Chapter 11
Nicole is still not ready to start a romantic relationship with anyone because she fears getting her heart broken and not being able to get over her first love, ever, so she and Ivan, as much as they love one another, decide to remain friends although they’ve known and loved one another for over six months. They go their separate ways and convinced that, if there hasn’t been romance between her and Ivan, there won’t be, for a while, or there may never be, so they give each other a chance to date other people and experiment this love thing, the many sides of it, and in the end, if they are meant to be together, they will be, in the future, when she’s no longer afraid of losing it all. Nicole starts dating Howard Reese’s brother, Holden Reese. Holden knows that Nicole is officially in love with another man, and after holding feelings for him this long, there is nothing he can do to change that, so they date the old-fashioned way—they go to the movies, they go to the club, to dance, they take walks in the park, thus Nicole can walk now, but she can’t run and she can’t jog just yet, and they have a good time. Meanwhile, Jordan, seeing that she has a chance with Ivan, although not for a serious relationship, but a chance to have fun with him until her desire for him comes to an end and she’s finally able to see him as a friend, jumps right in, not wasting time. They start sleeping together, but Ivan doesn’t know how this will end because he’s not sure if he’s ever going to have the only woman that he’s ever wanted, Nicole Ward, so he resigns to having her in his dreams, while Jordan blows his mind. He doesn’t know who’s really going to get Jordan for keeps in the end, but from the way that she makes love to him, whoever that guy is, he will be the most fortunate man in the world. But this relationship is not just about sex. They’re also friends. They share beautiful and unforgettable times with Jayden, whom, although he’s not as healthy as he was before, he’s a survivor, and he gets better and better. He will still need a few more operations to get his lungs to work correctly, but at least he can breathe on his own, during the day, and he uses artificial oxygen when he sleeps at night. Because running takes a lot of work and can leave him out of breath in a matter of minutes, he can’t do that, but he can walk and he can play with his little friends—and with Ivan, who loves him like a son, and always will. All is well until Mark, thinking Jordan’s been alone all this time, decides to jump back into Jordan’s life. The flings he had after the woman that broke his heart, they didn’t work out, and he wants another chance with Jordan, like she’s his back-up woman, or something of that sort.
Ivan was making breakfast that morning. He and Jordan had been together for only two weeks. He was doing something he'd never done with any woman before. He never expected a subservient woman because he knew that was way too seventeenth or eighteenth century, and not even that, but he was a traditional, but not chauvinistic man, who would not serve the woman outside the bedroom. For the love of Jordan, and to keep her with him for the longest time possible, he'd become that man, a man willing to do anything for the woman, in and out of the bedroom, though he knew this relationship was only casual, but he wanted to make it last. Jordan came into the kitchen to make breakfast for him and here and was awed to see he was almost done doing the same thing. "What are you doing?"
He knew what she meant so he didn't state the obvious to be a smartass. "I love cooking," was his excuse. "I cook for me and Aaron when he's here with me. He says I'm an awesome cook, that I should've been a chef, but when he told me that I told him that although my favorite place in the house was always the kitchen, since I was a little boy, I preferred working in healthcare, doing anything related to healthcare. I had studied to become a nurse because in reality I'd studied three professions," he said as he put Jordan's favorite creamer, French vanilla, in her coffee, one of the most-expensive brands of coffee creamer. The pancakes were done, and the scrambled eggs, and he'd turned everything off before she came into the kitchen directly from her room, and he was about to serve them, but not before serving the drinks: orange juice and coffee, Jordan's favorite, because she preferred the standard breakfast as it would be presented on TV and other places, with orange juice on the side. "But then I fell, oxygen was depleted in my brain, and I got cerebral palsy. Being a nurse was out of the question, so I went the other direction and studied to become a PT. I could be a PT because PT's don't have to lift or carry anyone, just provide them physical support. I never lost my ability to walk but after the accident in the bathroom, it became just a little more difficult."
"I hope you don't become my maid because I do ok when it comes to the money I earn but I don't have money for a maid and if you become my maid I'd have to pay you."
"You can't. Remember what we're doing. That would be prostitution," he said as he carried some of the food to the dining room and placed it on the table. Jordan helped him with the other plates full of food. "In reality, I do want to do nice things for you, make you feel good, make you stay with me for a while. I've tried other things, and none of them worked. Women treat me like a broken artifact, 'use it once, since it's broken, and then get rid of it', seems to be their motto when they bump into a disabled man."
