All the Waters of the Earth (Giving You ... #3) (14 page)

“I know.  I would have told you once I found out but I didn’t get a chance.”

I shook my head in anger. That was a topic to bring up with Amelia. But he and I had more to discuss. Like how hot and cold he was with me. “I want to talk to you. What happened that day in your office?”

“I fucked up,” he said immediately.

“Yes. You did. But why? What was going on with you?” 

“The short answer is that there is a big difference between what my office sees and what you see.”

“I want the long answer.”

He paused.

I kept going. I needed to know this. I needed to press it. “You have to explain things to me. I can’t read your mind. I can’t be with you if you are going to shut me out for no reason. I can’t handle it. It’s on-Jake and off-Jake. You don’t have to be always on, but I want to know what’s going on inside your head—”

“It has never been okay for me to be an artist. That is not a part of my life that I share with anyone.  Before he was a workaholic, my dad was an artist and he was the kind that was completely irresponsible. My childhood was very bad. I know how to dumpster dive. I had to panhandle. After my mother left us when my brother died, I did anything I could to get out of there. I worked as many jobs as I could to go to college and then to law school so I would never have to live that way again. The thing is, I’ve always drawn and I’ve always wanted to be an artist. But it’s never been okay for me to do so. No one knows that I take classes or draw or anything. So when I saw you, I handled it badly.”

“You did. Not badly.  You treated me like shit.”

“And I’m sorry.” Eyes on me, he radiated intensity, but sincerity. I still didn’t know what he was talking about. But I couldn’t handle not knowing any more.

“Show me,” I whispered. “Show me your art. Show me what you’re hiding.”

He stared at me and I stared back, hoping that he would let me in. Even though he had his quirks, every indication to me was that there was something in him, beyond the wall he had built, that was worth getting to know.  Second chance?  Third chance?  I still thought it was worth it.

“Okay,” he said finally.  “I’ll tell you everything, shit I’ve never told another soul. I don’t care anymore, I just want you to trust me.  I just want you to be mine.” His voice lowered even more. “You remind me of some dreams I had.”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll give you another chance. I’ve wanted to for a while. I want you too, Jake.”  I pushed his chest at his intake of breath.  “But don’t fuck it up.”

He looked very serious.  “I can’t promise that I won’t fuck it up. That’s the truth. But I can promise that I don’t want to fuck it up and if I do, I will do anything to fix it.”

Those were not the most soothing words. But they sounded like they were honest. Oh, what was I going to do with my sad, noble, artist-lawyer neighbor?

Kiss him, of course.

I got up on my tiptoes, reaching behind his neck. He looked at me for a second, questioning, and then stepped forward, collapsing his plush lips into mine, grasping me tightly in his suited arms, kissing me hard. I kissed him back equally forcefully, holding his head to mine, running my fingers through his hair, mussing it up. Oh, he smelled good. He felt good. He felt like home. I loved his lips, his tongue, the inside of his mouth, his neck, the way he held me.

I’d missed him. And all I was thinking about was how good this felt to be held by him.

But then I heard a familiar male voice call out, “Lucy?”

Jake and I broke apart.

“God you always were a filthy slut. What’s up with this?” Carlos was standing there, glaring at us. 

I lost it.

“And you were always an asshole,” I snarled back at him.

“At least I didn’t perjure myself. You fucking liar,” he said, pointing at Jake. “You totally committed perjury.”

“No, Carlos, he didn’t. We were broken up.”

“Whatever. I know what I just saw. It didn’t look like you were broken up to me.”

And with that, Carlos gave me a nasty smirk and said, “See you here again soon.” Then he walked away.

Fuck.

Jake and I watched Carlos saunter down the hallway, Jake super pissed. “He knows about us. I was trying to avoid that exact thing.
Fuck
.”

I shook my head and put my hand on my hip. “You know what? I’m glad.” He looked at me, surprised. “I don’t like to hide things. With me, what you see is what you get. I am who I am and I’m proud of it. And I’m proud of being with you. You’re good for my son.  So screw him.”

Jake smiled his wan, sad smile. “I suppose it’s too late now, anyway.” He pulled out his phone and looked at the time. “I guess I’ll go back to the office.”

I shook my head and grabbed his hand, pulling him to me. “Oh no you don’t.”  I stepped way into his space, putting my finger on his chest. “This is the day you get a quickie before you go back to the office. And you’re going to show me your house because I’ve never seen it.”

His eyes flashed. He nodded, not saying anything.  Unusual.  I guess I’d stunned him into silence. I went to go and leave, but before I could turn to go down the halls to find our cars, he grabbed me, hard, slamming me into him. Hand on my ass, hand on my shoulder, he kissed me like it was his life’s work. Like he was creating a moment with me.

And for the second time in that historic courthouse hallway, heels on the terracotta tile, I lost myself with him. In him, the taste of his tongue, his seductive smell, the feeling of his hard, athletic body.  People walked up and down the hallway, clattering their rollaway briefcases and their shoes. These sounds barely registered in my consciousness. I got lost—or maybe he was lost—but we both found each other.

He might be mine now.

Suddenly propelled to get a move on, we split apart, kissed again really quickly, and then with a hand squeeze to say goodbye, breathlessly headed to our cars.

