Page 107 of No Saint
“Thank you. And ‘he who shall not be mentioned’ stopped calling. Think the black eye drove the message home.”
“Good.” He fumbled with the waist of my shorts, nimbly unfastening my fly. “Now, let me drive my message home…” He shoved my shorts down, then picked me up and placed me on the counter before sinking to his knees. As apologies went, he was pretty good at them…
Twenty-Eight
Wolf
It had been a little over a week since Jade and I had gotten back together, falling right back into our old routines like there hadn’t been a year and a half separating us.
It was the first time in that many years I’d felt whole. At peace. Like I mattered and had some purpose in life. Of course, there were still occasional doubts, but one thing Dad had taught me was there were no guarantees in life.“Take what you get and run with it until you either give out or win the race.”I’d run full speed into being with Jade, just like I had run with the sick amount of money that Bear Bryant picture had brought in. Fanatics evidently had no problem dropping large cash for collectables, and that was one thing, I, as a university football player, had plenty of.
Luckily for me, Jade had been busy with work and exams the past few days, which meant she hadn’t noticed me busting my ass auctioning off football memorabilia. I couldn’t wait to get a decent amount and surprise her with it.
Speaking of surprises…I glanced at Jade in the passenger seat of my truck before I pulled onto a dirt service road. To most people, what I had planned for that afternoon may not beromantic, but it was us. The farther I drove, the shadows of the thick pines stretched across the lane.
“If you’re planning to steal another tractor, you could have warned me,” Jade said, staring through the window. “I’d have brought body armor.” She glanced down at the floorboard as I pulled into a grass clearing. “And running shoes.”
I cut the engine. “We aren’t stealing a tractor.” I opened my door and stepped out into the muggy heat and hum of cicadas. “Come on.”
I had just lowered the tailgate and climbed into the bed to grab the cooler when the passenger door opened with a squeal of hinges.
Jade folded her arms over the side of the truck. “What are you up to?”
“I’m not up to anything.”
I pulled a bottle of Strawberry Hill Boone’s Farm wine—Jade’s go-to drink in high school—from the cooler. It was absolute shit, the top choice of Dayton’s winos.
“You got me wine?”
“If you could call it that.”
“The fact that you think it’s crap shows how unrefined your palate is.”
“Hate to break it to you. Anyone who drinks gas station wine does not have a palate…”
She climbed into the bed of the truck with a smile that would have made Da Vinci reconsider theMona Lisa.
I cracked the twist top and passed the bottle to her. Then I found the playlist on my phone we’d made my senior year. Kenny Chesney’s “Somewhere With You” drifted through the phone’s speaker. There couldn’t have been a better song, because every damn time I’d closed my eyes in the past year and a half, I had been somewhere, in my mind, with Jade. It was always her. Would always be her.
“This song…” She took a sip, and I swore to God, Jade turning up that three-dollar, gas-station bottle could have made any photograph of a bikini-laced Coca-Cola model sipping their ice-cold beverage look like shit. “Just like old times,” she said.
“Not just yet…” The truck rocked when I pushed to my feet and held out my hand.
When she took it, I pulled her against me, wrapping an arm around her waist.
“Oh, no. You know I hate dancing.”
The laughter on my lips quickly died as I looked at her, the amber glow of the setting sun playing over her face. God, she was beautiful. “We both know that’s a lie,” I said. “You just don’t like anyone seeing you dance.” I ducked my lips to her ear. “It’s just us.”
Her body relaxed against mine, her cheek to my chest as we swayed in beat with the music.
“Now, it’s just like old times.”
Jade would never dance in front of anyone, but I loved the way she trusted me, and only me, to see that side of her. I guessed, to her, it felt vulnerable. Which made moments like this feel like a small gift.
We slow danced as the sun sank below the horizon, the cicadas humming their rhythm. And there it was, that peace that I only ever found with her. I twirled her around, placing my stomach to her back and my chin on her shoulder as we moved. “I’m glad you stole those pills.”
“My dad would call that being a bad influence.” She tipped her head back to look up at me. “But I’m glad I did, too.”
