Actually Love - Jessie & Zach (26 page)

“I
t just drove me crazy that that there were no patterns, no structure. I couldn’t be a part of that, so I had to remove myself.” Jessie’s voice was filled with conviction.

“But you stopped helping to decorate the tree at three.” Haley shook her head with a look of disbelief on her face. “At
three
years old, you went on strike because you didn’t like how we put up the decorations?”

“Pretty much.” Jessie nodded as she passed the large, white ceramic bowl of mashed potatoes to Zach. This conversation had been going on for almost twenty minutes and Jessie did not look happy about it.

Zach felt bad since he’d been the one who’d asked the question to spark the debate. He also felt bad because he was in the presence of her entire family and he was not just wondering about what Jessie was wearing beneath her black skinny jeans and cream-colored sweater, he was also thinking about how badly he wanted to strip her out of them.

“Wow.” Jessie’s mom Sandy, who was seated across the large table from Jessie, stared at her daughter. “I always suspected that was the reason. I wish you would have said something. We could have gotten a little more organized.”

He glanced to his right at Jessie. She raised her dark-brown eyebrows and stared directly at her mom with a look on her face that led Zach to believe that was not actually the case.

“Well…” Sandy’s hands turned in an I-give-up gesture as she sighed and said, “We could have tried.”

There was laughter around the table as Jessie’s sisters and cousins all chimed in on the many examples of how organization was not Sandy’s strong suit. Zach leaned back and just tried to soak it all in. He had no idea if all of the people here today knew how lucky they were to be a part of this family, but in Zach’s mind, it felt like he’d won the lottery just to be able to spend one holiday with them. It was Thanksgiving, and he and his mom were surrounded by a huge, loving family—that’s all he’d ever wanted as a kid.

After adding some of the potatoes to his plate, Zach passed the large bowl to his mom, who was seated to his left. She looked up at him and smiled as she took them and Zach’s heart squeezed. Since they’d picked his mom up at Avalon this morning, she hadn’t stopped smiling.

The drive to Harper’s Crossing had been one of the most entertaining car rides he’d ever had. Not just because every time he’d looked into his rearview mirror he’d seen Jessie—who’d been seated between Mabel and Margie—in the reflection, but also because those two women had been a walking, talking comedy show.

They’d filled the car ride with stories of their misspent youth. Some had been a little more than Zach had wanted to hear, but he figured, in a car full of women, that was bound to happen.

It wasn’t all laughs though. Margie and Mabel had also asked his mom about her illness. Zach rarely ever heard her talk about it. He always believed the reason for that was because she didn’t want to discuss what was going on. Now he realized the reason might have been because he hadn’t asked her. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about what she was going through. That’s
all
he cared about. He had just never wanted to bring anything up that would upset her.

But as he sat and listened to his mom tell Margie and Mabel things about how she’d felt at different stages of the disease, how she’d coped with it, and where she was at today with it, he made the decision that he would check in with her. That he would really see how she was doing, not just ask in a small-talk sort of way.

“You have Reynolds coming up, right?” Chase, who was seated on the other side of Zach’s mom, asked.

“Yep. Just a few more weeks.”

“I wish I could be there. I saw you knock out Cruz in Atlantic City. It was one of the best fights I’ve ever seen,” Chase said sincerely.

“Thanks.” Zach appreciated the compliment, but his mom looked like she was about to explode with pride.

He had to give his mom credit for the fact that she was playing it pretty cool around Chase, when he knew that she probably wanted to scream and lose her mind.

Zach still couldn’t believe that Margie and Mabel had completely lost interest in Chase after being here only a few minutes. They’d fawned over him and argued who was his biggest fan for a few minutes, but that only lasted until they met The Colonel, a.k.a. Grandpa J, and Chip Jones, who worked for Chase; Zach thought he’d heard him mention that he drove the tour bus. The looks on the two ladies’ faces when they’d laid eyes on the two distinguished gentlemen, reminded Zach of when the cartoon wolf sees a girl. Their eyes practically popped right out of their heads as they looked at the men like fresh meat.

Zach glanced down the long table and saw that both women were seated on either side of the men—Mabel beside The Colonel and Margie beside Chip. Zach almost felt sorry for the guys. They were being kind, but they looked about as happy to be sitting there as a kid in a dentist chair.

Jessie leaned towards him and whispered in his ear, “I think it’s going well. Mabel and Margie could not be more distracted.”

“I almost feel sorry for The Colonel and Chip though,” Zach replied quietly, as he tried not to let the fact that feeling her breath against his neck, had sent his body into turbo-speed arousal, become evident on his face.

He felt like he did a fairly good job of masking his reaction. Looking around the table, he found that no one seemed to be paying any attention to them. He’d had a ton of practice since, for the last four hours, they’d been pretending to be a couple and it had almost been more than Zach could handle.

As the conversations flowed around the table while everyone ate, Zach realized how much he’d missed just talking to Jessie over the last few days. He hadn’t seen much of her at all this week. Once, they’d passed in the kitchen as he was heading up to take a shower and she was leaving for work, and that was it. Since they’d had their one-night-only event on Sunday night, they’d both been either avoiding each other or really busy. He knew which category his actions had fallen under. Avoidance.

It wasn’t just that the sex had been the best sex of his life. Zach wasn’t even sure if it had been just sex. He had a feeling that what they had done was make love. That was part of it, but not all of it. What had kept him at the gym until one a.m. every night was what had happened after the mind-blowing sex.

