Page 176 of Finding Us

My dad is right. As a Kensington, there will always be people after us. And not just my dad’s enemies, or the organization, but criminals. People trying to get our money. We’re never completely safe. I don’t have access to my dad’s money anymore, but criminals don’t know that, which means they’ll come after me. Or Jade.

I don’t know if that guy in the white car is watching us, planning to rob us, or do something else to us. But it doesn’t matter. Even if he isn’t, someone else might be. That’s why I have to protect Jade, and today, I didn’t do that.

We walk back, neither one of us speaking. I hold her hand the entire time and she keeps brushing against me, trying to get closer.

When we get home, she goes in the bedroom and I go in the kitchen and get us both some water. I bring it to her, then go turn the shower on to warm it up. I go back to the bedroom and help her take off her shoes and her clothes. She looks exhausted, which you would be after running 12 miles in the hot sun.

We say nothing. Not one word. And the room remains quiet as I lead her to the shower and open the door for her to walk in. I kick off my shoes and rip my sweaty clothes off and join her. I pull her into me and let the hot water fall over us as we stand there in silence.

It’s one of those times when we don’t need to say anything to know what the other person is thinking. Right now, we’re both saying we’re sorry. She can tell by the way I hold her. When I’m sorry, I hold her head against my chest, keeping it there until I feel like she’s forgiven me.

I can tell when Jade’s sorry by the way she puts her arms around me, tighter and higher up on my back, and by the way she tucks her head down against my chest. It’s different than her other hugs and I’m the only person in the world who knows that about her.

It’s these little things we share, the way we touch, the unspoken language we have, that prove to me time and time again that we’re meant to be together. That fights like we had today will never break us apart.

Jade will test that theory in the months ahead, maybe even the years ahead. She already has many times and I’m prepared for her to do it again. Her tendency is to run. To hide her feelings. To push people away. Those were the skills she learned growing up in a home with a mom who abused her. And one year with me isn’t going to erase the 15 years she had with her mom. I knew that when I fell in love with Jade.

She has so much pain that I haven’t even begun to address with her. I’m trying to take it slow and let her heal on her own timeline. But I get the feeling she’s going to need a little push to get past some of the stuff she’s dealing with. This running thing she’s doing really concerns me. I feel like we’re going back to last year, when she ran every time something bad happened.

And today was bad. It was a bad fight and I could’ve handled it better. But Jade needs to learn to handle things better, too. She can’t run every time I get mad at her.

I can’t run either. I shouldn’t have left in the middle of our fight. But I did because I was afraid if I stayed, I’d say something I didn’t mean. I needed to calm down. I can’t be around Jade when I’m that angry. When we fight I feel like I have to censor every word so she doesn’t think I don’t love her anymore. Because that’s where her mind goes. Every damn time. If I raise my voice, if I curse, if I storm out of the room, she thinks I don’t love her anymore. And when we argue, she’s not good at fighting back. She shuts down and turns off all emotion and then gets quiet. Or she runs.

The hot water is raining over us, steam hovering in the air. We haven’t moved. I’m still holding Jade against my body. Her eyes are closed and her ear is pressed over my heart, which is still thumping hard in my chest.

I take my hand off her back and reach for the pink soap she uses. It’s the same soap she used when we first showered together back in my room in Connecticut. I don’t even know where it came from. Maybe the maid put it in there. Anyway, it was pink, girly soap that didn’t seem like something Jade would like, but she used it because she didn’t want to use my guy soap. That was the first time we had shower sex and I was surprised how much she liked it. I mean, she really, really liked it.

The next week, as a joke, I went to the store and bought her five bottles of that soap, so that every time she showered in the dorm she’d think of the shower sex we had. And ever since then, she only uses that pink soap.

I pour the soap in my hand and put it on her warm skin, starting with her back and working my way down her arms. I see her smile, her face still plastered against my chest, her arms now dropped to her sides. When I’m done with the back of her, I peel her off me and turn her around and wash the front of her. It’s totally turning me on, but I don’t want this to be about sex. I want it to be about us getting past this fight and getting back to the place we were before we moved here, because for some reason, things have seemed off between us ever since we arrived.

Jade grabs my bottle of soap and pours some in her hand, then flips around and does to me what I just did to her.

Okay, so maybe the no-sex thing isn’t going to work because this is killing me. To distract myself from what she’s doing to me, I take her shampoo and wash her hair. It doesn’t help. I’m even more turned on as she continues to slide her hands up and down my body. She stops and tips her head back, rinsing the suds from her hair. Then she pulls me under the water, rinsing the soap off me.

She’s hurrying this up. She wants to do it, but she doesn’t want to do it here. Once again, I know what she wants without us even talking. I shut the water off and grab towels for each of us. After we’re dried off, I pick her up and she wraps her legs around me. When our eyes meet, I can tell she’s as desperate to be with me as I am to be with her.

I throw her on the bed. And we have our best makeup sex yet.

CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE

JADE

That was not what I thought would happen when we came inside from the beach. I thought we’d clean up and then talk, but instead we made up without words. Not a single word was spoken and yet I knew what Garret was thinking and how he felt.

After we showered he took me to the bed and it was amazing. Beyond amazing. The sex was hot. Urgent. Uncontrolled. It’s like we were both filled with adrenaline from what happened on the beach, which made the sex over-the-top intense. And then we fell asleep, our bodies wrapped together.

Now I’m awake but Garret’s still sleeping. I check the clock. It’s almost 3 and my stomach’s growling. All I’ve had to eat all day are a few donuts, and after that long run I’m so hungry I feel lightheaded. I need to get something in my stomach, but first I sneak out of bed and go use the bathroom. As I walk back through the bedroom, headed for the kitchen, I hear Garret.

“Jade, come here.” He’s on his side with the covers pulled back.

I go over to him and lay beside him. “Hi.” I smile and run my hands through his hair. “I was just going to get something to eat. It’s 3. We missed lunch.”

“I’ll make you something.” He places his hand on the back of my neck and gently massages it. “What would you like?”

“You don’t have to make me anything. I’ll just have a bowl of cereal.”

“Let’s go out. I’ll take you to that steakhouse up the coast.”

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