THIRTY-THREE
JACKSON
We lay stunned and speechless, tangled in each other’s arms on the demolished bed like victims of a bombing.
After a while, Bianca said in a tremulous voice, “Oh. My. That was . . .”
“Perfect.” I stared at her in awe. “Incredible. Mind-blowing. We should get a trophy.”
Blinking slowly, she smiled. It was a heartbreaking smile, a thing of such soul-lifting and astonishing beauty I felt like a man who’d just discovered religion.
She was my religion. My north and south, my heaven and earth, the axis of rightness around which everything had suddenly aligned. For the first time in my life, all my polarized parts worked as one, humming happily along in harmony with the universe, finally understanding their place.
I surrendered to the feeling completely and without hes
