Back out on the sidewalk, it occurred to her that they’d had sex twice today. And twice yesterday. And twice the day before that. It had been a three-day weekend on account of the holiday—during the preceding week they’d only seen each other twice—but still. “Do you think we’re having too much sex?”
“Uh, no?” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “Do you think we’re having too much sex?”
“No, not really. I’m just thinking I’ve basically never had this much sex before. Or had sex at this rate, I mean. With this frequency. Whatever—you know what I mean.” Even at the beginnings of relationships, in the flush of new love and new lust, she had never had this much sex.
He chuckled. “It’s probably because we’re both so sex-starved.”
“Right.” Although she’d had much longer dry spells between relationships. But no. He was right. They were in the right place at the right time. They were attracted to each other and shared the same outlook on what that meant—and didn’t mean.
“But do you think we should cool it?” he asked.
She didn’t want to cool it. But would it be harder to stop later, if they kept going at it this furiously?
They had arrived back at the Mermaid. She shook her head. She was overthinking this. What had happened to not letting her brain get bogged down with worries and junk? So she smiled at him. “No. I do not think we should cool it.”
He smiled back. “Good.” He saluted and started backing away.
For some stupid reason, this walking-backward thing he did was hella sexy. Like he knew it was time to go, but he wanted to keep looking at her? Or maybe that was overthinking, too. She ran a hand over her scalp, like she could physically calm her overheated mind.
His gaze followed her hand. “I like your hair, Dr. Walsh.”
“I like your hair, too, Mr. Ramsey.”
It wasn’t until he got almost all the way home that Jake realized with a thud in his gut that he hadn’t paid any attention to Jamila’s prayer at dinner.
He wasn’t sure what made him think of it now. He was just walking across the dark beach, still basking in the glow of the definitely-not-playing-doctor sex he’d just had. He’d forgotten to leave his porch light on, so it was darker than usual. He rounded the outcropping and looked up, and it hit him.
Usually the waves came with a warning, but not always. He’d grown familiar with the triggers, and with the subsequent little tells in his body. Seeing someone he hadn’t seen for a long time. Hearing them say, “How are you?” Feeling his shoulders tense.
But sometimes they just came, like a freak storm from out of nowhere.
And sometimes, maybe, he made them come.
Because they were his due.
Because he forgot sometimes, and that was the worst thing of all.
He hated those fucking prayers. He dreaded them. He had to work hard not to punch the table during them.
He knew, with his rational mind, that Jamila meant well. Intellectually, he could even appreciate that she didn’t try to paper over the past. She was kind. She loved his dad—and him. She understood that her happiness was conditional on their having lost Mom, and she didn’t try to pretend otherwise.
But Goddammit, he hated it when she invoked Jude. She sometimes said something generic, something about missing loved ones who were gone. But sometimes she got rolling and got all specific. Her first year together with his dad, she’d made what felt like an endless speech, asking God to look after Jude, and he’d wanted to stand up and scream. Where had God been when Jude was alive? When Jude was hooked up to so many machines he looked more like a robot than a little boy? Or when Jake decided to wait until the trip to London to get him the flu shot? Where the hell had God been that day?
He’d calmed down somewhat in subsequent years, because he’d learned to anticipate it. He would do an internal version of plugging his ears and saying La la la I can’t hear you as he said his own prayer of thanks. He thought about his boy and thanked the God he wasn’t sure if he believed in for his nine months and thirteen days with Jude. It had become his own thing, his own little silent Thanksgiving ritual.
So what the hell had happened to him tonight? He’d been dreading the prayer, as usual. He distinctly remembered sitting in the kitchen, playing with the label of his beer, and fretting about it as dinner drew near.
But then…what? He’d been too busy holding Nora’s hand like a schoolboy with a crush to even notice it happening right in front of him? He’d let his lust crowd out his tradition of remembering his boy at Thanksgiving?
Usually, when the waves came, he rushed home. Partly so he could freak out in private. But also because he had found that sitting by the lake, by the real waves, helped. Sometimes, when it was really bad, he’d go into the water. The waves there were stronger than the waves inside him. He could sync his breathing to them, and eventually they would overpower the storm inside him. He could sit until the only waves left were the ones outside his body. Until order was restored.
But that was assuming he wanted the waves to stop. That he deserved for them to stop.
He stopped walking as his face heated. Sometimes, when he thought back to laying his hands on Jude’s forehead that first night, his own skin heated in some kind of macabre sensory echo. Jude had been like a little furnace as Jake got him out of his crib, gave him some Tylenol, and sat with him in the rocking chair waiting for the medicine to kick in.
Jake’s breathing grew short, just like Jude’s had that night as he’d gotten hotter and hotter.
Panic. Waking Kerrie. Calling Sawyer, who gave them a police escort to the hospital in Zurich.
He felt it now as though no time had passed. Stumbled forward as he fought the urge to double over on the sand. He needed to go inside. Sitting by the lake would help. Would lessen the attack. But if he was just going to fucking forget about his boy, his child, he deserved the full brunt of what was coming for him.
He dragged himself up the steps and into the cottage to hunker down.
Chapter Fourteen
Surprise! We’re here!
The next weekend, Nora was having a lazy Sunday afternoon in the back parlor of the inn when the text from her sister arrived. She eyed it with suspicion.
She was about to text back something along the lines of What are you talking about? when the bell on the front desk started ringing nonstop.
Uh-oh. That couldn’t be—
“Happy Walsh-giving!” Aiden, one of her nephews, shouted when she appeared in the reception area.
Holy crap. Her sister was here with her kids.
“Wow, when you said mermaid, you weren’t kidding.”
And her grandma.
Who was in a wheelchair?
Nora blinked as they all swarmed her with hugs and exclamations of “Happy Walsh-giving!”
“What are you guys doing here?” she asked after she had been passed around and hugged by all. She frowned at her grandma. “And what’s with the wheel—”
“You didn’t honestly think we were going to let you skip out on Walsh-giving, did you?” Her grandma swatted her on the arm.
Nora was on duty at the inn, covering Eve and Sawyer’s vacation. She’d explained to her family why she couldn’t attend Walsh-giving in Toronto this year, and after an initial flurry of objections, they’d acquiesced pretty easily.