Page 74 of Our Elliana

THIRTY-ONE: The Truth About That Tattoo

JACKSON

When Elle simply blinks at me, I can tell that we’ve screeched our brakes right at the crux of the situation. This woman is in charge of everything. She calls all the shots. She’s the leader while I’m the follower. As well as serving as her occasional sex bot. Not that I don’t live for that shit. And not that she’s ever made me feel anything close to used or degraded.

She could’ve made me feel like a side of beef if she chose, and she hasn’t. Yet her bringing up the contract out of left field like this falls on me like a ton of bricks. I feel so much affection for her. Far more than I’d like to, to tell the truth. I’m in no hurry for any of this to reach its inevitable conclusion. I’m good here. Content.

Even though that hasn’t been the case for me in ages.

Not that I can’t portray an outward appearance of happiness. I’m an expert actor when it comes to that. I’ve had to be. Because the only significant other who knew the real me was Rosie, and I lost her.

I can’t go through that again.

Hell, I can’t even discuss it with my gramps, though he knows the gist. Against my will my memory takes me back to when the only woman I’ve ever loved was still alive.

She’d been so gleeful and full of sunshine. Every single day. And she’d had the added allure of being a few months older than me. We had all sorts of adventures together. Then, she’d been gone. Deceased at the ripe old age of twenty.

How many times had we raced on those damn jet skis at Oxon Cove? Or swam from one point on the shore to another? How many times had she won? She sliced through that water like a fish, as if she had fins and gills, and to this day, her dying how she did will always haunt me.

The previous afternoon she’d been laughing beside me at the movie theater, one hand deep in the bucket of popcorn while her other teased me beneath it until I grew hard.

Afterward, we made love for the umpteenth time in our favorite spot, in a fake cabin on the paintball field owned by her family. We’d wait until it was closed and sneak in there. Since it’d been fake it had only a partial roof, and we could peer up at the stars.

She’d been my first everything. First kiss. First sex. First love. We’d met in the fifth grade and had been together as a couple since the summer before our senior year of high school.

Yet the next day, she’d gone on those same jet skis with her family up to the Finger Lakes. She’d both been looking forward to it and wishing she didn’t have to leave me behind. But Monroe had set up an interview he’d required me to attend, believing that I would be a good boy and follow in his professional footsteps.

I hadn’t wanted to go, but I’d surrendered to him.

Meanwhile a few states away, Rosie had been riding her jet ski. Her family told me one minute she’d been bounding along the waves and the next she’d tumbled off. They’d retrieved her immediately from under the surface. She hadn’t even been down long. They did CPR and rushed her to the nearest hospital.

Yet, she’d been dead on arrival.

A brain aneurysm. It’s still ludicrous to me well over a decade later. She’d been out doing exactly what she loved only to be ripped off the planet without warning.

I’d been waiting for the perfect time to propose but kept putting it off. Nowhere seemed quite right or quite good enough.

Then, it was too late.

Four years after that, I’d been part of a group of musicians playing along the Potomac. I figured out that the closer I came to the riverbank, the more dread I felt. This is when the first signs of my phobia took root. I haven’t been capable of being near most bodies of water since, as I proved so heroically—not—during our recent outing.

And as if all that isn’t enough, Elle probably has some legit psychopath stalking her, and she’s choosing now to discuss the end of the contract.

Really?

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