She gave him a big hug. "Hey, never mind those so-called women. A real woman loves and accepts a man just the way he is, and treats him right. If that is what you were looking for, with me, you've found it. I love the way you get along with my son. Aaron's lucky. You are a fantastic father, one of the best I've ever met. Jayden knows you're not his father, but he appreciates you treating him like you are. He tells me so all the time."
"Who wouldn't love your son? He's the sweetest."
"And you're the sweetest man," she replied. "Come on, let's eat."
Jayden got up and went into the kitchen. He took a two-foot ladder that his mom had left in the corner of the huge kitchen after reaching for the chocolate syrup in the high counter the night before, placed it right in front of the range, and then took a big black plate from the kitchen sink. Jordan and Ivan would always leave one plate of each kind and one utensil of each kind so that Jayden could reach them and use them without having to ask anyone for anything. They were teaching him to be as independent as he could be when it came to doing everything on his own--like bathing, serving his own food, getting dressed on his own, organizing his clothes, and cleaning his room. By now, Jayden knew how to make the bed and everything. Then he placed the plate right by the range, on the counter, got up on the ladder very carefully and served himself one regular-sized pancake, not too big, not too small, and a little bit of the scrambled eggs. He once again placed the plate right by the range, went to the refrigerator and looked for the syrup in the refrigerator. He said, loud, but not yelling, "Mom, you guys have the syrup?"
"Yes, we do, pumpkin," Jordan said. "Come and eat with us."
Jayden took his plate of food and walked all the way to the dining room. Then he sat down on one of the four chairs that were available. Whenever she would get married and have more children, she would buy a bigger dining room and give this one to someone who needed it because it was only two years old, from when she bought this house, and she took such good care of it, it seemed brand new.
Jordan got up. "Hold on. I'm going to get you something to drink. I know you couldn't carry everything over here and I am not going to let you go back to the kitchen, so far away just to get a drink." She walked out of the dining room and walked all the way back to the kitchen.
"So, champion," Ivan said, "how was soccer today?"
"Great. Thanks for enrolling me in soccer, Ivan."
"You said you wanted to be a soccer player, and you can't just express what you want, champ!" Ivan said, smiling. "You gotta make it happen!"
Jayden took Ivan's hand. Half his pancake was already gone. "You're the best, you know that?"
"I do the best I can, and I think you should, too."
"I will." Jayden would eat small portions of food, but when he hadn't eaten for several hours, he would eat faster than normal.
"Hey, hey, hey," Ivan said, concerned, holding the hand Jordan was using the fork with, "eat slow. I don't want you choking and getting full too fast or you're not going to be able to finish your breakfast."
Jordan would always tell him the same thing, but he didn't think anything of it, so he would disobey her, but this was the second person to tell him this, so he stopped eating for a few minutes, while the food got all the way down--and the worst of all was that he hadn't had anything to drink yet and he was already starting to get full.
Jordan came back to the dining room with Jayden's drink and handed it to him--orange juice, his favorite, that he would have every morning to keep his immune system healthy.
"Hey, Jordan, you see how fast he eats? I hope you don't mind since we're not married, but I told him he had to slow down or he would choke or get full too fast. As a matter of fact, I think he's full right now."
Jayden ate his eggs in five minutes time.
Jordan didn't know how to respond for a minute and then she did. "No, I don't mind. I told him that a million times, and he didn't listen. Besides it's ok because I didn't hear you insulting him or yelling. When you see him doing something wrong, call him out on it just the way you did just now and everything will be fine. I was afraid of getting with another guy before you for this reason. I didn't want that man to abuse my child in any way."
"You don't have to worry about that with me. My fatherly love is alive and well, otherwise I wouldn't have planned to conceive Aaron with his mother, Marissa."
"That's sweet, Ivan," said Jayden, finishing his orange juice, and then he got up from the chair and left the dining room. "I'm satisfied, but I don't feel full anymore."
"Anymore," Ivan repeated when Jayden was too far away to hear him. "You have to watch that boy to make sure he doesn't eat like that again, and now that he's in kindergarten, you have to have someone at school secretly keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't choke or vomit."
"Thank you, Ivan, for loving my son so much from the moment we met. I think you deserve a reward."
Done with his food, he asked, "What kind of reward, the super computer I want? Just kidding."
