Her lips pressed together, and her eyes dropped to her lap. For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then she looked up, her gaze locking onto mine with a seriousness that made my chest tighten.
“I’m here because I want to be,” she said softly. “But I’m scared, Ci. I’m leaning on you too much, using you to fill a void I’m supposed to heal on my own.”
I nodded slowly, her words hitting me like a weight. “I get that. But J, I don’t want to be your rebound. I’d rather just be your friend. As far as you leaning on me? I want you to. It makes me feel less like I’m taking from you.”
“You’re not a rebound,” she said quickly, her voice firm. “I promise, you’re not. But this… whatever this is between us—it’s not something I’ve figured out yet. And I don’t think you have either.”
She wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t figured it out. All I knew was that she consumed my thoughts, my dreams, every fucking breath I took. But I didn’t want to scare her off by saying that. Ialso knew that once we crossed the line, there wasn’t any going back. I was keeping her, and I didn’t know if I was ready for that yet.
“Maybe we don’t need to figure it out right now,” I said finally. “Maybe we just… take it one step at a time. See where it goes.”
She nodded. “I can do that. One step at a time.”
The tension in the room eased slightly, but a different kind of charge took its place—the memory of the night, of the club, of her hands on me and the crowd screaming my name. Her name.
“About earlier,” I said, my voice dropping lower.
She knew exactly what I meant. A slow, knowing smile touched her lips. “What about it?”
“The club,” I said. “What happened there… I don’t think I’ve ever…”
“Let go like that?” she finished for me, a teasing glint in her eyes.
I chuckled, shaking my head. “Yeah. That.”
She laughed softly, and the sound was like a balm to my frayed nerves.
“I didn’t think you’d actually go through with it,” she admitted.
“You don’t know me as well as you think,” I said, smirking. “I don’t back down from a challenge.”
Her smile softened, and she leaned forward slightly. “I’ll admit, it was… different. Seeing you like that. Trusting me like that.”
“What about you?” I asked, my gaze steady on hers. “How did it feel to be in control?”
Her cheeks flushed slightly, and she looked away, a small laugh escaping her. “It felt… powerful. But also kind of scary. Controlling somebody like that…”
I nodded. I heard her. But I had a question. “So when’s my turn, Mistress?”
She rolled her eyes and stood. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Twenty three-Oak
I hung up the phone after leaving Jordin my daily message. My brother and parents weren’t happy about my new mindset, this desperate hope I was clinging to. But I wasn’t letting go. The moment I’d signed the divorce papers, I’d noticed her new number scribbled neatly in the corner of the last page by her lawyer. Clear as day. It was a sign. It had to be.
That was three months ago, right after the mediation. I’d called her every morning since. She never answered. I left messages. Sometimes it was a simple, “Good morning, Jordin. I hope you’re doing okay.” Other days, I rambled—apologies, explanations, confessions of how badly I’d messed up. I knew she listened because she didn’t block me, didn’t change her number. It was the smallest, thinnest thread of hope, but I was hanging from it.
Every time I left a voicemail, I pictured how her face would look when she heard it. Jordin’s face was always an open book of her emotions.
The silence on her end was its own special kind of torture, a constant, quiet agony.
I dialed her number again. It rang twice and then clicked over to voicemail. I breathed through the spike of annoyance and waited for the beep.
“Hey, Jordin. It’s me. Again. I heard this line in a poem, and it sounded like you: ‘You were the sigh before the fall. The soft place I hit on the way down.’ That’s what you were for me. Even when things were loud between us, you were still the silence I trusted. I know I broke that. And maybe you’ll never call back. But I’ll still call. Anyway... I hope you smiled at least once today.”
I hung up and stared at the phone in my hand, my knuckles white, willing it to ring. When it did, my heart jumped into my throat. But the name on the screen wasn’t hers—it was my mother.
As soon as I said hello, she started talking in the middle of a conversation like always. “Oak, darling, you can’t live in the past,” she said, her voice crisp and certain. “I’ve set you up with someone. She’s lovely, Italian, from a good family. Just meet her. It’ll be good for you to get out.”
