Page 29 of Wait for Him

“You're awake!”

Michael's voice fills the room, causing Jackson's hand to disappear so quickly that the cool air that replaces it feels like another touch.

My eyes open, and he's already taken a step back toward the window.

The distance isn't dramatic, maybe three feet, but it feels enormous.

“Jesus Christ, Rose.” Michael is out of bed and beside me in seconds, hair flattened on one side, shirt wrinkled, relief written all over his face as he leans down to kiss my forehead. “How are you feeling? Are you dizzy? Nauseous? When did you wake up? Have you eaten anything? Did somebody get the nurse?”

“Michael.”

“What?”

“Breathe.”

“I've been breathing. You've been unconscious.”

“Clearly not anymore.”

“Don't be funny. You scared the absolute shit out of me.”

He starts fussing with the blanket that Jackson already fixed, then informs me, rather than asks, that I'll be staying at his place until I'm completely recovered. My opinion on the matter has evidently already been submitted and rejected.

I answer where answers are required. I reassure him when he needs reassuring. I even manage a smile when he threatens to personally supervise my fluid intake for the next month.

But my attention keeps drifting past him.

Jackson has moved to the window, giving Michael room to hover. He's quiet now, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, watching us from a few feet away.

Watching me.

Nobody else would notice the difference.

I do.

2023

Rose

“How did I know I'd find you out here?”

I smile and turn to find Michael walking toward me across the terrace, looking unfairly handsome in a tuxedo he complained about wearing for the entire drive here.

Tonight is our first time attending the Forever Family Foundation Gala, and all three of us are dressed to the nines. Michael and Jackson have built Sullivan & Associates into something remarkable, and over the years it's opened some of the city's best doors, but getting invited to this one meant the world to me.

I was in awe when we walked in. The ballroom glowed beneath hundreds of candles, and everywhere you looked there were photographs of children meeting their forever families. First hugs. First hands held. Nervous smiles on the courthouse steps. Parents looking at children like they'd been waiting their entire lives to find one another. Whole futures beginning in a single frame.

I made it through cocktails and dinner before the room started getting to me.

I told myself it was the crowd, the heat from that many bodies and candles, maybe the champagne I'd stupidly been drinking on an almost empty stomach. I told myself a lot of things before slipping outside onto the terrace overlooking the city.

What I did not tell myself was that Jackson had barely been near me all night.

Which shouldn't matter.

Except it fucking does.

Selfishly, I'd expected him to be glued to my hip the way he always is at these things. Jackson hates half the people at events like this and entertains himself by standing beside me and whispering increasingly inappropriate commentary into my ear until I have to pretend I'm coughing to cover my laughter. Instead, he and one of the other invitees have spent most of the evening dancing and flirting. She's beautiful, petite, with long dark hair and the kind of dress that requires a very specific relationship with gravity. Her hand finds his arm every time he makes her laugh, and I've been so committed to not watching them that I could probably recreate their entire evening from memory.