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We must be our own before we can be another’s. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
She loved him completely, simply, unconditionally, and she knew that, as surely as her heart beat, he felt the same about her.
bridesmaid. Joey Greer, his heart and soul for as long as he could remember, strutted down the aisle.
Jax put his hand over his heart, and he watched her eyes widen, those lips part. It was a gesture they’d developed in high school. A secret “I love you” across the classroom or the dinner table. Something that was just theirs. And he was determined to earn it back.
“Joey.” There it was. Her name on his lips. A prayer and a curse.
But Joey Greer belonged to no man.
YES.
The woman was born to make him insane.
Jax was starting to realize that no matter how long he knew her, he would always get this kick-start to his heart every time she walked in a room.
That two beings could be so connected without technology, without words. To her, that was the miracle.
Gia had her yoga, and Joey had her solitary rides. Just her, a horse, and Mother Nature. This was her window of sanity in days otherwise packed with work and responsibility.
“Fine. I promise,”
“Why do you even care anyway?”
“Because I never stopped loving you. You’re it for me.”
But gone were the days she’d shared with the carefree boy, and now, in his place was a dangerous man.
Because her dreams of independence, of success, would be funded by the man who abandoned her. Her success would be his. Just another string binding them together.
But he grinned as he tossed his phone back on the desk. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to be home, he thought. Being here to see his brothers settle into married life? Watching his mother shed the grief she’d carried since his father’s death? It was good for the soul.
Maybe when I’m touching you, everything feels better for just a second until the next breath when I need more.”
What did matter is we took a moment, a slice of a day, and did with it exactly as we wished. A lesson I could never iterate in a father’s lecture but one so essential to the way a man lives. Find your slice and live it.
She was a queen, a witch, and he was her devoted servant.
I’d learned long ago that actions spoke louder than words with my Phoebe. A man could say “I love you” ‘til he was blue in the face, but send her out on the porch with fresh lemonade while I do the dishes or surprise her with a ridiculous and completely sappy bouquet of flowers picked in the fields, and she heard me loud and clear.
Now, when the boys get caught doing something so stupid you have to wonder if they’ve had a head trauma, I remember Cayuga Lake and the Livestock Auction, and I know what it’s like to want to jump head first into freedom.
