Page 45 of The Love Audit
“You didn’t ask for permission before,” I said in a low voice, a smile tugging at my lips.
“That was different.” He smiled down at me. “Everything is different.” His words gave me pause.
“Derek,” I sighed, trying to focus on my next words, but this man was doing something with his tongue and my ear that was making focus a near impossibility.
“Yes, beautiful?” he murmured in response.
“Is this a good idea?” I asked, causing him to stop and almost making me regret my question because that tongue thing he’d been doing had felt so amazing, and it had been such a long time since I’d had sex. It had been a really long time since I’d had good sex, and this was Derek Fucking Carter. The boy I’d followed around like a lovesick puppy on family vacations and scribbled about in my diary was frozen on top of me with a very large erection pressing into my waist and a palm cupped around a pajama-clad breast.
“Are you feeling okay?” His face was full of concern. “Is this too much while you’re supposed to be—”
“No,” I cut him off. “I’m actually feeling a lot better. Definitely healthy enough for… this.” My eyes flicked downward, and he smiled down at me. “I meant is this a good idea because of our history, our jobs. If we cross this line and things go wrong…”
Derek sighed and climbed off me. I sat up and turned to face him.
“Yeah, we should probably talk about this, huh?”
“I think it would be the responsible thing to do,” I responded, even though my thoughts about Derek in that moment were nowhere near responsible.
“Listen, Jas. These past couple of weeks have been confusing as fuck, but spending these days with you has been…” He drifted off, deep in thought, before he continued. “To be honest, these past few days with you have made me happier than I’ve felt in a long time, even when you’re driving me crazy.” He raised an eyebrow at me, and I let out a small chuckle. “For as long as I can remember, being around you has always made me a little happier.” He reached over and brushed his thumb across my cheek.
“Even when I was driving you crazy?”
His smile widened at my question. “Especially when you were driving me crazy.” He pressed our foreheads together. “I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions about your involvement with the project. It was wrong to judge you based on our families’ history.” My chest tightened, and I opened my mouth to protest. “Jasmine, I don’t want to make whatever is growing between us about our parents. I’m not even sure what’s going on between us, but I like it, and I want to protect it. At least until we figure out what it is.” He hooked his finger under my chin and tipped my head up until our eyes met. “You good with that?”
“Yeah, I’m good with that.” I smiled and lay down on my side, pulling Derek’s arm over my waist and inching backward on themattress until I was nestled in the curve of his warm body. I wiggled my hips until his hardness pressed in the cleft of my behind.
“Go easy, Jasmine,” he mumbled with his lips pressed against my neck, making me shiver.
“What?” I asked. “I wanted to talk, and we talked. I was hoping we could pick up where we left off.”
“We definitely will, but not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re still recovering.”
“I told you, I was—”
He cut me off. “You’re still recovering. And when we do pick up where we left off”—he tightened his arm around my hips—“you are gonna need all of your strength.”
I chuckled softly before drifting off to sleep in his arms.
After a quick afternoon nap and a second lunch of reheated soup, I was desperate for some fresh air.
“Are you sure you trust me to hold the leash?” I strolled next to Derek along the tree-lined park where I lost Tora a few days ago.
“Yes, I trust you.” Derek’s eyes bore into mine, letting me know that he was talking about more than Tora’s leash. Just a few weeks ago, he was shouting in my office about how untrustworthy I was, and not even a month later, everything has changed. My head began to spin. I wondered how we’d gotten to this place. Not just this moment of trust, but the nearly decade and a half of mistrust that preceded it.
This beautiful moment on this beautiful day felt too perfect to ruin, but if I wanted us to move forward, and I desperately did, we had to discuss the thirteen-year-old elephant in the room.
“Why didn’t you ever call me, after”—I paused—“everything?” Derek let out a sigh before he replied.
“I guess the same reason that you didn’t call me. It’s not an accusation,” he quickly added in response to my expression. “I’m just saying that it was a crazy time, a confusing time. For me and Chris, it felt like it came out of nowhere. I was finishing undergrad. We were all preparing for our annual family vacation to Martha’s Vineyard.” I nodded, remembering how excited I had been for that trip. I’d left my suitcase packed for almost four years before throwing it away without opening it, because it hurt too much.
“One second, everything was fine. Then the next, the company was dissolving, our parents hated each other, my father moved out, my mother cried herself to sleep every night, the rumors, the tabloids, the lawsuits… It was a lot.”
“It was a lot for me, too.”
