Page 94 of Surrender

I flex my fingertips into her thighs bracketing my hips.

She flips the book open, and I wait patiently while she studies each page. I coast my hands up and down her thighs to distract myself from the nerves.

“When did you do all this?”

One shoulder rises in a shrug. “I took this one here during the blizzard.” I point out a picture of Whitney and Bennett in my kitchen. He’s leaning back in her arms with a big smile while she makes a kissing face at him. “I meant to share it with you at the time, but I got distracted and forgot about it. When I remembered it a few days later, I thought it’d be a nice surprise to take some pictures of you with your kids.”

“It’s so thoughtful.”

“You deserve to not always be the one behind the camera.”

Her breath hitches, and when she lifts her head, her eyes are red. Wetness gathers along her lower lashes. “I have so few pictures of me with my kids. I try to take selfies, but it’s just not the same. You’ve managed to catch so many candid moments, and I didn’t even notice. I feel like thank you is inadequate.”

“Thank you is exactly perfect.”

In the stretching silence, Corjan’s words come back to me. I think about telling her about the test.

Then I think about how it doesn’t matter.

It wasn’t hers, and I don’t want her to feel pressured that my feelings run deep. Deeper than hers.

Because I told her that I’m falling in love with her.

But the truth is, I think I’m already there.

23

Whitney

The hospital has been busy, which I’m told is normal for the day after Christmas. People get up to holiday fuckery, playing around with their new toys, and accidents are bound to happen. I was moved from the ER to radiology after someone called in sick, and while patients have been steady, this department is nothing like what’s going on downstairs. That’s not to say I haven’t seen my fair share of carnage.

Two boys have already come in this morning, brothers, both with suspected broken arms after crashing into each other on hoverboards. Their mother could only purse her lips and shake her head as I clarified she was sent up with orders for both of them. I’m certain she’s used to their antics.

Another was a fifty-year-old man being x-rayed for a suspected rib fracture after he crashed into the corner of a countertop while playing some VR headset game.

While I’m grateful to have the job, that’s all it is. This isn’t my passion. I’m here to support my kids. Kids who I miss deeply each moment I’m away from them.

Our Christmas yesterday was beyond my expectations.

After Jack and I exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, he pleasured my body until I was a boneless, shaking mess. Even then, he wrung one more orgasm out of me before he fucked me steady and slow under the glow of the fire and our dilapidated Christmas tree. We snuggled naked on the couch and whispered to one another until the early hours. Before dragging ourselves to bed, he kissed me deep and slow while I clung to him.

We decided that Jack would be there when the kids woke up and opened their gifts, but he’d spend Christmas with his family without us.

Joining the Powells felt like a step too big. We have feelings for each other, but I’m not quite ready to get involved with his family if this is going to run its course when the snow melts. He seemed to agree. Or at least he didn’t put up an argument.

He brushed aside my guilt, kissed me once, and promised he’d see me later that afternoon.

My heart flips over itself as I think of Christmas morning. Jack bought my kids gifts, simple plushies. Lucy hugged hers to her chest while Bennett immediately started to chew on the dinosaur’s tail. I appreciate that he didn’t try to pick out something sentimental. This is too new, and if things don’t work out between us...

It will be hard enough to explain to Lucy why she can’t see her Mr. Jack anymore. It’d be worse if I had to take a beloved item away from her too. A plushie isn’t all that meaningful unless someone puts meaning behind it.

While Bennett tasted his new puff snacks and Lucy chewed the end of her first ever candy cane, I walked Jack to the garage door for a long, slow kiss before he went to his family’s for the afternoon.

The kids and I watched The Polar Express and ate way too much candy, and for the first time in years, Christmas actually felt like Christmas. White, snowy, and filled with love.

A shrill ringing phone pulls me from staring unfocused at the computer screen. My pen clicks loudly as it falls from my hand. I mutter beneath my breath and snatch it back up. The last thing I wanted to do this morning after rolling out of bed was come to work and leave the cozy bubble of the weekend behind, but here I am, plied with iced coffee and M&M’s.

“It’s so boring up here today.” A willowy blond sits in the empty chair beside me. I think her name is Greta.

---