Wildflowers and Wide Receivers

21. Sophie

Chapter 21

Sophie

A fter getting Vivi to bed, Jonah finds me slipping into the hot tub on the back porch. My head tilts a little as he opens the sliding glass door and makes his way outside to join me.

“How’s the water?” he asks, his eyes roaming over what he can see.

“Perfect. You should get in,” I tell him, hoping he will.

He’s not wearing a swimsuit, but he has on athletic shorts. Not that I would mind him dropping both and just climbing in with me. Without hesitation, he reaches behind his head, grabs his T-shirt to pull it off, and tosses it onto one of the lounge chairs. Leaving on the shorts, he carefully swings one leg over the edge and climbs in. He slides over so he’s closer to me and not on the other side. The whirling of the jets replaces the sound of the water lapping on the shore.

“I really do love it down here,” I tell him after he settles, and I look out at the water. Tonight was a night I will never forget. As I lay under the stars with the two of them and Vivi curled up against me, she’s quickly secured a place in my heart. It really is devastating for everyone. Obviously for Vivi but for Ashley too. She will never see what this amazing little girl has become or what she’ll grow up to be. I know it’s the same for Jonah’s brother, John, but from one person who lost their mother to another, I understand.

“We do too. Especially Vivi. We’ve actually talked about maybe buying a place here so we can come more often.”

I turn back to look at him and laugh. Steam floats around him, starting to make his skin glisten. No guy should look as good as he does. It’s a crime for all other guys in the world.

“What?” he asks, one side of his mouth tipping up into a grin.

“Not many people just say, ‘Wanna buy a beach house tomorrow?’ and then do it.”

“I’m not going to apologize for working hard for what I have,” he says, flicking water my way.

“You absolutely shouldn’t. You’re living the dream of so many who wish to play a professional sport.” I flick some water back.

“Don’t think it was easy to get here because it wasn’t.”

“Oh, I’m not saying that. I'm very aware of how dedicated and hard you all work.”

I spent an entire year studying just pediatrics and sports medicine. I know without a doubt on the adult level and at the high-performing level that he is, the work on his body to keep it healthy and at its full potential is intense.

“I do love it, though,” he says as he hesitates, then brings his eyes to mine. “Thank you for talking to Vivi tonight. Sometimes she opens up to me, but not a whole lot. It’s good for her to talk about things, and I appreciate how you handle her. It means a lot to me.”

“Jonah, she’s incredible, and I know I’ve said this before, but you really are doing a wonderful job with her.”

He ducks his head to break eye contact and brings his hands to the water's surface. Dragging them back and forth, he collects his thoughts as the water flows through his fingers. Eventually, his eyes return to mine.

“Every day, it still feels surreal. She was never meant to be mine, and then one day, she was.”

My nose stings as my eyes burn.

“One day, she was,” I agree with him. Nothing I say will make him feel any differently about this situation. He feels loss, he feels scared, he feels overwhelmed, but beyond all that, he feels love for this little girl. All she needs from him is love, and she’ll turn out just fine.

“Tell me about this.” My hand drifts his way, and under the water, my fingertips brush the constellation he has tattooed on his side.

“It’s Gemini. Although the word means twins in Latin, which John and I are not, it also represents brotherly love. It has other meanings as well, but my brother . . .” He thinks about him and swallows hard. “He was a high school science teacher, and he loved astronomy. The stars were his thing.”

The stars were his thing. So much his thing that he wanted them permanently branded on his body. Oh, Jonah. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it isn’t just Vivi who experienced the loss; it’s him too. He’s lost so many people in his life.

“That’s why you take Vivi stargazing.”

“Yes. It’s stupid, but it makes me feel closer to him, and by talking about the stars, I’m still giving a piece of him to Vivi.”

“It’s not stupid. Not at all. It’s incredible. Stars, parades, ballet, sea animals, the things I don’t know, I would say you’re giving a lot of them to her.”

He drops his gaze and looks down at his hands. He’s flipped them over and is cupping the water before he spreads his fingers, and it falls through. “Most days, I feel like I’m failing her in every way.”

“Why would you think that?” I turn to face him, and our knees brush.

“I’m not what she needs. She’s different from how she was when they were alive, and I just feel like . . . I’m not enough.” He lets out a deep sigh.His honesty and the vulnerability make me want to wrap him up in my arms.

“Jonah, that’s just not true.” Reaching over, I place my hand on top of his. “And of course she’s different. Who would be the same after that?”

“You don’t understand. I wasn’t ready for this. I was barely getting by myself. That year, I had been released from Carolina. I was working so hard to make this my team, for them to want me past the one-year mark, and then John died. I mean, I’m not so far removed from reality to say that although I was twenty-four, in many ways, I was still a kid myself.

“I’d worked so hard for so long to get where I was, I rarely stopped for fun. I didn’t have the young professional experience that most have in their twenties. Yes, I had money, but all good things must come to an end at some point, and I was trying to be responsible. That night with you, my actions were so far out of my day-to-day character, yet of all the days and nights over the past couple of years, I remember that night with you the most.”

“That night was very out of character for me too, and I also remember it as if it were yesterday.”

Turning his hand over, he laces our fingers together. His hand is so much larger than mine, and I love it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel so in over my head.” He runs his other hand through his hair. The water forces it to stick up straight and be unruly. His hair, his expressive eyes, and the slightly dejected frown on his face are almost too much, and the need to comfort him is fierce.

