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

It’s funny how the tables turn. 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.

She is luminous with skin the color of rich cocoa.

Hendrix has a homegrown thickness that is tight in some places and voluptuous in others.

I’ve been forcing myself to not look down there where Hendrix stands alone, but now I can’t stop myself. Not because she’s beautiful. She definitely is, but that’s not why I sat down beside her at the bar. After watching her enthrall a group of people into dancing to her tune, I was drawn to the woman who so effortlessly compelled half the people at my party to eat from the palm of her hand. For the last twenty years identifying the exceptional and capitalizing on it has been my job. It’s an impossible habit to break, and Hendrix was much too exceptional to ignore.

Maverick and I are like soldiers trading war stories, only his battles are behind him. I’m still in the trenches. In many ways, just getting started.

When I drop my eyes from the spectacle overhead I meet Maverick’s considering stare. He almost seems to silently ask if I’m okay, if I’m better now. I smile and raise my glass to him, allowing the warmth of his answering grin to thaw out those last few corners that froze inside when I talked to my mother. The petrified places that always leave me shivering and uncertain.

grief is a wave, washing in and washing out. Sometimes calm, and others a riptide.

I’m used to it. Why is it so hard to believe there are women in the world who don’t want to act as host for a human who may never fully appreciate their sacrifices, drains their hard-earned money, and forces them to make the difficult choices that men, even as fathers, never seem to face?

rich auntie who gets to go home to my nice, quiet expensive apartment after spoiling their kids.”

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?

I don’t know that I want to be involved yet with the Aspire Fund, but I do know that I wanted to speak to Hendrix again.

“Sometimes people want different things more than they want each other. In the long run, it’s best they go their separate ways.”

How do you articulate the ache of watching someone you love fade?

“Yes, but me and my man are the only people who get to see the bush in full bloom.”

LMAO

Judah, a dad of twin boys on the autism spectrum, is a perfect match for Soledad. They both love their kids fiercely. After all the shit her ex-husband, Edward, put her through, it’s amazing to see one of my best friends happy and finally being loved the way she deserves.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

“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.”

“See anything you like?” I consider her in the light of lamps and moonbeams with her skin warm and deep chestnut against the vibrant pink of her dress. I see something I like much more than I should.

I reach one finger under her chin to gently push her jaw closed. There’s a sizzle where our skin meets, and it burns through the thin skin of my fingertip. She slowly tilts her head until my touch falls away. The amusement drains from her striking features at the same time the smile fades from mine.

the way my mind frazzles and sharpens simultaneously when I’m talking to Hendrix, how aware I am of where she is at all times.

“My wife and her cousin are courtside.” “That’s August’s wife, right?” “Yup. Iris has their two kids with her and Lotus has our little girl. It’s a full-on estrogen production and I needed a break,” he says, belying the words with a proud grin. “But my wife is not above coming to find me if I’m gone too long.”

I MISS MY BABIES

league’s brightest players

We haven’t landed a cosmetic contract yet. That’s my personal goal; for a makeup company to want her, not to cover up her vitiligo, or to say she’s beautiful in spite of it, but to look for ways to highlight that she’s beautiful because of it.

“Yeah, it’s me. You didn’t answer my text message,” I say, and it sounds lame in my own ears because why should she? She doesn’t have to, but she always has before and I was concerned. “Just thought I’d check on you.”

“This was one time when the truth wasn’t the right thing to do—not for him. If letting him believe a lie brought him any peace at all, it was worth it. A kernel of peace was better than the whole truth.”

therapeutic fibbing.

She said sometimes there’s nothing you can do and you just have to ride it out, but sometimes you can distract them either with an activity or a different memory.”

“I don’t care if Skipper comes or not, as long as you do.”

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.”

And I’m finally admitting to myself that I want Hendrix. Bad.

“You’re mighty quiet,” she says as we approach Dan’s office. The others have already gone inside. “What are you thinking about?” All the ways to win you over.

“I’m calling you this week,” I say without preamble, and she stumbles for a second before steadying her gait. She tilts her head just the slightest bit, not enough that I can look straight into her eyes, but at an angle where I have an unobscured view of the regal arch of her cheekbone and the plushness of her lips and the heavy fringe of lashes that hide anything she might be feeling from me. “Why?” she asks. I flash her the buccaneer’s grin I reserve for when something I desire very badly is within my grasp. “Because I want to.”

I honestly think most people are gender fluid. Society just locks us into these heteronormative roles before we have a chance to consider everything on the menu.”

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.

“Ezra Stern’s school?

“I just want to see you, Hen.”

“What’re you thinking about so hard?” Hendrix asks, slanting a look at me from under long lashes. “How pretty you look without makeup,” I say. Her face turns as close to bashful as a women this bold can be. “I mean, you look pretty with it, too, of course, but you have such a natural glow.”

“You said being whole means acknowledging all our parts. And that there were parts of me that wanted to be held, want to be needed and loved.”

“I know there’s a part of you that wants to be a successful producer, to fulfill those ambitions, but is it at the cost of the other parts? The parts that might want something else? That might want someone? Will you have to sacrifice those other parts for this one?”

I imagine the long hair she wears tonight streaming over us, curtaining us as she takes the top, riding me in my bed.

HOY GINOO KO

“I am saying that.” His eyes roam the length of my body and I force myself not to squirm. “If you give me the chance, I’ll make you feel like the goddess I see you as.”

“Our future.”

“I don’t care how many people you’ve slept with, Hendrix. You’re not going to change my mind throwing that in my face. I said I’m here to negotiate our future, not to litigate your past. Or mine, for that matter.”

“I’m not going. That’s the first thing you should know,” he says. “I want to build something lasting with you.”

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.

“I’m chasing my dreams,” I finish with as much strength as I can muster. “I’m chasing you.”

“I am a chaser, Hendrix. I go after things. You won’t find a man more ambitious than me, but I’ve learned that it’s never enough,” he says, his stare burning with belief, blazing with conviction. “You can’t earn enough. You can’t achieve enough. Ambition for things and acco...

“My life won’t be measured just in what I did, but who I did it with. Who I chose to be in friendship with. In relationship with. I think that’s where real contentment is found, and I think I could find it with you.”