Grace
Time was my number one enemy.
I felt like I was free falling, hurdling toward a certain death while I grappled to hold on to anything I could grasp. A tree branch, a rope, a jagged rock — but nothing would catch, and nothing could stop me.
One by one, we checked every item off my list.
Day by day, we explored and laughed and lived like we were the only two people in the world.
And night by night, I fell in love with Jaxson Brittain.
I didn’t even try to fight it. I think a part of me knew it would happen from the moment I jumped into his passenger seat. It was impossible not to fall for him — for his smile, his hands, his drive, his passion, the way he held me, the way he kissed me, the way he listened to me, like he wanted to know everything that made me who I was.
I didn’t just slip into loving him, either. I sky-dived. I flipped off a cliff and swam in the warm waters of loving him like the gift that it was.
I knew we were saying goodbye. I knew it was all coming to an end.
Just like every other relationship I’d ever had, I knew before it even started that it would be over soon.
But for the first time, I found it all worth it.
This summer with him had been worth the pain that would come.
It was almost laughable, how it had all started with him wanting to make me feel better after a stupid boy had broken up with me. That was not a relationship. That was nothing.
The very man who wanted to heal me had only given me something even harder to lose.
It was easy to pretend we had forever that week in Canmore, when every minute of every day was filled. There wasn’t any spare time to think. There wasn’t ever a silent moment to let reality sink in.
Until the night of the thirtieth, when Jaxson and I were packing our bags.
And this time — it wasn’t to get back in the car and set off to the next place together.
My throat was impossibly tight as I rolled a pair of jean shorts, trying and failing to find enough space in my bag for them.
We’d decided to sell our hiking and camping gear at the local outpost so they could in turn sell it used at a good price to someone in the area who might need it. But still, I’d bought so many little things along the way, there just wasn’t enough space.
Which was also very unlike me.
In all my travels, I never bought souvenirs. I was always taking my memories and photos with me and nothing else. But with this…
I’d found myself desperate to find and hold fast to any tangible object I could, to take any and all proof with me that this wasn’t just a fever dream.
That it was real — that we were real.
I had a coaster from the bar in Atlanta, a Chattanooga magnet, my sunglasses and hat from the festival, a golf ball from the tournament, a Wilson State Park t-shirt. There was the coffee mug from Rocky Mountain National Park, a keychain from the car show, a tiny bottle of water I snuck from Mr. Bubbles. And in the last week, I’d purchased something from every stop in Canmore and Banff, desperate to fill this bag with reminders of Jaxson and the place he grew up, of every memory we made here together.
Now, combined with everything I’d already had in my bag before, it was overflowing.
“Did you check in for your flight?”
Jaxson’s voice startled me a bit from where I was lost in thought, and I held my hiking boots in one hand, staring at my bag and trying to figure out where I could shove them. My speaker played softly in the corner of the room, “Almost Lover” by A Fine Frenzy setting the solemn mood.
“Yeah,” I answered, but the word was like a croak from my dry throat.
“And you have your passport?”
My nose stung, and I shoved my shoes forcefully into my bag. “Got it.”
“We’ll need to leave pretty early in the morning,” he said from where he was zipping up his own bag. “Calgary Airport is about an hour and a half from here, and I have no idea what security will look like. It’s peak season here.”
I sniffed, cursing myself as tears flooded my eyes.
Stop it, Grace. Pull it together.
I felt the moment Jaxson saw me, felt how the energy in the room shifted when he froze. Then, slowly, he moved across the room, wrapping his arms around me from behind and pulling my back to his chest.
He kissed my hair before resting his chin on my head. “Not all fitting, huh?”
I slumped against him. “No.”
The word garbled out of me, and Jaxson held me tighter with a little chuckle.
“Hey, it’s alright. We’ll stop and grab another suitcase in the morning. My treat.”
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, shrugging out of his grasp. Then, in a final attempt to shove all my emotions down, I started ripping things out of my suitcase.
“I don’t even know why I need all this… all this stuff,” I said, tossing one item after the next over my shoulder. “It’s stupid. It’s wasteful. Why did I buy all this? Why did I—”
Before I could launch the neon cowboy hat from the festival, Jaxson grabbed my wrist. He took the hat from my grip, dropped it back into my bag, and turned me until I was facing him. Then, he wrapped me up in a bear hug, his arms enveloping me, one hand at the small of my back, and the other holding my head to his chest.
“Shhh,” he said, running his fingers through the strands. “It’s okay.”
My face crumpled, and I squeezed him as tight as I could.
“I’m going to miss you.”
The second I whispered the words, tears pooled in my eyes too fast for me to stop them.
We both stiffened.
I was the first to acknowledge it, the first to call what we both were feeling to the surface.
And with that realization, I broke — shoulders shaking, tears rushing, all that pain that had been suffocating me breaking free at once. I couldn’t hold it down any longer, couldn’t fight it, and it took me under like a tidal wave.
