Page 86 of And Now, Back to You

The door clicks quietly shut behind us. Then it’s just us, exactly how we started. Standing too close together in a room we’re not meant to be sharing.

Jackson hovers in the dark in front of me, his body silhouetted by the fireplace behind him, his face unreadable. Tension rolls off him in waves as I stare hard at the line of his jaw as it clenches then releases.

“You regret it,” he sighs.

I shake my head. That’s the problem. I don’t regret it at all. I want more.

I just don’t want to be made to look like a fool when I’m the one with my heart in my hands.

“No,” I say, just as quiet. “I don’t.”

He lifts his hand and bites at the middle finger of his glove, yanking it free, impatient, tossing it across the room before repeating the same process with the other. Then his hands are there, cold, against the back of my neck. Tangling in all my snowflake-dusted hair, angling my face to his.

“Then what is it? What’s got this look on your face?” he murmurs, and I could cry. I almost do. He reads me so well and I’m so scared I’m somewhere he won’t let himself be.

“I like you,” I whisper, my throat thick.

His thumb finds the curve of my jaw, tracing up to the hollow beneath my ear. “I like you too.”

“I just—” I hesitate. Swallow hard. He keeps tracing that gentle circuit, over and over again. I loop my fingers around his wrist and hold on. It feels easier, when I’m touching him like this. “I don’t want you to confuse proximity with affection. I don’t want—I don’t want you to kiss me and not mean it.”

Jackson is quiet for a long time. “You think I don’t mean it?”

That’s what he said, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be more than that.

He dropped me in the category of distraction, and I let myself occupy that space.

He slips his hands from my face and I have to bite my cheek against the words that want to bubble out of me.

No, I want to say. Come back.

“I think,” I say carefully, looking at the floor by our feet, “today has been an overwhelming day.”

His hand lifts and he rubs his thumb over the thick material at the bottom of my coat. Then he drops it with a sigh. “I know there’s something here, Delilah.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “There is.” The burning behind my eyes gets more intense, spreading across the bridge of my nose. I sniffle. “But maybe there shouldn’t be? I don’t know, Jackson. I feel like I’m taking all the wrong steps. I don’t want—” I suck in a wobbly breath. “I don’t want to ruin anything.”

Jackson watches me carefully. He palms the side of his jaw. “I don’t know how I can keep myself from kissing you.”

“Jackson—”

“I like how I feel when I’m with you,” he says, his face earnest. He steps closer, his big body curling over mine. “I don’t want to stop.”

And that’s what I’m worried about. That Jackson likes who he gets to be here. But when we return home to our routines and responsibilities, he’ll be the man who glared at me from across a parking lot. I’m not sure I could take it.

“It’s just this trip,” I explain. “We’re on our own up here. I think it’s possible we got caught up in the moment.”

“So? Why can’t we have more moments? As many as we want.”

“What are you suggesting?”

In the flickering light of the fireplace, I can just barely make out the curve of his mouth. The way his jaw bunches and then releases. He’s frustrated, but so am I.

“I don’t want to kiss you as an excuse for something else,” he says quietly. “I just want to kiss you.”

I look away.

“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “I just—I don’t know, Jackson.”