"No, something much better than that." She said, taking his hand and making him get up from his chair. "I realized you destroyed your computer because of me, remember, when we had sex on the sofa and we didn't realize the laptop was there? Yeah...a fifteen-hundred-dollar-laptop, shattered in a million pieces. Nice. You know a $1500-laptop today is something out of this world." They were running to her bedroom now, running and running because it was far away in this one-story but seemingly-endless house. "But then again, so are you, and living things that are out of this world deserve," they got to the room and she turned the knob and opened the door behind her, "to be treated as such." She embraced him and then the door was shut.
Once in the room, they tore each other’s clothes off from the waist down without realizing what they were doing. Then, Ivan took off his shirt and threw it on the floor.
“I’ve taken over during lovemaking all this time. Now I want you to show me the lover you are. I want you to do everything for me this time, because from now on it’s going to be an equal thing, we’ll both get ours. When I say everything, I do mean everything.”
“You’re scaring me. I’ve never done everything at once.”
“Ok, I didn’t know that. Then do some of what you’ve done so far. I can’t take it anymore, just screw me, damn it!”
All he did now was have intercourse with her and she had to sit up to reach him in order to kiss him. Without realizing it, it became more and more aggressive for both of them until they collapsed on the edge of the bed, and despite having all that weight on her, she didn’t feel any pain on her body. She was used to this. Mark would end up right on top of her every time. That’s the way he was. He was always the active one and use Jordan only for his pleasure, but she was so in love and desperate to keep him with her that she couldn’t see what was going on there, until today. She slept, hating him even more, and dreaming of a thousand ways to kill him.
* * * *
Mark comes over to Jordan’s house and is shocked when Ivan answers the door. Ivan doesn’t live with Jordan, but still on his own, and he only has fun with Jordan when Cherie and Merlin, who have survived after a year and a half of invasive treatment for their skin cancer, have Aaron over at their house, and for now, they have him with them Monday through Friday, and then he spends the weekends with his dad, so he and Jordan don’t see each other on the weekends because Ivan doesn’t want to give his son false hope that Jordan Polo will be his new mother figure. She’s definitely meant for someone else, and so is he, although he doesn’t know who she’s really meant for, thus they have no feelings for each other. They only saw each other as friends with benefits, no real love there. They are just letting it out, realizing the fantasies that deep down they’d always had. Obviously, Mark and Ivan start arguing.
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want. I want my woman back, and you have to get out.”
“Excuse me? Who’s your woman?”
“Jordan.”
“Oh, really? If she’s ‘your woman’, why isn’t she with you? Why does she tell me all the time, that she’d rather be with Freddie Krueger or Jason Voorhees, than you?”
“You’re a son of a bitch, you know that? She’d never say such bullshit.”
“Oh, watch it or my dead mother’s going to come in your room, pull you by the legs, and yank you out of your bed. I’ve seen paranormal cases on the news, you know? And today, they’re more common than ever before, so if I were you, I would never mess with the dearly departed.”
“Cut the bullshit, Northwood, and get the hell out.”
Now Ivan really lost it. No son of a bitch, or no one for that matter, had talked to him like that, not even his ex-girlfriends when they got angry with him. Ivan grabbed him by the shirt with both of his rock-hard hands and threw him out of the foyer and into the walkway. Then, he grabbed him by the shirt again, right from the floor, and lifted him, like a 200-pound weight. It turned out that at age twenty-one, Ivan hadn’t stopped growing like he thought. He’d gotten half a foot taller, his height soaring to six foot three, and because of all the exercise he’d done and the weights he’d lifted all this time, he’d gotten much bigger and stronger, and now, since a lot of people knew that he was a black belt in karate despite his disability, which was waning more and more as he received more treatment and more physical therapy, no one was afraid to get close to him and be friendly to him, but no one dared to mess with him, either. He’d never killed anyone or sent anyone to the hospital, but he’d left several people unable to get out of bed for days, and if Mark kept on with the bullshit, he’d get his, too, very good. Unbelievably, Langston had experienced the same changes as Ivan, leaving Diana stunned and hungrier for him than ever before. God must’ve loved her and considered her pretty special because her worst nightmare had become her sweetest dream, and it would only get better by the day. “Now, you listen to me, asshole—“
Mark cut him off. “Hasn’t she ever told you my name? You just met me and you’re attacking me and calling me names, man! What the fuck is your problem?”
