AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I know I’m right. And you know, that’s one hell of a domino effect.”
“What is?” she said, her voice nasally and clogged.
“If you hadn’t met me, we wouldn’t have gone to my house, and you wouldn’t have ended up at your dad’s house.Then nothing that happened from there would have carried out like it did.”
She realized he was completely right. She considered sitting up to look at him, but her shoulders fit so perfectly under his arm and her head so warmly against his chest, she didn’t want to move. “I guess if you look at it that way, it makes sense, then, that Patrick was stuck in New York all day. It made it so I visited our dad on my own and finally said everything that needed to be said,” she added, realizing yet another connection in it all. She quietly laughed in wonder.
Jack thoughtfully hummed, and she heard it deep in his chest. “That... seems to fit right in with everything else here.”
“And what’s more,” Gemma went on, “we wouldn’t have gone to your house if you hadn’t quit your job.” The last word turned into an audible yawn.
Jack tensed and leaned forward, so she sat up. “Hey, no yawning. We’ve got to stay awake, remember?”
She hadn’t realized how tired she truly was until they sat on the couch. Its old, worn-in cushions cradled them like welcoming arms, and she would have given anything to lie down. “I’m awake,” she promised Jack with a nod. “You’re just... very comfortable.” She lifted his arm and settled back beneath it. She stifled her next yawn, her eyes burning, before she spoke again. “Why did you quit your job? Did you ever figure that out?”
Tension lingered in his body like she hadn’t hidden her yawn well enough, and he might have been about to scold her again, but he let it out with a breath. His arm settled warmly over hers. His hand rested on her hip. “As soon asyou kissed me onstage, all my memories came back too. From before the loop. I was really unhappy, Gemma. I honestly did need a change. Don’t get me wrong; I loveMac Drake. I love the characters; I love the cast and crew. It’s been a great five years, but I felt bored and stuck. Running in place. I think I’d been thinking about a change for a while, and then Angelica... Anyway, that was the last straw, because we broke up about a week ago in real days, and Charlie got the offer for the new show right around that time too. I was ready to leave it all, and then I met you. I didn’t know that the change I needed all along was you.”
The way he saidyoumade her sit up and look at him. The moonlight bleached them both colorless, but she could somehow still see the blue of his eyes.
“Do you think that’s why you couldn’t remember what came before the loop? Because of... me?”
On another day, she might have felt foolish for centering herself with such significance in someone else’s life, but the way he looked at her told her the answer without him needing to say it.
“Yes. I’ve been in here for so long and so focused on you that nothing else mattered. And, Gemma, I’m so much happier with you than I was before.”
Gemma flushed and tucked her hair behind her ear. She knew that no matter how long she had the fortune of it falling on her, she would never get over his unabashed flattery and his gaze like the universe began and ended with her.
“And what about your new contract?” she asked, reluctantly pulling a slice of reality back into her little bubble of comfort.
His lips pulled into a soft smile. “I had Charlie put itthrough the shredder, figuratively speaking. I’m not going anywhere.”
When he’d made the suggestion before, it threw her into a tailspin of self-preservation panic. She didn’t want him to rearrange his life around her, but that was before everything he’d just said. Before she knew how sure he was of what he wanted, and before she felt the same certainty.
She leaned in and kissed him, softly and slowly. The warmth that filled her lulled her into a deeper state of drowsiness. She saw the same exhaustion mirrored in Jack’s eyes when she pulled back. It had been a hell of a day, and a hell of a five months.
He grinned at her. “So, I guess I can say, if I hadn’t met you, I never would have un-quit my job.”
She hummed a laugh and settled back beneath his arm. “Yes, you’re welcome for that. Though I’m sure you would have loved making up stories about dragons in the snow.” She yawned again, and when Jack didn’t scold her, she realized it was because he was yawning too. She felt his chest expand and contract in the telltale way. “I felt that,” she said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His voice was watery and warm.
“Mm-hmm.” Her eyes had slipped closed.
“I really don’t know what I had been thinking either. I mean, to switch genre so dramatically... I guess that’s testament to how desperate I was for change.”
“Do you think you’ll regret it?”
“No,” he said immediately. “I don’t regret anything that landed me right here with you.” He shifted to lie back withhis head propped up on the couch’s pillowy arm. He hauled Gemma up beside him and lifted one leg onto the cushions.
“I thought we weren’t sleeping,” she said, eyes closed, once she settled into him with her back to the couch. She nuzzled her nose against his chest and took a deep inhale. The smell of him alone would have been enough to knock her out.
“We’re not,” he said through another yawn. “I’m just resting after five months of chasing you.”
She laughed and her body bounced against his. He ran his fingers through her hair, and the gentle tugging bumped her down another level of consciousness. “Jack, that’s a bad idea.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, but didn’t stop.
She curled into his warmth and looped a leg over his. In a dreamy haze, she thought back to that morning when they’d crashed into each other. To say the path that put them where they’d ended up was long was a careless understatement. It had started with one hundred and forty-seven coffee crashes and wound its way through science and a psychic, exes and celebrities, a viral video, missed flights, flights that never were, reunions, a rock concert. A kiss. A few kisses actually.
