The Reluctant Romantics Box Set (The Fall, The Mind, The Heart)

“You arrogant ass!” I took two steps and nailed her to the back of her bedroom door with my hips and mouth. There wasn’t an ounce of resistance in her posture as she returned my kiss and pulled me impossibly closer, the way she often did. I slid my tongue along the seam of her lips, and she moaned eagerly into my mouth. With both hands, I cupped her ass and rubbed my hard cock against her. “Feel that?”

She broke from my kiss suddenly, her eyes wide. I stood alarmed as I thought of anything that might have set her off. She wiped her face with her hands. Confused and knowing we’d gone so much further sexually; I took a step back.

“What—”

“You better go check on that party,” she said, failing to hi

de the shakiness in her voice.

“Okay,” I said as I let my patience filter throughout my body. As much as I’d tried to earn her trust, I knew it had to come from her naturally. I turned to leave and heard her faintly whisper my name as she turned off the porch light and stepped into her bedroom.

“Jack.”

“Yeah?”

“Can I still be your dance partner?”

I hid my smile. “If you want to.”

“I do.”

“Then you are,” I said, forcing my feet away because I had no choice. “Goodnight.”

“Night, Jack.”

I closed my eyes after her whisper because I loved the way she said my name, especially in the dark.

Jack: Good morning, beautiful.

Rose: Morning, handsome. Rap & R&B 101 Toni Braxton, You’re Making me High.

Days after the party and full of jumbled emotions and stress, I decided to hide from the world in my own special place. Between my late hours and Jack’s busy schedule at the center, we’d been unable to connect since our parting on my porch. I’d used the time to focus all my energy on the hospital and last minute details pertaining to the center. My to-do list was endless, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep up.

Jack had been right about my need to escape. As much as I fought him on it, our late night talk about his endless adventures had lit a curious fire inside of me. As many dreams as I’d realized in my career and as happy as I was with my progress, the idea of taking off to explore the world outside of the one I’d lived in for so long seemed like an unreachable dream. Instead of doing something rash, I settled for a different kind of escape.

A few acres away from my house behind a row of trees lay a small creek with a tiny clearing of grass big enough for me to stretch lazy-cat style on my favorite quilt. I decided to spend the surprisingly cool day under the warm sun with a paperback, ignoring everyone. I’d left my phone at home along with an unfinished list of things I had to get done but decided to hell with it all. I was head spent and desperately needed a break. Books did that for me. It was my favorite way of ignoring the world and living in someone else’s. No movie, not even my beloved rap music, was as consuming as being locked in the pages of a good romance or thriller. I looked down and my tattered and tarnished copy of Anne of Green Gables and smiled at it fondly. It had been my first love affair, and I’ll never forget the emotions that stirred inside of me during my first reading. Over the years, I’d read hundreds if not thousands of books, but that book would forever be my favorite. I must have read my paperback a hundred times, and the wear on it proved as much. There was a jelly stain on page thirty-three, and I had accidentally torn page one hundred and ninety but had taped it back together. Some may just throw out a book as used as my copy and buy a new one, but if there was ever a possession I cherished and couldn’t live without, it was the book I held. Not only was it a reminder of my youth, but a reminder of a more wistful and hopeful version of myself. I’d fallen in love within the pages of this book and each time I closed it, I would spend hours in silence, daydreaming of a future love of my own, wondering who my Gilbert Blythe would be. I figured, if an outspoken girl with red hair and freckles could capture a man’s heart, one day I too could be gifted the same thing.

I lay in the sun, the distant trees gracing me with just enough shade to comfortably see the pages.

It was absolutely perfect September weather, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Not even the excitement of surgery or the feel of the scalpel appealed to me as much as staying exactly where I was at that moment. I spent a few minutes staring at the faded cover, trying to remember the last time I’d read it. After a while, it finally came to me.

I was in my first year of medical school. David had just shredded my heart, and I’d just been told he was going to marry someone else. I’d picked up my book and read without stopping in full-fledged denial until page—I flipped through to see the wrinkled page where an hour or six of tears had accrued and found it—two hundred and six. On page two hundred and six, I’d mourned the five years of life I’d spent with a man I thought was my Gilbert Blythe. I spent hours in my room with the book cradled to my chest, screaming into my pillow about the injustices of love. I’d thought David was the loss of my life.

And then, both figuratively and literally, I turned the page only to suffer another.

I looked up at the cloud-filled sky with my book full of memories clutched to my chest. Suddenly, I felt like I’d lived so much life, tired in young bones, and wary of anything else that could taint the girl I once was.

Was she still in there? The girl full of love’s ambition, full of life, and never-ending hope of a future filled with moments to latch on to and relive? I’d had those moments. I’d had them. I’d been so lucky.

Had she fled from me to a place where nothing else could hurt her or was she still in there? I missed her.

“What’s going on in that beautiful head of yours, woman? And why exactly are you hiding?”

I smiled at the clouds.

Cajun.

I didn’t bother looking his way as he made himself comfortable on my quilt, his head next to mine.