We drove in separate cars to the same place. As I drove home, I called Amelia and told her.  Again, I wasn’t going to keep anything from my attorney if it would hurt Rob.  I told her that Jake had testified truthfully, but we might have gotten back together afterwards and Carlos saw.  She gasped and said she would do damage control.  I wasn’t sure what that would be, but I was grateful for her help.

Once I parked in front of the duplex, no private investigator in sight, I got out of my car, feeling electrified and turned on. As in, really fucking heated. Wet. Wanting to be naked with him.

But I had to be a mom first.

Jake pulled up right after me and I went over to him. “Let me check in on Roberto and I’ll be over.” 

He nodded and looked like he was feeling about the same way I was, like he was going to explode if he wasn’t touching me. But he didn’t touch me anywhere except my hand, holding it. He walked with me over to the duplex and then let go of my hand, looking at me.

“I’ll be just a minute.”

“Be fast,” he ordered, and then he went and unlocked his home.

I walked into my house and called in to Sara, who’d been watching Rob during the hearing, so grateful for her help. She was the only one available at the last minute.  I’d lucked out that she was going to work late tonight at Macy’s, so she could help me. Holiday hours.

When I walked into the living room, Rob was sitting on the couch reading a book and Sara was reading something on her tablet.

“Hey, guys.”

Despite being interrupted from his reading, Rob smiled at me.  “Hi, Mom.”

I looked over at him. “You good, mijo?”

“Yep. Tía and I went to the park and came back and now we’re reading.”

“Sounds good,” I responded, grateful for the awesome free babysitting.

“How did it go?” Sara asked in a low voice, getting up. She walked with me into the kitchen before I started talking.

“Carlos basically lost,” I told her, “and Jake and I made up. But then Carlos caught us in the hallway so he thinks that Jake lied on the stand.”

“Huh?” She had a look on her face of utter bewilderment.

I realized that I hadn’t told my friend everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

“I’ll explain, but right now, Sara, can you watch Rob for just a little bit longer?” I was begging. “Like less than an hour? Jake has to go back to work. I need to go talk to him.”

“By talk you mean—” she started, suggestively.

“I hope so,” I giggled.

She laughed. “Go get him, mama. I’ll watch Roberto.”

“I’ll be back in a little bit, mijo,” I called to Rob. “Just a little bit more.”

“Uh-huh,” he muttered, his nose back in the book. Clearly he was my kid, lost in his reading.

I knocked on Jake’s door, feeling tentative, because I’d never been inside his place. The door opened. He stood there, hot, still in his perfect suit.

“Come on in, Lucy.”

He opened the door the whole way and I stepped inside, looking around. His place was basically the same layout as mine, except reversed. As I expected, there wasn’t much in the way of furnishings, just a table and chairs in the dining area, a couch and a coffee table in front of the television, and not much else. Clean and orderly. Nothing on the walls.  This made it seem light and airy, though, rather than depressing. Minimalist to the utmost degree.

But this was his space.  Even temporary, it was him.  More so than his depressingly stark den of an office.  He stood in the room and shrugged.

“Looks the same as yours, no? I only moved what I needed here and put the rest in storage.”

“Tour, guapo. I want to see it.”

He grinned. “Well, this is the living room.”

I nodded. “Duh.”

He took my hand, holding it lightly, his hand bigger than mine. I pulled his hand up to my lips and kissed it, noticing how long his fingers were, how sensuous his artist’s hands were.  Nails well kept, prominent veins.  God I wanted them on me again.

“I sleep in here,” he said, pointing to the master, “and paint in here.”

We stepped into the second bedroom.

Two large tables, one bare but paint-splattered, the other stacked neatly with large pads of paper, jars with paintbrushes sticking out, paint tubes, colored pencils, charcoal, markers, and other art supplies made it clear that yeah, he did paint.

This was more than just another room to him.  He made a place for his art here.

He walked me past canvases stacked against the walls and an easel, to the table with the art supplies.  Pausing for a moment, he fingered the cover of a large pad of paper on top.

“These are my drawings of you.”

Then he handed it to me, his eyes piercingly blue.

For a moment, I just stood there, grasping it with both hands, looking down at it, wanting to open it and unwilling to breach his privacy.

I knew how it felt as a writer to show someone something you create.  Would they judge?  Would they shame me for thinking this way?  Would they make fun of it?  Of me?

It took trust to show someone else your art.  Trust that someone would connect with it and not rip it apart.  And when you stood there, next to the person who created the art and looked at their eyes and saw the breath escape their lips as they had that delicious pain of
being seen
?  Well,
that
was intimacy.

Letting someone know you, all the parts of you, not just the parts that you want them to see. He was giving me a piece of himself that he didn’t even know that he had to give. I wanted to accept it, to allow him in. I gently set the tablet on the empty table, perched on a stool, and opened up the cover. Then I reacted viscerally.

The first picture depicted my face. Just my face. With very few lines, he’d captured the curves of my jaw, the angle of my nose, the line of my brow. My hair was suggested with just a few quick strokes. I looked calm, reposed.

And beautiful.

I turned the page.

The second picture illustrated just my lips. My full bottom lip, slightly pouting. My upper one separated from the bottom. The hint of my teeth beneath.