He’d stayed the entire night in Jessie’s bed, holding her close to him, and they’d spent most of the night talking. Talking about their childhoods, their fears, their successes. Zach might have only known Jessie a short time, but he knew that she didn’t open up to people easily, and as she talked about herself, her life, her dreams, he felt like she was letting him into a secret world that only she lived in.

It wasn’t a one-way street either. Zach had told her things he’d never told another soul. He talked about his dad, his grandparents’ death, his mom’s health. He opened up about a lot, but he hadn’t told her about the fact that, from ages eighteen to twenty, before he’d been making any real money as a fighter, he’d been a stripper to pay for his mom’s medical bills. He didn’t know why he left that out. It wasn’t like he was ashamed of it. He just wasn’t exactly proud of it either.

That night had been perfect. He realized now he just hadn’t wanted anything to come in and ruin that. It wasn’t like Jessie was his real girlfriend. If she were, of course he would tell her. She’d made it perfectly clear that the last thing she wanted was a relationship. That shouldn’t bother him. In fact, he’d gotten to spend the night with the sexiest woman he’d ever met with absolutely zero strings attached. He should be ecstatic. But he wasn’t.

Spending the night with Jessie had had the exact opposite effect on him; instead of getting her out of his system or even taking the edge off, it had made him want her more. Need her more. Crave her more. He knew one thing for certain. After having been with Jessie, one time would never be enough. He wasn’t even sure if a million times would be. Maybe if it were just physical, he could get her out of his system, but she had managed to make her way into his heart, his soul, and there was no way that sex was going to remove someone from either of those places.

Zach looked up as he heard a tinging sound. Alex stood at the end of the table and was tapping his fork against his glass. After everyone quieted down and he had their undivided attention, he said, “I just want to take a moment to thank you all for being here today. It’s a Sloan-family tradition to go around the table and say what you’re most thankful for this past year. Before I met Jamie and Joey, my answers were always different, anything from career, health, material things, to my family.”

Looking down at his wife, Alex continued. “But since I was lucky enough to get hit over the head with a beam and open my eyes to see the angel that I know was put on this earth just for me, and then I got the bonus of meeting the coolest kid in the world, I know that, for the rest of my life, I will have the same answer whenever someone asks me what I’m most thankful for. Basically, I’m giving you fair warning of the fact that I will sound like a broken record from here on out.”

There were a few chuckles before Alex continued. “Jamie, you and Joey are my whole life, and I thank God every day for bringing you both into my life. I love you.”

Alex pulled his wife up into his arms and kissed her like he needed her more than his next breath. Which, Zach figured, he probably did.

The table broke out into applause and whistles, and several people shouted out for them to get a room or pointed out that there were children present. As everyone went around the table saying what they were grateful for, Zach felt more authentic love between the couples than he’d witnessed in his entire life.

When Jessie had been lying in his arms on Sunday night, she’d opened up to him about the fact that part of the reason she didn’t plan on getting married was that she didn’t believe in love. At least not the kind of happily-ever-after love people claimed to have. She told him that the most she could ever hope for is to find someone she got along with and also had hot sex with. And that she would consider entering into a legal partnership with someone like that, but it wasn’t something she was actively seeking.

The cynical way she spoke about the subject of love led Zach to believe that either she must have been burned pretty badly in the relationship department or she’d never really seen a true example of what real love was. He asked her about her past relationships, and she seemed like she was telling the truth when she said that no breakup had ever hit her that hard. Now, looking around the room, he saw that there were more examples of true love in this six-hundred-foot area than he’d ever known existed.

Growing up, he’d seen his grandparents’ relationship and known that it was real. They had been more than just husband and wife—they’d been a team, each other’s best friend, and each other’s safe place. When things got stressful or tense, even as a kid, he remembered seeing them look to each other for strength.

Zach might have been scared of love, but he definitely knew it existed.

*     *     *

“What’s wrong?” Jessie asked as she followed her sister into the back bedroom.

Krista didn’t look back. She just kept walking in front of Jamie and Jessie at a clipped pace.

Jessie had been in the kitchen helping Jamie, her mom, and several of the other ladies clean up when Krista had pulled both her and Jamie out of there and said that she needed to see them in the back.

When they passed by the front room, Jessie had been happy to see that Anna looked like she was feeling more than just okay, she looked like she was having the time of her life. She seemed to be in a deep discussion with Chase’s mom and Katie’s aunt. Jessie had no idea what topic had the ladies so animated, but it must have been good because they were enthralled.

Her sister had seemed so cryptic when she summoned both Jamie and her into the back, that Jessie was starting to get an uneasy feeling. Her first thought had been that someone was pregnant and they wanted to tell a smaller group before announcing it to the entire family. But Jessie didn’t think that was really plausible because she knew her family, and if someone were expecting, she thought they would have shared it when everyone was saying what they were grateful for.

She felt a flutter low in her belly when she thought about what Zach had said. In her head, she knew that he said what he’d said only because he’d been putting on a show for Mabel and Margie, but her heart had not seemed to make that distinction. He hadn’t just said that he was thankful for meeting her, like she’d expected. He also said that he felt like the luckiest man alive that he got to spend each day getting to know her better, that she trusted him enough to let him see behind the curtain that she kept so safely guarded.

There had been a chorus of ‘
awws’
around the table, and she’d seen her parents exchanging a knowing look. Like they were thinking,
This is it. Jessie has finally found the one.
She wasn’t sure if everyone had just been playing along or if they had actually been under the delusion that this relationship had turned into something real. It wasn’t like she could set the record straight—at least not today with the M&M sisters here—but she made a mental note to call her parents tomorrow just to make sure they weren’t getting the wrong idea.