Our first Thanksgiving, when we’d invited Katherine and Jared over, and Jared ate my vegetables for me so long as I took his cranberry sauce, which he hated.
The hot summer day my dad chased us out of the house when Jared and I set out to prove that nothing was really nonflammable.
The mornings in junior high when he’d sneak back through the tree to his own room after having slept over, only to show up a half hour later to walk me to school.
I sighed into his neck, smiling. “I bought something for you, too,” I said in a sweet voice.
“You did?” He sounded amused. “Today?”
I shook my head and leaned back, looking up at him. “About a year ago,” I clarified. “I saw it and immediately knew I had to have it for you. I’ve been saving it ever since.”
His sexy mouth curled into a smile, a curious look in his eyes. “I’m a hard guy to shop for,” he warned.
I backed away. “Come up in five minutes.” And I turned around, jogging up the stairs.
As soon as I entered my bedroom, I tossed his jacket on the chair in the corner and went into the bathroom to freshen up.
He’d made a mess of me. My hair was tangled, my body was sore, and I had red marks on my hips from his hands.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it. Jared devoured me like food. No one loved me like he did, and I lived him. And loved him.
Jumping into the shower, I spent maybe fifteen seconds rinsing the sweat and sex off, before jumping back out and brushing through my hair.
Going to the top drawer of my chest, I reached into the back and pulled out the lingerie that I knew he never needed me to wear but would definitely love.
The black lacy top was a cross between a tank top and a corset—however, while traditional corsets laced in the back, this one laced in the front. I stepped into the matching G-string and slipped my arms into the top, lacing the long, black silk ribbon through the loops, so that they crisscrossed in the front, leaving the skin of my stomach exposed through the ribbon as it threaded upward to tie between my breasts.
I’d always been embarrassed to try stuff like this. Jared was low maintenance, and he never gave the impression he wasn’t perfectly happy with my pajama shorts and tank tops. And I had been intimate with Gavin so rarely that I never got around to experimenting with lingerie.
But Juliet inspired me. She and I had trailed into a shop one day, and then the very next day we had to go back, because Jax had destroyed the nightie she bought and gave her his credit card with instructions to replace the negligee and to buy some more as well.
I was jealous at the time. Her giddiness and happiness made me long to feel that again.
I glanced up, seeing a light fall across my floor, and I stepped over to the window, peeking through my sheer curtains to the house next door. Jax pulled down Juliet’s dress to expose her naked back, and then he reached behind her to pull the curtains closed.
I smiled to myself, remembering the day almost two years ago that I’d had to tell them, “Hey, I can see everything. Would you mind . . . ?”
Since then, they’d been careful about making sure the window was closed—because they were loud, too—and the curtains drawn.
I was glad Juliet had her happily ever after, but I also knew it was past time for my own. Spinning around, I walked for the bedroom door, not wanting to waste another second of the five minutes I’d told him to wait.
***
“Tate, baby,” a sleepy voice whispered against my hair. “Your phone.”
Jared’s arm tightened around my back and jostled me gently awake. I blinked my eyes open, realizing that my phone was ringing on the nightstand. I lifted my head off his chest and looked down at him, my dreamy cloud not lifting from my brain as I smiled at him.
His head lay to the side, facing the French doors, and his eyes were closed as he breathed peacefully.
Reluctantly turning away, I held the sheet up to cover my chest as I reached over to grab my phone.
“Hey, what’s up?” I answered, seeing Juliet’s name on the screen. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was only six thirty in the morning. Jared and I had been asleep for only a couple of hours.
“Sorry,” she shot out. “I saw Jared’s car over there, so I’m sure you’re . . .” She hesitated just long enough to make an innuendo. “Busy,” she finished.
A grin tugged at my jaw. “Nooooo,” I drawled out. “I was sleeping. What do you want?”
She cleared her throat. “I know you wanted to work out today, but I need to cancel. I’m drained this morning, okay?”
“No problem,” I sighed, twisting my head at the sound of thunder rolling outside. “I’m not going anywhere, either. Would you text Fallon to let her know?”
“Yeah, sure.” She yawned.
If it was going to rain, then it would be a bad day for an outdoor workout anyway.
“Are you okay?” I prompted, noticing that she sounded unusually tired for a morning person.
“Yeah,” she reassured me. “Just up too late. See you in a while.”
“All right, see you later,” I told her, shivers lighting up my skin as Jared’s hand trailed up the inside of my thigh.
“Bye.” And she hung up.
I put the phone back down and looked over, seeing Jared still half asleep, his wandering hand creeping farther up my leg.
Nuzzling back into his arms, I traced the lines of his jaw and lips with my eyes. Trailing my hand down his chest and farther to his abs, I took in the script tattoo on the side of his torso that he’d gotten when I was in France five years ago—Yesterday Lasts Forever, Tomorrow Comes Never—and the Until You he’d had Aura, his tattoo artist, add more than a year later when we finally got together senior year.
He’d added more tattoos since we’d been apart.
There were two feathers on the other side of his torso, one inscribed with Trent and the other inscribed with Brothers.
And looking up on his left pec, I raised myself up, struggling for shallow breaths as I read the script.
I exist as I am, that is enough.