Can't Get Enough (Skyland, #3)

by Kennedy Ryan

For the ones who have used your magic to lift, protect, and illuminate everybody else… rest is our new resistance. Rest & shine, my loves. Rest & shine.

“A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her own destiny.” —Mary McLeod Bethune, educator, philanthropist, activist

I’m only now realizing that often when people say “it’s funny,” they really mean that it’s… sad. A sad reversal of fortune. To have always been the parent. And now to be…

One of the hardest parts of aging is being the one “still standing” when everyone else has found their peace lying down.

We so rarely truly see people in their hurt. It’s even rarer not to flinch—not to look away from another’s pain.

In my twenties, I was just running. Always in the streets and for what? In my thirties, I started asking big questions and looking for answers. Now I know exactly who I am and what I want. And I can finally afford myself.”

Over his own happiness? I don’t say it aloud and neither does she, but it’s loud in the room. Is that love? Expecting him to become someone else for you? Forgo what that person knows will make them happy to be with you? Is that trade ever even?

“We are not magic,” she says. “We are resilient. It’s not a wand. It’s work. We work harder and shine brighter to survive. Excellence for us has been a matter of necessity. In a climate where less than half a percent of venture capital funding goes to Black women, women founders still perform sixty-three percent better than all-male founding teams in the first round. With those odds, we can’t leave our success to chance and we for sure can’t depend on magic.”

There are women like me who are mothering in our own ways, but have never carried a child or been a parent. We’re teachers and mentors and social workers and godmothers. We find ways to pour love into the world, to shape the world for good without bearing a child. It’s not about our wombs. It’s about our hearts and how we share them. That is bodily agency—me getting to decide what I do with my body in this life.”

The world isn’t designed for women like me. Women who’d rather be single literally for years than settle for a partner not worthy of her. A woman who doesn’t want to be a mother, and assumes the rich auntie role with panache, but occasionally feels left out on game night.

I briefly tighten my arm around her waist and dip my head to catch the scent at her neck. It’s something fresh and clean, with top notes of fuck me against a wall.

“Hooked up with anything breathing.” “Good for you,” I reply neutrally. Is she saying that to put me off? I don’t care who she fucked before. Once I have her, all other pussies and dicks will be laid to rest.

“If you wanted someone the way I want Hendrix, then you would not waste time, and you for damn sure wouldn’t be waiting on a green light from your ex.

“I been in the BYOO club.” “BYOO?”

“Bring your own orgasm.”

I imagine the long hair she wears tonight streaming over us, curtaining us as she takes the top, riding me in my bed. I have Charlotte Thomas sheets, bespoke, literally made to my specifications with twenty-two karat gold woven into the fabric, and I want to see Hendrix come all over them.

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to work with her. You have nothing to lose.”

“You’re wrong. About me having nothing to lose,” I say. “I could lose you.”

“You’d have to have me first.”

There are parts of you that want to be held, want to be needed and loved. That is just as emotionally valid as the parts of you that crave independence.

“That’s everything because that means I’m good to you and you’re good to me. Being good to you means wanting what’s best for you. If there is an upper hand, baby, I don’t want it. I know I’m asking you to take a big risk, but all I can do is promise that I’ll never try to hurt you and I’ll do everything to protect you. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you don’t regret choosing me and I’ll protect your dreams as fiercely as I chase my own.”

She didn’t regret the sacrifices she made, though. My parents had a once-in-a-lifetime love, but she knows me. She recognized that I needed more than that. That if I made the same decisions she did, I would eventually regret and resent them. She urged me to take my twenties to figure out who I was and what I would and wouldn’t settle for.”

“Well, once I figured out what I wanted and needed, I realized how few truly eligible men there were. I mean eligible for me. In my thirties I learned to be happy with myself and the life I was building. I learned to be whole.”

“If I make a mess,” he says, greed in the look that sweeps over my body, “I promise to clean it up.” “A mess?” I ask. “What do you mean? I—” “This,” he says, holding up the bottle of Macallan, “is a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bottle of whiskey.”

“No.” He doesn’t smile or laugh. “I want to pour it as an offering before I worship you.”