I felt the way Jaxson’s next breath hitched, heard how hard he had to swallow before he responded. When he did, his voice was gruff and tight with emotion.
“I’m going to miss you, too, little Nova.” He let out a ragged breath. “So fucking much it kills me to even think about it.”
I squeezed my eyes tight, burying my face in his chest, and he wrapped me up even more. It was like we were trying to meld ourselves together, like maybe if we could become one person, we could have everything we wanted.
Take me with you.
The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down, fighting back another sob. I hated this pain more than anything in the world. I was so terrified of never being rid of it, of committing myself to a life of unhappiness.
But this was what we’d known all along.
I had to believe there were better days ahead. I had to believe that one day, I’d look back on this time in my life, on this summer with Jaxson, and I’d feel nothing but joy. One day, when my heart was healed — and it would heal — I would tell our story to another lover, or maybe to my kids or grandkids, or maybe just to a fellow stranger roaming the Earth.
I’d tell them and I’d smile, thankful for what we had, grateful for the time in my life where I belonged to Jaxson Brittain and he belonged to me.
But right now, in this moment, I was sad.
I was ripping at the seams.
It was foolish to think he would ever want to be tied down. As much fun as we’d had, that was just what we were — fun. We were a summer of being reckless, an unplanned road trip with no destination, and yet a most definite dead end.
He was my brother’s teammate.
He was thirty years old.
He was a professional hockey player with women quite literally throwing themselves at him and begging for his attention.
It made me sick to think of any of them getting it, of anyone else getting to touch him the way I had, to feel him inside them. Did he want to settle down? Did he want a family? Why would he, when he could live a life of taking any woman he wanted to bed?
Regardless — I wasn’t the girl for him in either option.
I didn’t want to settle down. I wanted to fly, to explore, to see the world. I didn’t want kids now. I maybe didn’t want them ever.
What did I expect — him to ask me to be in a long-distance relationship? To stay faithful to his teammate’s twenty-two-year-old sister while she ran all around the globe? To ignore every woman far more attractive than me who presented themselves? Did I really think we could tell my brother, he’d be just fine with it, and then we’d have a relationship where we barely saw each other?
None of it made sense.
I couldn’t ask for what I wanted because I didn’t even fucking know.
Inhaling a long, deep breath, I swiped the tears from my face and grabbed Jaxson’s hand, leading him to the bed we still hadn’t made from when we’d trashed it that morning.
One last time.
I needed to feel everything that he was one last time.
And then, I’d do the impossible.
I’d let him go.
My hands trembled as I reached for the hem of my dress, pulling it up and over my head in one fluid movement. I made quick work of my bralette and panties next, and then I stood there — stripped to my soul in front of a man I knew I’d never forget.
Something in Jaxson’s gaze told me he wanted me to talk to him, that he wanted to heal my pain. But I think he knew as much as I did that he couldn’t — just the way I couldn’t heal his.
We only had one option, and that was to break together.
Slowly, he shed his clothing, too — piece by piece until the floor at our feet was covered. He swept me into his arms then, pulling me into his lap as he sat against the headboard.
There was no time for foreplay, no playfulness or dirty talk. I reached down and placed him where I needed to feel him most, and then with my hands braced on his shoulders, I worked myself onto him, slowly lowering inch by painful, blissful, heartbreaking inch.
Jaxson held my hip with one hand, the other sliding into my hair, fingers curling behind my neck. I dropped my forehead to his, our warm, shallow breaths mingling in the space between us as I rode him.
I moved slow, rolling my body into his, savoring the way it felt to stretch and open and be consumed by him. I didn’t miss how he trembled, too. I didn’t miss how he pinched his eyes closed and swallowed hard before kissing me, his tongue sweeping in to dance with mine.
Neither of us reached for our climax. It was like we both wanted to stay just like that for as long as we could, connected in every possible way, inhaling the other like our last breath.
I rode him until my legs were so sore I couldn’t move, until he rolled me into the sheets and started his own slow pace between my legs. His ocean blue eyes searched mine, piercing my soul deeper with every thrust until I thought maybe we’d succeeded in our mission.
Because he felt like a part of me, like a permanent piece of who I’d be when we left this cabin.
I welcomed the new addition, riding out the first orgasm and then digging my nails into his back to beg for another.
My bag stayed half-packed for the rest of the night, our cabin an absolute mess that we’d have to deal with in the morning. But we pushed it off as long as we could, losing sleep and losing ourselves in the possibility of what we could have been in another space and time.
I catalogued every brush of his hands against my skin, every flex of him inside me, every kiss he ghosted over my lips. Every one was a whisper of farewell, of I’ll miss you and this and us.
And I whispered it back, clinging to him as I kissed his shoulder, his neck, his beautiful, sacred mouth — all while my heart splintered in my chest.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
The morning came too quickly, and when we had no choice but to finish packing and roll our suitcases out of that cabin, I knew only three things for certain.
I loved him.
He changed me for the better.
And I’d never get over him — not as long as I lived.
