momentarily did Jack notice it. “Fuck it.” He said, rising before her, paying no attention to the glass at his feet. Her touch left a trail of heat across his skin. Arching her back, he took her breast into his mouth, skimming his tongue around the nipple, now erect. He pulled at it gently using his teeth to elicit a single squeal of excitement from her. Her moans and ragged breaths drove him to near desperation to be inside her.
In the darkness of the kitchen, he could make out the outline of her body, her hair sweeping the tops of her shoulders, eyes hidden behind black eyelashes.
“Jack.” She called to him like a siren beckoning him to the sea and he would gladly drown in her abyss. For all the effect she had on him, he was acutely aware it was possible he could make her cum just by sucking on her nipple. Laying her back on the table, he pulled her forward so he could enter her. He’d never seen anything so lovely in his life, the paleness of her skin against the dark wood of the table. In the throes of ecstasy, her mouth open, back-arching, fingers trying to find purchase on anything to stabilize herself, and he was lost at sea.
35
Anonymously Yours
Erin
Present
Erin sat in a metal chair in the basement of a church on the outskirts of downtown L.A. The church itself was a long stucco building with a tiled roof. A tall cross rising from the roof.
One of the rooms was dedicated to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Signs had directed them down a long hallway where donuts and coffee were served on their way in. Erin clutched a very strong cup of coffee between her hands, more out of necessity to have something for her hands to do than to actually drink it. She didn’t want to look at the faces of the other people in the room. Instead, she memorized the tile pattern on the floor thinking quietly to herself.
“They don’t bite,” Jack said softly to her.
Erin looked over at him, “It’s supposed to be anonymous.”
Jack chuckled, “That doesn’t mean you can’t look at anybody.”
“You’re not supposed to laugh at me.” Erin sounded incredulous but at least Jack seemed a bit calmer in the church.
“You’re very sweet.” He said.
Erin blushed. “I think you are very brave.” She recognized the fact that it took a lot of strength to stay sober.
Jack stared at her with those clear blue eyes making her even more uncomfortable. “Maybe you should wait until the end of the story before you decide who the hero is.”
“And then you’ll let me write the book?” Erin looked at him expectantly.
Jack gave her a disapproving look.
Erin was puzzled by him. He was an arrogant man but could not stop making himself out to be the bad guy. Erin did not think he was a bad guy at all. In fact, he was the kind of redeemable villain rivaling the likes of Mr. Darcy. She’d had a bad impression of him in the beginning, maybe because he let her. Once he showed his true self, she began to understand that he was just a person, trying to overcome the shadows of his past.
“Why did you bring me here?” Erin asked.
“Because I trust you.” Jack’s answer was simple.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” She felt the weight of his trust like a building upon her shoulders. Her love of music had brought her to this place in life and her genuine interest in wanting to tell Jack’s story. Trust was a burden only a few could carry. She would have to see this through, even if she did not like the ending.
“It’s a little late to change my mind now don’t you think?” Jack cocked an eyebrow.
Erin smiled reluctantly. “I suppose.”
“Besides, after this, you might think differently of me,” Jack said cryptically.
Erin scrunched her forehead trying to think of what he meant and before she could ask, he got up from his chair and headed for the unofficial podium at the front of the room.
Jack took a small red chip out of his pocket and held it in front of his face inspecting it.
“Hi, my name is Jack.”
“Hi, Jack.” The group of people said, startling Erin. They either didn’t know who he was or respected the fact that they weren’t supposed to act like they knew who he was.
“I’m a drug addict and an alcoholic. That’s present tense, because you’re always an addict, even if you got one of these.” He held the chip out. “It’s not something you can cut out or off of you like an organ or a limb. I live every day with it.” He took a deep breath. “This is my five-year chip.” He looked down thoughtfully at the object pressed between his two fingers.
Erin studied his face, noticing the lines at the corners of his eyes as his lips raised into a sardonic smile.
“I am a horrible human being, but I’m a great addict.” He put the chip back into his pocket. “Great addicts can always recognize other addicts. It’s like a mirror, reflecting one’s self.” He gestured around the room eliciting a few laughs. “The problem with addicts is that they can’t save themselves and they certainly can’t save other addicts. We’re a bit selfish, ya know.” A few more sniggers from the group erupted.
Jack took a minute to collect his thoughts. “My best friend died 5 years ago. She is the reason I am holding this chip. It’s too bad she’s not here to see it and that’s my fault, my burden, and my greatest regret.”
36
You're Like Twins
Jack
Past
Mia’s legs dangled off the table, her hand wrapped around a cup of coffee, the other holding a pen. He watched her as she gnawed on the cap, deep in thought. When she pushed her glasses onto her head and looked at him, a question in her eyes, he just smiled at her.
“What?” She laughed.
Jack shook his head.
“Is it the glasses? They make me look old.” She pulled them off her head and set them on the table.
Jack moved towards her and grabbed hold of her arms to pull her towards him.
“You look very cute with your glasses.” He kissed her, nose. Jack had left the song they were working on, playing in the background.
* * *
