“Hopefully, they aren’t past their expiry date.”
He tried to tear open the condom wrapper but he couldn’t grasp it in his hand. I wondered how much he couldn’t do. I’d never noticed so much when we were at the bar but then maybe he made it like that, wanting to hide his weakness.
I took the condom from him and tore it open, then rolled it onto his cock.
“Sorry, I’m not much of a man,” he said. “Can’t even open a bloody condom wrapper”
I ran my fingers along his thick, hard cock. “You’ll do,” I said with a cheeky grin.
Chapter 21 Gina
JACKSON WAS SILENT the next morning. Not in an awkward way but in the way that he was when he had something on his mind. I made him coffee but he didn’t want any food.
“Are you going to have the surgery?” I asked.
He shrugged and I left it at that.
I had a million other questions I wanted to ask about what this had all meant. It wasn’t just a casual fling or a one-night stand. It couldn’t be like that.
After we had coffee, I tried to work out what was going on in his head. He didn’t look at me, though. His expression was unreadable.
He walked around my apartment, looking at the books on my shelves. I had so much stuff around the place I didn’t want him to see. Parts of me I’d have hidden if I’d thought last night would’ve ended like this.
“I’m not snooping,” he said as if he read my thoughts. “I just wanted to check out your books. They say a lot about a person.”
I wondered what my bookshelves said. I read all kinds of things from romance to business books and anything that caught my fancy.
“That’s okay,” I said. Although my nerves were on edge, wondering what he’d find and what he was thinking.
He picked up the teddy bear that Drew gave me and looked at it as though it held the answers he was looking for. Seeing him hold it like that just reinforced what Drew had said: the bear really did look like Jackson.
“No work today?”
“It’s Saturday.” I guess when you didn’t work Monday to Friday, the days blurred into one. You didn’t have weekends to hold out for.
“How’s it going?”
“Just the usual.”
I didn’t want to talk about work but Jackson was working up to something. He just needed time.
He took a book off the shelf and flicked through the pages.
“We can’t keep doing this,” he said. “Not as a regular thing.”
That struck me in the belly. Those were the last words I wanted him to say.
“Not that it wasn’t good and not that I don’t want to do it again. I mean, I’m not using you just for sex. For a bootie call, as the kids say. I want something more than that and I know you do too. If it’s going to be anything between us, I need to sort my shit out first. It might take a while. Will you wait?”
I nodded. If that’s what he wanted, I’d wait forever.
His mind ticked over with something. I didn’t want to interfere with that or push him. He’d make the decision on his own, he had to do that.
“Because I will do it, Gina. I’ll make everything right for us.”
Before he left, he kissed me goodbye. If I’d had any doubt about his words, his kiss left nothing unsaid. It wasn’t a brush-off but a promise.
Chapter 22 Jackson