“Oh, like you weren’t disrespectful to me just now, you prick, and just so you know, Jordan referred to you as ‘asshole’ and ‘prick’ when she met us at the hospital eighteen months ago, when your son was in danger of dying, before she even told us your name, so guess what, Casanova, she hates you. She despises you. She’s lucky that Jayden looks much more like her than you because just saying your name, remembering you, or seeing you on TV, by mere accident, makes her sick in the stomach. You make her skin crawl. When she’s reminded of your existence, she goes straight to the bathroom, to puke until she has no more food to puke and you can see her stomach acids. I know because I’ve seen it, and you know something else? When she has those episodes, she can’t eat for several hours, and sometimes, not even for the rest of the day.”
Trying to conceal the tears he was shedding, and finally getting up, Mark said, “You’re just saying these things to hurt me.”
“And I can see that it’s working like a charm,” said Ivan, arms crossed across his chest. “You can’t hide your tears no matter how hard you try, you poor excuse of a man. You know, the only thing that makes you a man is the thing that’s between your legs, and not even that. That just makes you a chromosome-Y organism.” Ivan couldn’t help laughing at his cruel comments, and smiling brightly, like he was saying nice things.
“I don’t believe you. I’d have to hear those things from her own mouth.”
“As you wish. I’m going to go get her.” Ivan walked back into the house.
As Ivan walked the entrance hallway to go get Jordan, Mark screamed, “Asshole! Prick!”
Ivan turned around to face him again, and from afar, to keep from breaking his bones in a fit of rage, he replied, “Oh, no, no, no, no…that’s your first name and your middle name, remember? And you know what your last name is? Man-whore.” Then Ivan left.
Mark cried tears of fury and sadness at the same time as he waited for Jordan to come out to see him and tell him that Ivan was lying, that he was just telling him that she’d said those horrible things about him, and that he had her so psychologically damaged that anything pertaining to him would make her literally, physically sick—because he was trying to protect her and Jayden from him, because he didn’t want him to give them false hope to abandon them again.
Finally, he got his wish, only the first part of it, because Jordan came out, and then she decided to put on a show in front of him and Ivan. “Ivan, do I need to remind you of your place in this house for the zillionth time? Need I remind you that you’re nothing but my boy toy, my adventure, my fuck-buddy? Get the hell away from us and go wash the dishes while Mark and I talk this out, ok?”
Ivan left. They’d talked about this before she came out to see Mark because if she had done this without warning, he’d feel extremely hurt because he was as sensitive and sweet on the inside as he was big and strong on the outside.
“Come on in, Mark.”
Mark went in and she closed the door behind them.
“I’ve humiliated my blow-up doll over there more than enough today. Let’s go talk out on the porch.”
They got to the porch, minutes later, because the house was just as big as her hatred for Mark, and she closed the sliding door behind her. He sat on one of the pretty patio chairs that she had in there. “Ok, Mark, I am going to listen to every word you have to say, no matter how long it takes, and I won’t say one single word, because you have a lot of explaining to do. Why did you abandon me and your son?” She had her arms crossed across her chest, still standing up, leaning toward the door. “I thought you loved me. I thought you would be my first real love. What happened?”
He stood up and walked closer to her, and then he held her hand and looked her deeply in the eyes. “That asshole thinks he can get into your business and mess up your life just because he was lucky to get in your bed, that crippled freak.”
Although Jordan didn’t love Ivan like she would love her husband, these words hurt her like repeated strikes of stakes directly in the heart because she adored him like a friend, because of everything that he, the Northwood, Ainsworth and Thornhart families had done for her son, and because he was being a true father figure for her son and no matter what happened between them in the future, he would always be just that and leave his mark in Jayden’s heart, a mark more permanent than a tattoo because tattoos could be erased. She also hid the tears these comments caused.
Then Mark continued with his heartless comments. “You got to set him straight. Do you ever punish him when he misbehaves, when he does something that bothers you?”
“Yes, I do,” she lied. She would never hurt or humiliate any man, especially Ivan Northwood. When she had a man in her life, whether that relationship was serious or not, she would dedicate her life to pleasing him in every aspect of life, making him truly happy so he would stay a little longer than a man usually did, and she was just like Andrew. None of the men that she’d had in her life had ever and would never get over her. She’d left her mark deep in their hearts, and their skin, and although they no longer wanted her in their beds because they knew they couldn’t have her, they would hold her dear in their hearts and remember her with love, as the best woman the three of them had ever had.
“I’m glad because this time you really have to set him straight. To make a long story short, he said that you always refer to me as ‘asshole’ and ‘prick’ and you’ve replaced my real name with those insults, and just being reminded of the fact I exist makes your skin crawl and makes you sick in the stomach and unable to eat for the rest of the day, even if you haven’t eaten breakfast in the morning yet, and I’m saying this in my own words. He was much crueler than that.”
