Page 78 of Five Stolen Rings
Kissing Jack is not like kissing anyone else. He’s not even kissing me back at this exact moment, and I still can tell the difference.
I break away from him, placing my hands on his shoulders and stepping back so I can look him in the eye.
“You’re in, or you’re out,” I say. I take a deep breath and then go on. “I’m sorry I can’t promise to give you time to come around on your own.”
The Serenity Prayer once again drifts through my mind—the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I know the difference. I can’t change Jack; I can’t force him to get past his hang-ups, and it would be stupid to try. I’m not going to put my life on hold for something that might never happen.
I have things to do; I have a new person to become. And I haven’t met her yet, but I can already tell she’s going to be pretty great. She’ll know how to get up when she falls. She’ll understand what’s her fault and what isn’t.
She’ll understand those things because I’ll tell her, every day, in the mirror.
My grip on Jack’s shoulders tightens as he looks down at me, his gaze dancing over my face. I’m just opening my mouth to go on when he speaks.
“I’m in,” he breathes.
I freeze as my heart leaps. “I—are you sure?” It’s all I can manage.
“As sure as I’m capable of,” he says, and the most incredible thing happens then: a smile stretches across his face, so brilliant and genuine that it’s like the sun is rising from below the horizon. “But—areyousure?”
I almost cry out when that smile disappears.
“Are you sure?” he says again, looking seriously at me. His hands grasp my waist and tug me closer, snaking around me when our bodies collide. “I want to love you, Princess,” he says hoarsely. “I want to worship you. Are you ready for that?”
“No,” I say firmly as my mind reels and my heart flutters like crazy. “You will kindly take things as slow as I need, or I will steal every one of Maude Ellery’s portraits and hang them all in your bedroom.”
His dark eyes dance with laughter as his lips curl into a grin. “Breaking out the big guns, I see.”
I slide my hands up his chest and slowly twine my arms around his neck. “Absolutely. I know what it takes to keep you in check.”
His grin widens as he leans down, his lips brushing lightly over mine. “Do you?”
I nod and kiss him again, leaning into him now; my arms tighten as I push my hands into his hair. He kisses me back, his lips taking over as they move with mine, hungry and full of longing—and I simply don’t think it’s possible for anyone else on the face of this planet to kiss me the way Jack does. No one else could hold me like this—tightly, desperately, yet somehow gently, as though I might break.
I won’t. I might bend sometimes; I might stumble and fall and scrape my knees. But no matter what happens, I won’t break.
Irefuseto break.
I appreciate his care all the same, the way his hands cradle my face tenderly, the way he gasps for breath like he would rather continue kissing me than break apart for even a second.
“You taste like apple pie,” he murmurs a moment later, something dazed in his words. “Better than apple pie. How is it possible—” But then his lips are on mine again, voices forgotten, the strokes of his mouth devouring as he deepens the kiss.
Above our heads, I imagine, our mingled breaths float lazily into the night sky to dance with the stars.
STELLA || TWO YEARS AGO
La Luna, California, is in shambles.
I won’t say it’s completely destroyed, because parts of it aren’t. Parts of the city—the ones with seismically sound buildings—are more or less fine.
But our little community, a hidden treasure of the Bay Area, perches right on the San Andreas fault; the earthquake that hit early this morning was the worst we’ve had since the seventies. So while some parts of the city are fine, other parts have crumbled.
Several people have died; dozens more are injured. But even the ones who’ve survived—many of them have been left homeless, adrift, with nowhere to go.
I sigh and wipe the sweat from my forehead with one grimy arm before bending down to pick up the box in front of me. As much as I tell myself to lift with my legs, it doesn’t work; I do not have alift-with-your-legsbody. So I wrestlethe giant box of books out of the room using my arms and back only, shuffling out into the hallway.
“I think that’s it,” I say to my neighbor Mr. Mackie. Our building was spared the worst, thank goodness, but he has an entire library room that fared poorly. He’s in his sixties, and he has a bad back, so when he knocked on my door and asked for help getting his place back in order, I said yes.
