Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,125
was seeing Knightley differently, and I knew I could never dismiss him as just a handsome charmer ever again.
“You know what was the hardest part, outside of losing Jess, of course?” he asked.
I shook my head. It was all hard, miserably, awfully, brutally, wrenchingly hard. I’d never really broken it down into a hierarchy of pain.
“Watching her get smaller and smaller,” he said. His voice was soft. “I used to go into her room when she was sleeping, and I’d put my fingers around her wrist to see if it had gotten any smaller. Some days I could convince myself that she hadn’t lost any weight, but other days I couldn’t lie to myself, and I knew she was shrinking, disappearing before my eyes, and there was nothing I could do to stop the cancer from siphoning off the rambunctious, loud Jess I knew and leaving this fragile little bird in her place.”
Yeah, I remembered. My mom had always had feminine curves, as a love of cake will do to a gal, but when she got sick, the pounds had swiftly slipped off her, leaving her skin sagging around her bones and her eyes sunken in her bald head. It had been a struggle for my mom, who, while not vain, had always felt confident in her femininity. The disease had stripped her of that. My throat got tight at the memory of those last days with her, because even while knowing that she would be out of pain when she passed, I selfishly hadn’t wanted to say goodbye.
“Sorry,” I choked. I waved my hand as if I could wave away the emotions that were suffocating me. I rested my head on my folded arms, trying to breathe through it.
“Nah, it’s okay,” he said. “I get it.” He put his hand on my back and ran it up and down my spine in a comforting gesture.
“My memories of Jess are so bittersweet,” he said. “Bitter because there are no more, but sweet because they keep her alive in my heart and mind and I treasure that, even though it hurts.”
That was it, exactly. I had never, not in all my years of working for the ACC, met someone who put into words what I felt so precisely. Never could I ever have imagined that the person most likely to understand me so completely would be Jason Knightley.
I lifted my head and turned toward him. He didn’t move, so I leaned forward and put my arms around him. We had just shared so much grief and pain that I desperately needed to feel anchored to something or someone. I needed help to step back from the ledge of grief that made me want to jump and wallow in the darkness.
A shudder rippled through me as I tried to get it together. He pulled me in close and tight. We huddled like survivors after a storm, trying to assess the damage while getting our bearings. I could feel his heart beat in time with mine, our breath mingling. The amber-resin scent of him wrapped around me like an invisible cord, lashing me to him. I wanted to stay there forever, but I couldn’t.
I pulled back, forcing myself to let go of him. He was a coworker. We had a major ask to nail down in the next few days. These were lines that couldn’t be crossed.
“Sorry,” I said. I fisted my hands and drew them toward my middle to keep myself from reaching for him again.
“Hey, it’s okay. We shared some pretty heavy-duty stuff. It’s perfectly normal to get caught up in the moment.”
I turned away and drew up my knees, tucking myself into a little ball of self-containment. I had this. I could resist the urge to cling to him, to bury my face in the curve of his neck, to weep all over his chest, to place my mouth on his. Really, I could.
“So hugging the stuffing out of you is the normal reaction from women when you tell them about your sister?” I teased, trying to break the tension between us.
He leaned back. His eyes met mine, and I noticed they were as blue and clear as the sky above. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never told anyone about Jess before, not even Aidan.”
Whoa. I had no idea what to say to that, so I said nothing.
He stood and held out his hand. “Come on—Severin might be here soon,” he said.