Page 88 of And Now, Back to You

“It was a good kiss,” he tells me.

“Yeah,” I agree with a smile, a heavy thrum of something good and warm tightening low in my belly. “Yeah, it really was.”

PENELOPE CLARK: Should we add Delilah to the family chat?

JACKSON CLARK: No.

ADELINE CLARK: You sure?

JACKSON CLARK: Yes.

JACKSON CLARK: I don’t need to expose her to you two.

PENELOPE CLARK: Rude.

ADELINE CLARK: But, like.

ADELINE CLARK: DECKSON is happening, right?

JACKSON CLARK: What is DECKSON?

PENELOPE CLARK: DELILAH + JACKSON. DECKSON. There’s a whole thing on Reddit.

PENELOPE CLARK: And since you INSIST on acting like the whole world didn’t catch you swapping spit with the cute weather lady, everyone is feral for details.

PENELOPE CLARK: We can see you typing and deleting it, Jackie.

JACKSON CLARK: We’re not adding her to the family chat.

JACKSON CLARK: Not yet.

CHAPTER 21

JACKSON

I stop what I’m doing and stare at Delilah, sitting with her legs tucked beneath her on the floor next to her suitcase.

“That is . . . certainly something.”

“I think what you meant to say is”—she adjusts her ski goggles so they’re over her eyes, tipping her head back to look up at me—“Delilah, baby, you look incredible.”

My stomach pulls and then twists. “‘Baby,’ huh?”

I can’t read her expression with the giant opaque goggles, but I can see the way her mouth parts. The pink that spreads over the tops of her cheeks. I have to clear my throat and look away, studying my backpack like Delilah isn’t basically on her knees next to me.

I came out of the bathroom to find her in her hot pink snow pants again, fluorescent goggles across her forehead. She looks like a bag of Skittles—and now that I’ve kissed her, I know that she tastes like them too.

“Sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m just being silly.”

I stop messing with my zipper. Delilah’s head is angled down toward the floorboards. I’m not sure where our boundaries stand after last night, but I go with my gut, reaching for her goggles and lifting them gently. She stares up at me as I rearrange them across her forehead, smoothing her hair carefully out of the way.

“Delilah, baby,” I say, rolling my voice low to let her know I’m teasing. But she makes a small unconscious sound, and it doesn’t feel very much like a joke. “You look incredible.”

The color on her cheeks deepens to a furious red, her eyelashes fluttering as she blinks up at me.

“God,” she says. “My brain knows you’re being sarcastic, but I’m still—” She gestures at her face and sighs. “Really didn’t think that one through.”

There are lines on the bridge of her nose from where the eyewear was cutting into her skin. I rub at one gently, and then the other, trying to walk myself back from the edge I just tiptoed toward.