Set just before Alice’s solo contract night with Henry in Chapter 10 of Crossing the Lines, “Forever and Always” finds Jay and Alice strolling down memory lane after lunch.
Jay guided his bike one-handed. Walking, not because of an unfixable flat or an unclimbable hill but because Alice had claimed his other hand. Too nice a day to linger at their table at Oscar’s, she’d said, and definitely too nice a day to rush back to angles and metal stress fracture points.
He couldn’t disagree. She’d made his day better by slipping her hand in his and pulling him up from his chair and out the door. Three blocks and she’d kept her hold, slim fingers tucked inside his palm. He swung their linked hands, and their sidewalk shadow copied him.
Giggling, Alice bumped his shoulder. “It’s a compulsion, right? Day like today, everybody’s ten years old.”
The bank sign at the corner flashed sixty-eight degrees. More warmth than early April in Boston usually delivered. Enough so he’d left the apartment in shorts this morning despite the forty-seven-degree chill. Now a warm breeze tickled his skin. Day like today at his folks’ place, with the creek water still running ice-cold and the grassy bank sunny and warm…
“Maybe not ten. Maybe sixteen.” He lifted his chin toward a couple across the street stealing a kiss against a bakery’s sun-warmed bricks. “It’s a day to play hooky. Do something fun.” A picnic with Henry and Alice. Kisses and laughter that rolled into naked teasing until he begged for satisfaction and got it because he’d earned it. Like those magical days in February with the heat out and Alice practically living in their lap. “Too bad we can’t throw snowballs today.”
Alice tucked in closer, her arm brushing his hip on each stride. “Or walk down the middle of the street without a care.”
The snow had been sparkling all around them then, the streets empty and nearly silent. Now traffic cruised past, and crosswalks beeped their warnings, and every few minutes a thudding jackhammer echoed against the storefronts.
“Don’t give up on the dream yet.” He pointed their joined hands at the barrier up ahead. Construction fencing sprouted from the sidewalk like towering orange weeds. “We’re entering a no-go zone.”
The detour signs led them off the curb and into the street, down a tight squeeze between the bagged parking meters and the concrete blockade. The whole thing spanned no more than the parking lane, so he dragged the bike against his side and back-kicked the pedal banging his calf.
Alice knocked a stray concrete crumble out of their path and laughed. “We’re practically Jay-walking.”
Mock groaning, he raised her hand to his heart to feel the wound. Rubbing her knuckles against his whatchacallit, heart bone, he tucked away the memory to carry the rest of the day. “Yeah, I’ve never heard that one before.”
She bounced up and planted a quick kiss against his cheek. “Not from me.”
“Nope.” His skin tingled with the imprint of her lips. These moments—damn. These were the moments Henry should have, too. He and Alice should go do art museums or something. Post-sex Saturday outings. “Not from you. But you only get one, you know. I hope you used it wisely.”
“What happens if I use it again?” Devils danced in her eyes as she lifted an eyebrow.
He stumbled. Caught himself, didn’t take her down too, thank fuck. He’d steered the bike right into the danged concrete barrier as it curved to guide them back to the sidewalk. “Ugh.”
“Are you okay?” She curled around in front of him and laid her hand against his abs, her splayed fingers moving with his breaths. “Did you catch a handlebar?”
“No bars.” The honey-and-lemon of her hair urged him to take deeper breaths, make her scent part of him for the rest of the day. Sunshine and Alice cured almost anything. “Just ugh because construction blows. It’s unpredictable—messes up routes and timing, narrows the lanes, makes drivers frustrated and biking more dangerous.” Almost as bad as distracted drivers opening their doors without checking their mirrors. Of course, he’d been the distracted one this time. “And apparently I suck at walking around it when there’s a sexy woman baiting me.”
“Sorry.” She slipped her hands free, and the shine in her eyes faded. “I’ll tone down the spring giddies. Can’t be making you unsafe.” Stepping aside, she waved him forward. “What would Henry say?”