“Every night, I lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, and wonder if I’m doing enough for her. Am I making her life worse or better? Am I disappointing them? When we stare up at the stars, I can’t help but wonder if wherever they are, can they see the same stars too?”

Grief is such a heavy emotion. There’s no timeline for how long it lingers or how often it rears its ugly head. People cope in so many different ways. I just hope that, through all the chaos and change, he’s had his moments, too.

“I thought about you over the years. A lot. I was sitting in front of your place on New Year’s Day when I called my uncle back, and he told me about John. For a split second, I thought about running back inside to you, but I couldn’t. I had to go. And going to Vivi was such a hard thing to do, but also the easiest. As much as everything overwhelmed me, I had to be numb at the same time. I had things to do and people who needed me. Funny enough, who I needed was you. I don’t know why, but you were all I wanted.”

He needed me. He wanted me. My eyes now blur with an unmistakable heartache that I didn’t get to be there for him. I would have, too.

“Oh, Jonah. I wish you would have come back inside or at least called me.”

He shakes his head. “We had just met. I couldn’t bring you into the tragedy of my life. It didn’t feel right. So instead, I played our night together over and over and over in my mind. From the dancing, to our first kiss under the fireworks, to what it felt like hearing your laughter and the other sounds you made. Those tiny moments gave me light when I was drowning in the dark.”

I don’t say anything, not that he expects me to, but he sees my eyes are glassy with emotion. I would have been there for him. I could have helped him. Shame ripples through me that I wasn’t woman enough to seek him out and ask why he didn’t show. They say pride is the killer of all good things, and my pride cost Jonah the good that he needed, as well as two years when we might have been together.

“How long has it been since you and that guy ended?” he randomly asks.

“Probably a month.”

“Good.”

“Good?” I laugh.

“Yes, because I want to hug you equally as much as I want to kiss you,” he says, his eyes lingering on my lips.

My gaze travels up his broad chest, across the tanned skin of his Adam’s apple, and over the sharp defining line of his jaw and the fullness of his lips until my eyes find his. His are roaming my face, like he’s memorizing the tiny details he doesn’t yet know. They pause on my mouth and then lock on to mine. His hazel to my blue. At this moment, I want to drown in him, as heat races down my spine and butterflies take flight in my stomach. No one has ever looked at me the way Jonah Dallmann is. The way he does.

Scooting closer, I unconsciously lift my hand to push the fallen hair back off his face, but he captures my hand and flattens it to his cheek, his eyes briefly closing at the connection.

“So why don’t you do both?” I whisper.

Laying his forehead against mine, he lets out a deep exhale and wraps his arms around me until we’re pressed together.

“I know this probably sounds completely wild to you, but I missed you.”

Surprisingly, this doesn’t sound crazy to me at all, and I feel nothing but truth and honesty when I tell him, “I missed you, too.”

We had something that night. I knew it then, and I know it now. I had convinced myself that I had made it all up, that these feelings were one-sided, and it turns out they weren’t. As I hear him say these words, the disappointment I’d felt over how things ended between us drifts away. I know why he didn’t show up that day, but tragedy aside, I wasn’t really sure how he felt about me. I only knew how I felt about him. And with that, his mouth lands on mine.

Many times over the past two years, I’ve thought about what it felt like to be kissed by Jonah. It isn’t simple, and although some of his kisses are sweet and tender, after that night, that’s not how I would normally describe them. They’re consuming. A whole-body encounter. Which is what I’m experiencing now.

Large hands have wrapped around my head, and his fingers have tangled in my hair. He’s angled me how he wants me. His lips are full and soft as they coax mine open, and his tongue tastes delicious as it dips inside to refamiliarize mine with his.

Good gracious. This man undoes me.

Time passes as Jonah takes this moment to thoroughly kiss me and make up for the loss of the past two years. He sucks my tongue into his mouth; he bites my bottom lip and then licks it to wipe away the sting, and he breathes air into my lungs. I try to think back to the last time I made out with someone just for the sake of kissing them, and it turns out it was with him.

It was only ever him.

He pulls me through the water by my waist until I float over his lap and straddle him. Just like the night we met. Yes, the water is warm, but I feel like his skin is even warmer. His hands roam over my hips, butt, and back, and everything below my waist tightens as he shifts me closer, and his hardness settles perfectly between my legs.

No one in this world has a more perfect body than Jonah Dallmann, and I take advantage by tracing the hills and valleys of his stomach, running my fingers over the individual bumps of his spine, and flat handing his broad shoulders and upper arms.

From here, his hands slide up my thighs, and his thumbs dip into the crease of where my legs meet my body. They’re so close to touching me intimately that I exhale harshly against his damp lips.

He pulls back just a little, and his eyes find mine. I’m mentally shouting the word yes at him, and by the way his mouth twitches on one side, my message is received. I want to be close to him, as close as possible. His hands then shift and both of those thumbs rub straight down the middle of me.

I’ve died and am floating away.

I don’t know what it is about Jonah. Never in my life have I ever wanted someone the way I want him. I crave the nearness and the connection with him to the point it makes me feel crazy. His skin and the way it feels and smells, the roughness of his cheek against mine, his arms when they wrap around me, and his hands when they’re on me. I want it all, and I’m almost embarrassed to say, all the time. Physically, I want to grab him and never let go. Emotionally, even though I know something is there, I’m doing my best to push that aside. I can’t think about that now. I don’t want to think about that now. After all, what good will it do if I end up leaving?