“Deal,” I said, then waited until Phil looked at me so I could give him a stern look. “Now get out.”
“No way,” he said. “You two can’t be trusted.”
“It’s fine,” Morgan said as I opened my mouth to tell Phil off. “We can continue our … um … conversation later.”
“Suuuuuure,” Phil said, waving her towards the door. “Now let’s go.”
She glanced at me apologetically as she obeyed, letting herself be shooed out of the room. But there was still laughter in her eyes, and that heat that I’d seen there just before she’d kissed me, and I knew she meant it when she said we’d be continuing this later. I strained against the pillow once more just at the idea of it.
Phil shut the door behind Morgan and turned back to me. His stern expression split into the most laddish grin I’d ever seen, even on him.
“Fucking finally, mate!” he said, coming over to grab my shoulders and shake me. “Well done.”
In the mirror I saw my face turn a bright beet red. “Don’t be an idiot,” I said, but I was smiling, too.
“How long has that been going on?”
Morgan had actually pushed me onto Phil’s bed, so he sat down on mine, facing me.
“About sixty seconds longer than you’ve known about it.”
“Score one for the costumes.”
“Hey, I’d like to think I had something to do with it.”
We both laughed, but my mind was still with Morgan, and what she was doing now. Would she go back to her room and debrief with Chloe about our own near-debriefing? Or would she play it cool? I had no idea – it had happened so suddenly, and we’d had no time to talk about what it meant.
“Hey, could you please not say anything to the others?” I asked. “I mean, obviously if she tells the others then that’s fine, but I want to follow her lead.”
“Yeah, totally,” Phil agreed. “Now get dressed, please; I need to see if that costume fits.”
He waved for me to stand up, but I shook my head and pointed at the pillow. “I’m gonna need a few minutes.”
“Riiiiiight,” he said in understanding, backing towards the door. “Let’s do that later then. And I suppose that can be your bed now. Oh, and just remember, no funny business in the costumes, and that goes for solo play, too.”
I threw the pillow at him as he dashed through the door, but he was gone before it got there.
Chapter29
Morgan
Dinner was a literal feast. We were all squished onto a picnic table in Fatima’s garden, fairy lights strung overhead, having just devoured the four-course meal Phil had painstakingly created to pair with Chloe’s favourite meads. There was even a honey-flavoured birthday cake. We all sang a delightfully off-key round of “Happy Birthday”, after which we drunkenly polished off the cake in one sitting, digging straight into it with forks. It was all delicious, and Phil looked equal parts pleased and exhausted after his whirlwind effort in the kitchen. After he’d cockblocked Jack and me, of course.
It was both the best and worst thing that Jack and I were sat across from each other and not next to each other. Worst, because I was certain the secret smiles and lingering eye contact were giving us away. Best, because those same gazes had me wanting to pick right up where we left off, which wasn’t exactly dinner table appropriate.
Okay, so maybe that was the worst, too.
I’d been spending the last two weeks oscillating between feeling confused by Jack’s reaction and indignant over the fact that he couldn’t just tell me how he felt. So when he’d cornered me at the pub and handed me a laundry list of proof points that he did actually care about me, it had left me with just confused. He’d seemed finally ready for something to happen between us, only to then tell me he was okay with me leaving? Even when I hadn’t been planning to leave in the first place? I realised in the throes of that frustration that if I waited for Jack to be clear about what he wanted, I might be waiting forever, so I’d started applying, fairly indiscriminately, to the jobs he’d sent me.
So since Monday, I’d been steeling myself for tonight. All I’d been hoping for was to clear the air. I certainly hadn’t expected to see him looking like Arthur Pendragon in his Ren Faire look, or for him to do the finger-under-chin thing I’d only ever read about in books.
Everything that had happened from that point on was a blur, but I had distinct memories of his fingers running through the hair at the nape of my neck, tugging gently as he kissed me. I even wore my hair up to dinner just so I could appreciate the tingly flashback I got when the breeze caught my curls. Looking at his hair matted against his forehead from the heat, thinking about his hot breath on me, I felt almost pained at the distance between us.
But he didn’t look pained. Despite how stuffed we all were from dinner, as he kept his green eyes locked on mine, he looked somehow … hungry. I’d never seen him look anything but cheerful or brooding, and the raw desire was an exciting change of pace. Heat spread through my core every time we locked eyes, and I felt the ghost of a sensation against every part of my skin he’d touched.
It took an agonisingly long time after we’d finished dinner and then games for everyone to decide they were ready for bed, but after a couple of hours, Fatima and Jared were the first to peel off. Grey and then Phil were the next to go, and thankfully Chloe could always read a room, because despite it being her birthday, she excused herself to bed shortly after.
Finally it was just Jack and me, locking eyes across the picnic table, no spectators for whom we needed to be subtle. In fact, subtlety was so absent from the look he was giving me that I wondered how I’d ever questioned his feelings. How had it not been obvious every time we’d spoken that he wanted me just as much as I wanted him? How had I never noticed the mind-melting mix of affection and desperation in his gaze? Had I been so blinded by my own confusion that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me?