He’d say Jay was an idiot for teasing when he’d clearly hit some kinda Alice sore spot. Okay, he wouldn’t say idiot. He’d say something about not letting unintentional blunders turn sore spots into deeper hurts.
Jay reached for Alice’s hand and reclaimed his hold. She clung tight, not like she was just humoring him. “He’d absolutely say we should use the buddy system. These streets are dangerous, you know.” He navigated the curve this time and hoisted his bike back onto the sidewalk without missing a step. Take that, construction zone. “The Jersey barriers just walk right into you like wandering cows. No sense of common courtesy.”
“You grew up around cows?” Her little work heels brought her almost level with him, and the tilt of her head in the sun made her face glow. Only the twelfth time since their lunch hour started that he’d wanted to steal a kiss. “I thought my neighborhood was the only one where the streets ended at the pasture fence.”
“Trees, but they’re basically the same.” He let her laugh soak into him and quiet the butterfly nerves twitching since his teasing had poked her wrong. “Stand around in the field, suck up all the water, won’t move outta your way. So rude.” Yeah, the flush in her cheeks, that was the reward he wanted. “Plus, we didn’t even have a street. Gravel drive boy, right here.” He patted his chest with the back of her hand. Never get tired of that feeling. Even better when she was straddling him, covering his heart in her hands for balance. “You and me, we’re still, what’s the word, acc…” He scanned the block, where scarves and chunky girl jewelry dangled in the window of the next shop. “Uh, accessorizing—”
“Accessorizing?” She rapped her knuckles against him. Definite love tap. “You want to wear me like a scarf?”
Hell yes he did. Her soft thighs riding his cheeks featured in at least half of his fantasies. He ducked in close and overdid the glance left, glance right. “Not in public, Alice. Think of the children.”
The pink in her cheeks spread down her neck, and she coughed. “Nope, definitely not what I’m thinking of when we’re accessorizing. Which you say we’re doing now?”
“Sure, we’re doing that to being city folk.” He tipped his head at the block behind them with its squished-together storefronts and upstairs apartments, and at the one coming up with its bright green lawns in front of cube after cube of offices. Only the enormous numbers on the fronts made each different from the next. No forests, no pastures, and probably more people stuffed in those buildings than in his whole hometown. “You’re sure we’re not accessorizing?”
“Accustoming ourselves. Acclimating. All the ack words.” She shrugged slim shoulders, jostling him, then did it again like a cat nudging for a pet. “It’s been ten years since I moved out here for college. Pretty sure I’m citified by now. East Coast snobbery, Dad would say.” Her steps slowed as they crossed the sidewalk border between quirky shops and business campus. Third on the left, just two more blocks, and he’d have to leave her until dinner. “I came because it seemed so far away from everything I knew. Like if I stayed, my life was gonna be one big, stagnant watering hole in a field full of cow pies.” A sigh shivered down her whole body.
Stay-at-home Alice never would’ve come east, never would’ve crossed their path. He and Henry would’ve been without her forever.
She swung their hands like he’d done earlier, but neither of them giggled now. “Anyway, Boston—it’s old, but it’s new, too. Energy and innovation setting up shop next to history that goes back before my great-great-grandparents settled in the Dakotas. Out there, strangers think they know you. The guy who fixes your car went to school with your dad. Every teacher starts the year by saying you don’t look a thing like your mom.”
Hell, he knew from drowning in family history. Stories of uncle so-and-so and great-aunt such-and-such never died back home. Living up to their greatness—or at least not ending up like Great-uncle Lonnie, whose name meant “ready for battle” but who’d died when he tripped on his way down to the water hole and impaled himself on a broken branch—could be a tall order. Too tall, some days.
“Kresses have held the land my dad manages for five generations at least.” Lots of families like his up north. Not so much the monied kind, like Henry’d grown up in Maine, but working the land. Holding their patch. “First cutting down the trees and now growing ’em back up. At home, it’s like everything’s been there forever and always. Even the dead things—the shut-up paper mills, the old service station along the road nobody takes anymore. They just sit and watch the seasons go by.”
