Page 19 of Love Set Free

“Phoenix?”

“I’m here,” I reassure him. “I want you to do something, okay?”

“Of course,” he replies. “Anything.”

“Down toward the bottom of this box, about…a foot-and-a-half to your left? There’s a bigger hole. Can you lay down and find it?” I’m confident that, even blindfolded, Jackson should easily be able to locate the hole by touch. I’m more concernedwith how well he’ll be able to scrunch his body up to be able to get his head and face in front of the hole the way I’d like.

“Oh. Yeah. I think I know…”

Jacksonhmms, and I watch as he tugs and wriggles his left arm and wrist until he’s able to pull his hand free. He rotates his wrist and wiggles his fingers a few times, making me wonder just how much discomfort he’d been in, all so he could make physical contact with me.

Moving from kneeling to sitting with his knees folded up in front of him doesn’t look very difficult, but I can’t help but wince in sympathy as Jackson has to use his hands to help raise his bent legs. With them propped up, resting against the far side of the box, Jackson is able to lay his upper half along the bottom of the box and soon I find my face separated only a few inches from his.

The splintered and jagged end of the broken board that created this hole is too close for comfort for me to where Jackson’s right eye is behind his blindfold, but there’s no way I’m going to encourage him to move back. Not until I get my fill of looking at and memorizing each feature of his face.

“There you are.” My words are soft and reverent with this first look at my Jackson.

A hesitant and shy smile trembles on lips that are thin and wide and, in this light, nearly colorless. “I found it then? The hole?”

“You did. I knew you would, sweetheart.”

“Yeah. I knew it was there. Well, sorta. I didn’t know which side of the box I was facing,” he added, “but I knew about this hole. I’ve had plenty of time to explore just about every square inch of this fucking box. And the guy who brings us our food?”

“Silva?”

“Oh. Is that his name? I’ve overheard a few of them using each other’s names a couple of times, but I’ve only picked up on acouple of names and I couldn’t be sure which name went with who. Anyway, I think he’s used this hole a few times to deliver my food to me when he was feeling too lazy to bother with the lock on the little metal door.”

The only reaction I can muster up for this little tidbit of information that he offered up was a soft grunt to acknowledge that I’d heard him. Frankly, I can’t even find the interest to think about what sort of information Jackson has about our kidnappers and how we should compare notes on what he’s discovered or figured out and what I was able to learn during my short, but memorable, time in a room with all four of them. Nope, all my attention, all my focus, is on the man in front of me, and taking the time to catalogue his features.

Except…

My right hand trembles as I slowly extend it toward Jackson. It hovers, a breath away, just before I make contact with the dark fabric stretched across his eyes. “May I?”

Without even knowing what I’m asking permission to do, Jackson immediately responds, “Of course.”

When I let my fingers dance across the scratchy, coarse cloth, Jackson sucks in a swift breath, clearly being able to read what it is I’m about to do. I carefully work my fingers under the top edge of the blindfold, then I slowly, but surely, tug it upward.

An irritated and abraded swath of angry pink spans the expanse of Jackson’s skin around his eyes and over the bridge of his prominent, slightly large and bony nose. There are even splotchy patches of what looks like a rash gracing portions of his cheekbones and along his temples. But nothing…nothing…can detract from the glorious beauty of the pale, almost colorless, blue eyes that meet mine as his eyelashes flutter and then sweep open.

Objectively speaking, one might say that Jackson’s eyes were a touch on the small side, and maybe a bit too close together.Or maybe they just seem that way because of how much his nose dominates the landscape of his face. But Jesus, they’re the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Those blue eyes widen and Jackson breathes out a tremulous and surprised “oh”, seemingly as affected as I am by that first glimpse of each other’s faces.

“See. Told you I was right here.” My smile hopefully tells Jackson that I’m teasing him. There’s no way I can’t smile at him, not here, not now, but the air is charged with so much emotion that I feel as though if I don’t do something to move the mood in a lighter direction, I’m liable to start bawling. There’s just too much coursing through me—relief, joy, hope, worry, fear, adoration, need. All of them fighting and squirming inside of me to see which will come out on top.

“Yep. There you are.” His narrow lips tip up in a smile that reveals a set of teeth that could use quite a bit of loving from both a dentist and an orthodontist, including a chipped incisor on the top and severely crowded and overlapping teeth on the bottom. Nevertheless, it’s a smile I never want to stop seeing. And one that makes mine grow bigger as Jackson playfully says, “Hi.”

“Hello, sweetheart.”

Jackson doesn’t comment on the endearment that continues to slip out of me. Obviously, he doesn’t know me well enough yet to know that isn’t the sort of thing I do regularly. Almost never, in fact. I can’t even recall the last person who would’ve prompted me to shower them with pet names. On the plus side, at least he doesn’t seem upset by it. A trifle bemused and uncertain, perhaps, with the way his eyelashes tip down to cover his eyes and with the faint pink blush creeping into his cheeks.

“It’s...I...” Jackson glances back up at me, his eyes meeting mine for a brief second before they bashfully look down again. “You look just how I imagined you would.”

“Oh, really. Just the sound of my voice told you I’m a sexy fucker, did it?”

My flirtation causes Jackson to blush and splutter. I can’t tell if it’s because he’s not used to guys flirting with him or if he just wasn’t expectingmeto flirt so boldly with him. It’s not necessarily something that needs to be worked out just now though, not with the current circumstances still being what they are. I’ll hopefully have plenty of opportunities once we’re out of our kidnappers’ clutches to explore how receptive Jackson would be to any sort of overture from me.

Dropping the playful tone from my voice, I softly murmur, “There are so many different ways I pictured you looking. But all of them were wrong. I can’t even tell you how happy I am to finally know. Finally, I’ll have an image in my brain that I can draw upon whenever I think of you.”

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