“Don’t listen to him. He’s only doing this because, though he knows I don’t love him, he adores me. I’m the only woman that has stayed with him for more than a few nights, and I will stay with him. I won’t leave him until he has real hope with Nicole Ward and goes right back into her arms. He may love me very much, but Nicole is the only rival I can’t even fight against. I don’t stand a chance, and I know that. I deserve it because I am using him, but I am going to enjoy him while I can and I will be stuck to him like gum every minute of the day, until I suck the last drop of his blood.”
“But I thought you were willing to give me a chance.”
“I will give you a chance, but I can’t commit to you until you prove to me that you’re going to do everything in your power to make this work, that you really, really love me.”
“So you’re going to sleep with both of us at the same time?”
She cleared her throat. “I’ve never two-timed anybody before, but if you insist on interrupting my life you give me no other choice. This time words won’t be enough to get my heart and keep it forever, Mark. You already had that chance once. I am no longer the woman you met who was desperate for anyone to love her, the woman that felt unloved, not only by men, but by her family and her friends at that moment.”
“Ok, you know what? I would never accept this from any woman.”
“Well then, get out of my house the same way you walked in because I am offering you the only thing I’ve got to give you or any other man because you took everything from me, Mark. You took my heart, you literally took it. You left me empty inside.” She sounded like a soap opera, but she meant every word she said. She was this romantic and intense. That was one of many things about her that would drive them crazy, that, with no intention, just because it came out of her, she would talk to them, and everyone she interacted with, like no one had talked to them before. “What do you want me to do? I can’t give you something that you already took, you understand?”
He cried in front of her like he had few times before, and then he got on his knees, grabbing on to her like she was going to run away from him. “I love you,” he said, crying on her leg. I love you like I’ve never loved any other woman, and I’m not like you, I’ve lost count of all the women I’ve had, even after you, in the few years we’ve been apart!”
“And that doesn’t make you ashamed, to have to say something like that, for that to be true. You lost count of all the women you had. Wow, Mark, just wow…”
“Jordan, please, I’m begging you, don’t break my heart like this. I’m nothing without you, please.” Just like her, every word he said came straight from his broken, scarred heart.
“You know why I’ve had so few sex partners? You know why Ivan Northwood is only my fourth partner?”
Ivan was listening to the conversation behind the glass door now, and he was stunned with what he just heard. She seemed like such a pro, like she’d explored a lot more, with a lot more men. Turns out that the incredible things she learned, she only learned from a few of them. Usually a human being, according to many people that claimed to be open-minded, would need many more partners or to be with the same partner for decades to have the experience that she had. That made him love her and care about him a lot more. She was a better woman than he thought. Whoever turned out to be the true man of her life, the man that would keep her forever, would catch a star upon catching her, taking a diamond of incalculable value in his hands.
She continued her thought. “Because I don’t make love to a man unless I really love him, unless I know him. Once I entangle a man in my web, I give him everything I have, I go out of my way to make him the happiest man alive. I’m not the kind of person to notice someone good looking at a club, or in a bar, or in any public place, or at someone’s house…and take that person home and to my bed in a matter of minutes, without knowing his name, because by the way, I am a rarity. I am straighter than a ruler.”
“Jordan, you don’t have to tell me any of this. I know.”
“I thought you’d forgotten.”
“No!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Don’t you get it? I could never forget about you! No one could! I bet you anything that your men before me and Ivan are still madly in love with you! I don’t mean to suck up, but you’re one of a kind!”
“I know you are not sucking up. You can’t suck up to me when you’re on the verge of a freaking heart attack while telling me all these things. There’s just one little problem, Mark, an itty bitty problem. You’re telling me all this too late.”
“Jordan, no, please!”
“It’s too late, Mark. You should’ve told me all these things, and meant them a long time ago, when our relationship started! You should’ve cherished our love, water it like your favorite plant to watch it blossom, maintained it, kept it alive, instead of destroying it like you did!” She was crying in earnest, too. “We have a son together. There’s no more solid evidence that there was real love between us at some point. Jayden wouldn’t have even been conceived if what we had hadn’t been real. We wouldn’t have stayed together long enough to plan having him, to conceive him! We were happy until you suddenly decided that you weren’t really a one-woman man, that all the women out there were born for you, and you just had to go get them. You said, these were your exact words, you said, ‘You know what, Jordan? There are too many women for me out there, and I have to