Past the echo chamber of storefronts and construction, the small sounds returned as if they’d never gone. The bike spokes ticked and Alice’s shoes clicked. Gaggles of guys and gals in dress shirts and fancy slacks ambled or rushed along toward the shiny glass-and-metal buildings.
The breeze came, and Alice swayed with it, closing her eyes as she walked alongside him. “Is that why you left?”
“Same as you, I guess. I just…” Didn’t belong, not really. He hadn’t belonged anywhere until Henry had opened his arms and Jay had fallen into them. He’d tried. Still did. And he was lucky—his family loved him despite all the shit that was wrong with him. But Henry—and Alice, too—they looked at him like they didn’t see the wrongness. Jay being Jay was good enough for them. Maybe even perfect for them. “Small towns, they kinda expect people to be like those old buildings. Forever and always the person they were at ten or sixteen or twenty-one. My sister Peggy still reminds me to tie my shoes and tuck in my shirt. Keep my elbows off the dinner table and my feet off the coffee table.”
He ought to call her sometime soon. Mom and Dad had an anniversary coming up. They’d gotten married in the spring a bajillion years ago, before planting season started. Peggy would know if this was one of the special gift years, but probably a card and flowers would do. Henry could help him figure out which ones.
Alice tipped sideways, to the end of their linked arms, and gave him an are you kidding me side-eye. “And you don’t tell her to mind her own beeswax?” She snorted with a laugh at the end. “Ollie regularly tells me to stuff it when she thinks I’m leaning too hard on the big sister button. And then she sticks her nose in my life like she used to dig through my closet.” Shaking her head, Alice pinned her lips together, but her smile broke through. “Every time I call, she asks about my relationship status.”
Taken. Twice over. Living with Henry and him. Had she told her sister? Made their love real-real, official and out like she could just tell and her sister would go on loving her? Accept him like a brother-in-law? If he dropped his bike and grabbed Alice by the shoulders to shake the answer out of her, Henry would definitely get upset. He’d make the disappointed face, and his voice would lose its cock-hardening smoothness.
Jay should ask, though. He couldn’t ride back to his office and sit there all afternoon not knowing. The paperwork would never get done. Besides, Henry would want to know Alice was taking advantage of the open conversation section in their contracts. If she was. Jay never did, except when Henry sent him to chat with Emma. But he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. He was the boss at work, for all that he tried hard to stay one of the guys. And explaining to his parents, his sister Peggy—his chest seized up. No. Just no.
“Does she know?” Talking to a sister. Alice could probably do it because she was a girl. Peggy and Beth would sit him down for a lecture about marriage and babies and that nice girl the year behind him in school. Maybe Nat, though. She didn’t lecture him so much. Someday. When he was ready. “About Henry and me?”
The bike rack in front of Alice’s building held a mish-mash of colorful commuter bikes. Overpriced, overpowered for what the riders actually needed. Jay leaned his bike against the pile. His suddenly free hand didn’t know what to do with itself, finger-combing his hair, tugging at the bottom of his shirt, scratching at his chin where stubble wouldn’t show for hours yet.
Alice grasped the fidgety fingers so the two of them stood linked on both sides, arm’s length apart, like slow dancers at a fifth-grade party in the school gym. “She knows. She’s really happy for me.” Green-and-brown eyes went distant, and Alice grimaced. “Mostly. That I have people in my life out here who care about me, anyway.” She held him tighter, her hands the most powerful substance in the world. The universe. “And you know what?”
“What?” He didn’t dare breathe.
“I’m really happy, too.” Eyes bright, she stepped in and kissed one corner of his mouth and then the other. “The second kiss is for Henry. You’ll give it to him for me when you get home?”
“I promise. I won’t forget.” He snatched a little nuzzle, his nose against her cheek, and a defiant thrill zinged down his back. Her coworkers could walk by any second, and they’d see Alice had someone who loved her. “You could always give us each another one before dinner, you know.”
“I just might.”
She slipped away with a gorgeous smile and the sexy hip wiggle of a woman in heels. Not just any woman, though. His woman. Henry’s woman. Forever and always.