Page 47 of Love Set Free

Jackson looked dead to the world, actually, when I slipped out of bed this morning. I thought it was because of the early hour, and, possibly, due to our impromptu second bout of rolling around in bed during the middle of the night. But taking a closer look at him and seeing the dark circles under his eyes, exhaustion in the lines of his body and seeming to weigh him down, I have to wonder if his earlier period of deep sleep had been caused by something else.

“Did you sleep okay?” I ask. “I mean…I know you were already awake when I woke up in the middle of the night. But you seemed to drop off to sleep easily enough after we cleaned up. And you were asleep this morning when I woke up.”

A faint blush pinkens Jackson’s cheeks and he crinkles his nose, creases forming along the prominent ridge, as he sheepishly admits, “I did have a fair bit of trouble sleeping last night. Kept waking up to check on you.”

“I’m. Fine,” I tell him, emphasizing the words so that, maybe, he might actually believe them. I raise my left hand in the air, showing off the clean, white bandage adorning the tip of my middle finger, which sort of looks like a narrow, gauze condom for my finger. “The appointment Dad set up for me yesterday went well. The doc did what he needed to do and now my finger’s all good as new. Er, almost. Minus what got chopped off by Blond Guy, and then a few extra millimeters of bone by the doctor so he could stitch the skin over it properly.”

“Still don’t see why I couldn’t be in the room with you,” Jackson mutters, a pout softening the narrow curve of his lower lip.

Jackson had not been happy when he’d been informed that he’d have to remain in the waiting room with my parents yesterday. When the surgical nurse had brusquely informed him that he couldn’t even stand in the doorway of the operating room, looking in, which was the compromise he’d sulkily requested, it had seemed like Jackson might succumb to another panic attack. Thankfully, after I spent several minutes reassuring him that I would be fine, and that I’d be right back by his side in almost no time at all, he calmed down and agreed to stay in the waiting room as long as he was able to see me the moment I got out of surgery. Good thing, too, since Dad looked as though he’d be willing to bodily sit on Jackson if it meant getting me in for my surgery as scheduled.

“Because it would’ve weirded the doctor out too much, and then who knows what he might’ve accidentally done to my hand,” I cheekily reply.

Jackson rolls his eyes but, otherwise, doesn’t respond to my teasing. Grabbing one of the cups of coffee off of the tray, Jackson brings it near his face and inhales a long, lingering sniff of the aroma. As he tilts his head forward, his shaggy hair cascades over his forehead, obscuring my view of his eyes.

“You know what we should do today?” I ask, a sudden urge to be out and about hitting me.

“Um…absolutely nothing, while you let yourself rest and recover from a major surgery?”

“Pffth. It was a minor surgery, at best," is my retort. “And, no. What we should do…is go see my barber,” I tell him. “We could both use a haircut. You, in particular.” A frown forming on his face, Jackson looks as though he doesn’t agree with my idea at all. But before he has a chance to vocalize his stormfrontof naysaying, I sweeten the pot with “And after the barber’s…we could head to my place. We’ve stayed just about as long as we’ve needed to with my parents, I think.”

And isn’t that the truth? I adore my parents, I do. Couldn’t have really asked for a better set of parents to have growing up. But I’m a full-grown man of nearly 30; my days of enjoying living with my parents have long passed. I’d given Mom a couple days of my presence in their house to coddle me, feed me, hug me whenever she wanted, but now all of that is just getting under my skin.

“Your…” His reluctance seemingly clearing like the sun breaking through on a cloudy day, Jackson breathily says, “That’s right. You don’t… This isn’t where you normally live. You have your own place.”

“Mm. A house, actually,” I inform him. “Bought it a couple years ago. It seemed like a good investment, and I was tired of living in a condo. For some reason, it didn’t sit well with me, having to abide by a bunch of arbitrary rules set by a condo association, when I was the one whose money paid for the place. Now, I’m in my own home, and nobody can tell me what I can, or cannot, do with it.”

Blue eyes peek up at me shyly through a straggly screen of wheaten-brown. “What’s your house like? Is it… It’s not as big as this place, right?”

I’m aware that, even by Westerly standards, my parents’ house is large. But they’d bought the place—early on in their marriage and shortly after the first big burst of business profits—with the intention of using it as a base for lavish parties and with the dream of filling a lot of the bedrooms with a small fleet of tiny-toed children. While the anticipated parties did happen—and still happen with frequent regularity—I wound up being the only longed-for offspring set to occupy all of those other, smaller bedrooms.

But instead of appeasing Jackson’s curiosity, and reassuring him that, while large and pricy and also on the beach, like my parent’s house, my own house is a more modestly sized two-story house with only four bedrooms, I decide to let him linger in a state of wondering. For a little while longer, at least.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” I reply. “Haircuts first…then a house tour.”

“Ugh. Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

He tries to sound grumpy as he gives his agreement. But I can tell his irritation isn’t genuine. First, there’s the glimmer of a smile creasing the corners of his eyes. And his lips, as he leans over the tray, uncaring if any of the food is crushed by his body as he does so…they don’t taste grumpy at all as he offers me a kiss. Even the faint hint of bitterness, from the few sips of coffee he’s had, doesn’t disguise the sweetness of his affection as his lips sweep softly back and forth against mine.

“We can do anything you want.” Jackson teases the words against my mouth. The layers of meaning in his simple sincerity tell me he’s not just referring to my plans for today. And I have a feeling that those plans just might get pushed back by a little while. Breakfast, too. Because how can I do anything else other than take another taste of what he’s offering, what he promises is mine to have, as he softly adds, “Always.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Jackson

Both the barber dude and Phoenix seem pretty happy with the way my haircut turned out. They kept nattering on about bone structure and cheekbones and face framing and some other sort of gibberish that I kind of tuned out after a while. I’m not quite as certain—he cut the sides and back the shortest I’ve ever had them. The top, he left moderately long, and he put some gunk in it to make it sort of lazily tumble forward and over my forehead. But I suppose I’ll take their word on the matter.

Not that I really care if the barber is satisfied with the results. Although, I suppose with as much as Phoenix probably paid him and, what with this being his profession and all, he probably wouldn’t leave me with a head looking like it’d lost a battle in the war on good taste.

Nah, what really had me feeling all puffed up and about ten feet tall, is the way Phoenix is having trouble not casting hot and dirty looks my way every five seconds or so.

The temperature outside is already a few dozen degrees south of comfortable, in my opinion, at least, and the strong breeze blowing in from the Atlantic is certainly doing nothing to defrostmy poor Southern-bred body. Parts of me are decently insulated by the heavy winter coat the Wildings gave me, but my jeans feel like a solid layer of denim ice against my legs and, now that I’m missing a whole slew of inches of hair from my head, I’m really wishing I’d thought to ask if there was a hat I could borrow.

I’m tempted to at least pop my hands over my ears before those things freeze and fall off, but if I had, I would’ve missed Phoenix’s slowly drawn out “Sooo…I know I said we’d go see my house after we got haircuts, but…”

Yes. Yes, he, indeed, had promised such a thing. He had promised that, hadn’t he?

“But…what?” I can’t, and don’t bother to, stem the irritation twining with the suspicion in my question. When Phoenix had set us off strolling down this oceanside path, I’d meekly followed along without a peep, despite my reluctance to spend even five seconds out in this wintery hellscape he called home, assuming he lived near the salon and that it’d be easier for us to walk there than it’d be to bother his driver with taking us there. If it turns out I’ve been freezing my ass off for no fucking reason whatsoever…

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