Page 59 of You Didn't Know Me Then

He caressed her cheek, and she pressed it against his palm, closing her eyes. His heart melted beyond recognition, congealing back in the shape of her.

“You probably have many exes,” she suddenly blurted, opening her eyes and watching him.

“I don’t know if many.” He threaded his fingers into her hair.

“More than my two or three.”

“Is it the quantity that counts? Because I’ve never loved anyone enough to want to have children with them, and you did.”

“Never?”

Not until now.

Fuck. Where did that come from? He couldn’t tell her that. The thoughtkicked him in the gut like a motherfucker. This wasn’t anywhere near his belated disappointment when Sharon’s accidental pregnancy wasn’t his. Because it hadn’t been about Sharon at all. He didn’t want her. He didn’t love her. And he knew beyond certainty that this was the name of what he felt for Hope—love. He fell in love with this woman who wouldn’t even like him if she knew what he was hiding, though he was inching closer to the core of what he would tell her if he wasn’t afraid of losing her immediately after she had taken a chance on him.

His silence must have goaded her to speak, because she added in her usual fumbling way, which he loved more than any polished blather, “I did love Eric when we had Hannah. But Naomi … things weren’t good. I think he would have preferred … I don’t even want to say it. Once Naomi was born, he loved her, obviously, and we kept going for a few more years, but …” Her eyes blazed with the inconvenient truth that she had just shared.

And that was it. What she had just told him tied his tongue. He couldn’t now tell her that his past was sprinkled with one abortion and one almost pregnancy. It didn’t matter that he would have supported both. What mattered was how his fucked-up instincts had him initially react regarding the latter.

Not until now.

His unspoken words seared him.

Instead of replying, and knowing, knowing, knowing he had no future with her until he could tell her the truth, and maybe no future because of the truth, Jordan tightened his arm around her, and with the hand that was threaded in her hair, he pulled her down for a kiss that deepened with every second.

At least he would have tonight.

He hoisted her to lie on top of him, each stroking the other’s body, their gazes connected. “You’re amazing, Hope. So amazing it’s scary.”

She bent to kiss him, and he grabbed her thighs so she straddled him. He slowly rose to sit up with her on top of him, holding her, as their kiss became fevered.

“I want to look at you,” he said, leaning back against the pillow, raising his hands to caress her face, her neck, sliding to her breasts as she positioned herself and sank down along his hardness. He brought his hands up to cup her face, fingers drowning in her hair as they moved in synch, slowly, savoringly.

He loved that she didn’t seem self-conscious of the light anymore. At least not until she grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to sit back up and hold her as they kissed all the way to the end.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“This song was playing when you left with Roni and Don after the engagement party,” he said much later, when they stood half-dressed in her kitchen, making grilled cheese sandwiches. The music she had turned on before he had arrived was still playing in the background.

Hope finished buttering the bread and inserting the cheese and the tomatoes that he had sliced. In her loose pants and that Tweetie sweatshirt that he found endearing because it was so her, she was efficient, like a sandwich production line. He could imagine her doing that for Hannah and Naomi.

“It’s from that TV show, Big Little Lies. It’s part of the playlist, I guess. Libby downloaded Spotify for me, and I love how it just guesses what I like.” She put the ready sandwiches on the griddle.

“It’s called “Cold Heart.” Michael Kiwanuka sings it.”

“And you remembered it played then?” she asked, looking up from the griddle.

“I remember everything about that evening.”

She bit her lower lip for a second. “Yeah, me, too.”

He would tell her, just not tonight. He would tell her that he remembered that song out of all the others because it had played just as he had seen her out of his apartment after kissing her, and the lyrics had punched him in the gut—she was the hope for his cold, bleeding heart, yet he feared that neither one of them could get over knowing him as he was.

After a lingering moment, Hope averted her gaze. “So, when’s your flight tomorrow?” She flipped the sandwiches over.

It felt like some sort of a deflection mechanism from too much emotion when reality hovered above. And it worked.

“I have to be there at noon.” He took the plates that she had given him and went to put them on the dining table. Absentmindedly, he ran a finger over a box of crayons that had been left there. “When are Hannah and Naomi coming back?”

“Tomorrow evening.” Hope emerged from the kitchen and placed a platter with the ready sandwiches on the table.

“Tell them I said hi? No one has to know what I wore when I said it.”

They grinned at each other, and he saw her gaze tracing over his bare chest and down to the jeans that he hadn’t bothered to button. Then, when she brought her eyes back to his, they were a strange combination of hazy and sparkling.

Jordan grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and crashing his mouth on hers. The sigh that escaped her throat made him rasp her name against her lips.

Whatever else he had to tell her would have to wait. He needed to muster the courage to face the risk.

Tweetie landed on the grilled cheese sandwiches three seconds later, and Jordan hoped to God the table was sturdy enough to last through it all.

---