Page 124 of Limbo

When I nod, I expect his mouth to devour mine and for us to take advantage of the time. Instead, he rolls away from me and dangles off the bed. I hear something slide across the floor. He sits up again with a flat box. It’s featherlight, and nothing rattles when I shake it.

“If this is a box full of packing peanuts, I’m not chasing you out of the house.”

He grins and props on an elbow to watch me open it. I shimmy my way up to sit against the headboard and untie the blue ribbon. It’s from the same spool we used to wrap the papers declaring Graham’s parental rights severed. We gave them to Connor for his birthday a few weeks ago. He considered them a better gift than the car.

Trey and Jordan had pitched in and twisted my arm into it. I was hesitant to buy my brother a vehicle after I heard about the little joyride he had taken while I was unconscious in the hospital, which required Jordan tracking him down. No one is brave enough to tell me the entire story yet, but it’d involved Connor stealing Pete’s truck, and then Graham’s, and ended with the latter being hauled to a scrap yard.

Whatever had happened cemented the relationship between Jordan and Connor. Jordan even convinced him to start counseling to work through his Graham issues. The two of them have an unshakeable bond now. I’m just not sure either of them will survive to enjoy it once I find out all the details.

I tuck the ribbon away to keep because, at some point, I became sentimental about things Jordan gives me. There’s an embarrassing shoebox and everything.

His smile widens as I start to open the box, and I pause.

“Seriously, is this a T-shirt?”

“Just open it, you frustrating woman.”

Still dubious, I pull the lid off. Then I groan. “You’ve got to be kidding me. A countdown calendar?”

He’s trying not to laugh. “Look through it.”

The cover has a collage of famous sites from around the world—the Louvre, pyramids, Easter Island. I flip it open to January, but there is no January. It starts with July, the first number on the countdown today. And it’s short, less than a month. I turn to August, the only other page. The countdown ends with a giant circle on the nineteenth.

“What are we counting down to?”

When I look up, Jordan is holding two plane tickets. “I took the liberty of telling my mother that we’d be out of town for the week, just in case she planned to visit while we were on our trip to London.”

My eyes snap up to his as I remember our fake trip that made her face pinch.

His mouth curves into a smile, and I squeal, tackling him back on the bed and kissing him over and over. He chuckles and catches my face in his hands, serious when he says, “Don’t think every time you make something up to freak her out, I’ll make it come true.”

I laugh and kiss him again. Then I hop out of bed, bringing the calendar and tickets with me. He follows me to the wall covered in photos from our summer. Fishing with Trey and Pete, Connor’s surprise birthday party, Cate’s graduation from swim lessons, a random show Beta Void pulled together at the last minute. Even after everything, it’s been one of the best summers I can remember. Now I can add best gift to the list, and I have no doubt, by the end of the day, best birthday will join it.

Jordan wraps his arms around me and nuzzles against my neck as I hang up the calendar and pin the tickets next to it. He leans to the side, taking me with him, and snatches a pen off the dresser. He straightens us up and sets it in my hand. “Mark away, beautiful.”

I draw a line through the box, corner to corner, and relax back against him.

“Twenty-six days until the nineteenth,” I tell him.

Then, I’m never counting days again.

One Month Later...

Jordan drops down on the couch next to me. “I quit.”

“You can’t quit. You just started.”

Clearly not in the mood to finish carrying my boxes up the stairs, he lets out a dramatic sigh and pulls my legs onto his lap. I can’t blame him for wanting to enjoy our first real second of calm since we got back from London last week.

We hadn’t even unpacked our suitcases when the courts finalized my guardianship over Cate and Connor. We’ve been scrambling to relocate them and sign them up for school, which starts tomorrow.

Lauren will write a monthly check and see them alternate weekends and holidays—no summer schedule. It’s more time than I like, but they’ll have Trey and our friends watching out for them. While they might not qualify as ideal candidates to help raise upstanding individuals, they’re fiercely loyal and always there in the ways that count. They’re our real family. Always will be.

Jordan must decide my legs are not enough because he drags the rest of me over. I straddle him and lean down, brushing my lips over his. He groans when I run my fingers through his hair and slides his hands around to my ass. My hair falls, creating a curtain around us. Too bad it does little on the privacy front.

“Ew, Jordan.” Cate stands at the bottom of the stairs in her princess pajamas, hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”

“He’s feeling up Cal,” Connor says, swooping her up and dashing up the stairs.

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