Page 115 of Absolute Certainty
“She wasn’t for a long time, but she’s been better in the last four years. She found love again two years ago, and we all really like him. He’s good to her.”
Everything about his mother having a second chance at love made her heart squeeze.
“I hate that he hurt you all so much.” She swept her lips along the corners of his eyes, down to each cheekbone, his nose, his jaw. “I hate that he took so much from you.”
Jay pressed his mouth to hers in a featherlight kiss. “I don’t want to waste another minute with you talking about him. He doesn’t deserve it.” He roamed his fingers behind her shoulder toward the hydrangea tattoo. “Tell me about this.”
“They’re my favorite flowers. It’s my most recent one. I got it two years ago for my thirtieth birthday.”
He touched the January twenty-nine, ninety—written in Roman numerals—on the side of her wrist, wordlessly asking for its meaning.
“Matching tattoos with my sister. She has my birthday. I have hers.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“September twenty-three, ninety-two. When’s yours?”
“October eight, eighty-nine,” he answered, kissing her forehead.
Jay pointed to the two hearts on her left arm. “What about these?”
“They’re for my parents. Mum and Dad both drew one.”
Sahar sat up a bit higher. “Do you want to know about my most personal one?” she asked him.
He nodded, pressing his lips to hers. “I want to know everything.”
Slightly, she moved her body away from him to show the words written under her left breast. They were just barely visible under her bra line.
Jay read the words aloud. “We’re all fools in love.”
“It’s fromPride and Prejudice.Not the book, but the 2005 movie. Charlotte Lucas says it to Lizzie.”
Sahar smiled, biting down on her lip. “My ex, a chap named Tyler. I think, of all the people in my past, I loved him the most. He was also an actor,” she paused, swallowing. “He dumped me two days before my birthday.”
She kept the details of him stating she was only palatable in small dosesto herself. She could give Jay so much of herself, every little secret he asked for, but not that—not yet. It would hurt too much. It’d all be too real.
“I was devastated, but I desperately needed to feel something—to continue believing that love wasn’t some made-up fantasy. I was rewatching the movie when I heard that quote again, and it made me so proud to believe in love. To know that I wasn’t silly for falling. Because really, isn’t that the universal theme in all of Austen’s stories? That we’re all just fools, looking for connection?”
He dropped his mouth to hers, kissing her slowly, reverently.
“I think we were meant to find each other,” she let out.Bloody hell. Shut up. Why would you say that out loud?
Jay cupped her cheek, and all self-deprecating thoughts were momentarily relinquished. She tilted her head to place a kiss on his palm.
Resting his forehead against hers, he said, “I think so, too.”
30
JAY
The vision of Sahar, naked and curled in his arms, consumed him. Breathtaking and ethereal, her pink lips slightly parted. She wasn’t kidding when she said she could fall asleep wherever, whenever, at any given moment because that’s what had happened after he’d once more dropped to his knees and watched her come undone from his mouthagain.
She was so devastatingly beautiful. Perfect in every way.
Trailing the pads of his fingers languidly up and down her shoulder, he wondered how anyone could possibly let her go. Her heart. Her mind. Her body. How they’d had a taste of her without wanting more. If it weren’t for her ankle, he’d be a dead man walking; she would’ve wrecked him, he was sure of that. He was already more than halfway there.
He could stare at her for hours, marveling at all the ink scattered across her body. Memorize every dip and curve.