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” “Nothing, just… most guys complain about me asking for lube because they think it means they didn’t get me wet enough or some shit.” “The point is for us to both enjoy it, right?”

“I’m not doing a good job of this, and you’re right. I can’t assume anything, so I’m saying to you very clearly I want to make love to you as many times as humanly possible. I only want to do it with you and I would appreciate it if you would consider only doing it with me.”

“Not anymore, no, but while we did, I loved you, Zere. I want you to believe that. Every love isn’t forever. We can love people along the way. Relationships can begin and then end.”

“What is this? I’m not a jazz girl.” “It’s Miles Davis’s ‘Blue in Green.’ It’s one of Pop’s favorites songs. I love it, too.”

This and ‘In a Sentimental Mood,’ or ‘It Never Entered My Mind.’ They loved jazz.”

“Oh, God.” Hendrix’s eyes zip from her foot on my knee to my face. “You got me a unicorn.” “I know you have to find your own billion-dollar company, but this is just keeping the dream in front of you.”

You make the plan. God’ll make the way. We’ll see about that.

“I want to use the toy while you do it,” she whispers. “Is that okay? Some men don’t like it when—” “Why the hell you talking about ‘some men’ when you fucking me? Get the damn toy, Hen, and don’t bring those motherfuckers in our bed again.”

Had no idea emotion could overtake reason and wisdom and have you risking it all in a public place with a party just beyond an unlocked door, or leave you surrendering everything when it feels like you are the only two people on Earth. I didn’t know it could be this good, but as I shout her name, release all the love I haven’t yet put into words, into her beautiful body, now I know. And nothing else—no one else—will ever do.

“Sure. I mean, not in a long time, but I know it. The person says they see two sets of footprints, but at the lowest times of their life, it’s just one set.”

“But I want to give you everything, Hen. You work hard. Let me make things soft for you.”

“Falling in love with you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” I tell her. “It happened before I even realized it. I just knew you were the most fascinating woman I’d ever met and I wanted to know you. I wanted us to be friends, and then I wanted us to be everything.”

Staying together will hold new challenges, but that unassailable joy I saw in Hendrix out on that dance floor the night we met tells me there is no one I’d rather face hard times with. The world can take its best shots. My girl’s a fighter, and when she’s knocked down she gets back up. I want to stand with her in her convictions. I want to hold her when grief or sorrow knocks at her door. I want to dance with her when life serves up celebrations.

I wasn’t looking for this—what we have, what we’re building—because I didn’t know it was possible. Not for me, but this woman had me looking, had me searching, had me chasing. I caught her. She caught me. And now, thank God, there’s no letting go.

“Let her walk into every room like a hymn sung high, a Black woman named Beloved, hips swaying like the gospel beat she was born to… I want love to arrive freely for her— like light breaking into a room at dawn, gentle but sure, a thing hers without labor.” —Frederick T. Joseph, “A Black Woman Named Beloved”

“I want my love to be the most extravagant gift I ever give you,” he whispers, his voice deep and reverent. “I want it to be outrageously unconditional. I want it to overflow and spill into every crevice of your life, every corner of your heart because that’s what you do for me. You overwhelm me, Hendrix.”

This one’s for the girls. Who are fighting through fire, foraging for their ferocity for the first time. For the girls rediscovering their strength that they have buried under servitude.

This one’s for the girls… Who have been pushed down, beat down, or put down, because they didn’t want you to discover how strong you truly are.

This one’s for the girls… Whose lives are dedicated to those they love, with joy, without recipr...

This one’s for the girls… Who extend grace and compassion to everyone else, making allowances for others’ behavior, but are quick to find fault with and disparage yourselves.

This one’s for the girls… Who were told you were too much or too little, too boisterous or too broken, and walk around minimizing or masking who you are to ensure acceptance.

This one’s for the girls… Who need a reminder of what a masterpiece looks like… a reminder that you can look internally and in the mirror and discover your true potential and your divinely crafted beauty, and fall...

This one’s for the girls… Who don’t need a partner to complete their lives or justify their worth, but whose powerful presence and radiance att...

This one’s for the girls… Whose hearts cried out for understanding, for compassion, and received this—a symbol of solidarity, a love letter—to celeb...