Page 47 of Body Check

I’ve had them for years, ever since I was a little girl and wondering if my parents would ever return for me and Sam. They never did.

Back then, my grandmother used to awkwardly pat my head and encourage me to be brave. It was as close to affection as she had to give, not because she didn’t love me or Sam, but because she belonged to a different generation. She was a woman who felt no regret over shooting a man in the ass when he dared threaten her business, and then there was me . . . always remembering how Momma was dressed when she walked out the front door and never came back. My grandmother said I loved too hard back then, and she said the same thing about my relationship with Jackson right before she died.

“You don’t need that man,” she told me over the phone, “you divorced him. Do you see him banging on your door because he thinks y’all made a mistake? No, you don’t. You love too hard, Holly-bear. You love too dang hard and they never deserve itoryou.”

The anxiety has been with me for as long as I can remember, crawling into my heart when my emotions threaten to get the best of me. But Jackson always knew, somehow intrinsically, how to bring me back from that panicked rush that seeps into my bones and lingers.

His fingers leave my hips to trail down my thighs, up and down, up and down, until I’m more focused on his mesmerizing touch than the shuddered breaths heaving out of my chest.

“That’s it, sweetheart.” The gentleness in the way he touches me is completely opposite to his gravel-pitched tone. “Focus on me. You’re good, you hear? Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

I want to ask if the new girl he’s seeing is problem-free, unlike me. If she has a supportive family and parents who care. If she’s laid-back and easygoing, and not a control freak the way I am. Does she make him laugh the way I used to?

“Doeswhomake me laugh?”

I blink.

Oh. Oh, crap, that was said out loud.

My gaze lands on his hands, which rest on my knees. I want them to move up, up, up, until his thumbs linger near where I want him most.Don’t go there.“No one. I just—”

His hold on me tightens. “I’m not seeing anyone, Holls.”

The panic swiftly kicks me straight in the gut, and I swallow it down. “You can do whatever you want.” My fingers tangle in the comforter, twining and squeezing the way my heart does at the prospect of Jackson loving someone else,makinglove to someone else, of being their best friend. “I’m not that crazy ex who’ll hover over your shoulder and watch your every move. I’m the cool ex.”Oh, my God. Please stop talking.“You know how they say if you’re a cool mom or whatever? I’m that, without the kids. The cool ex-wife.”

“The cool—” Jackson breaks off, his hand lifting from my leg to pinch the broken bridge of his nose. “I’m going to be straight with you, that’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Is it, though? All I’m trying to say is that I support you living your best life. Whatever you want to do, I’m—”

“There isn’t anything I want to do besidesthis.”

And then Jackson, my ex-husband, crashes his mouth down over mine and steals every last breath from my lungs.

16

Jackson

She tastes exactly the same.

Sweet. Bold.Mine.

I’m crossing so many boundaries here, knocking each one down like a child chasing after his favorite toy. But there’snothingchildlike about the way I mold my mouth over Holly’s, nor the way I drag her down off the bed so that she straddles my thighs. Her weight is slight, her hips and curves slender but mine for the taking.

And I take.

Fuck, do I take.

I flick my tongue along the cushion of her bottom lip, demanding entrance. When she gives it with a familiar whimper that goes straight to my cock, I echo her small, feminine noises with a guttural groan that reverberates in my chest.

As though she’s desperate to find the source of the sound, she touches my chest, her short, blunt fingernails dragging down over my skin, marking me in a way that feels at once familiar and foreign.

There’s been no one since her.

No one could ever compare, not when we met at Cornell, not when I drank myself into a stupor after the divorce was finalized—and I spent days, weeks, trying to lose myself in hockey and games and practice.

Losing Holly broke me—even if I was the reason we were broken in the first place—and only now, under her touch, do I feel as though I’m coming alive again.

I pin her to the side of the bed, bracketing her body with mine. My palms clamping down on the edge of the mattress, her spine arching as she nips at my top lip, her core circling down on my hard-as-nails erection. God, she feels so damn good.

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