AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Gemma,” he whispered so as not to startle her. His heart had shoved up under his collarbone and squeezed like an angry fist. He had to steady his hand from trembling. “Gemma,” he said again, and gently shook her arm.
She peacefully woke and filled her lungs with her first conscious breath of the day without opening her eyes. Jack held his own breath as her brow furrowed. Her face pinched as her body registered that she’d spent the night on an old couch. She took another, deeper breath, and her eyes fluttered open like a bronzed sunrise. Jack had never seen a shade of brown so beautiful.
He held stiller than a statue, watching her wake and feeling his heart pound in anticipation.
She blinked several times, her face betraying nothing. When her gaze fell on his, her eyes widened a fraction. She pushed herself up to sitting, her hair mashed on one side and her cheek rosy. She stared down at him kneeling in front of her, and Jack couldn’t remember the last breath he took.
“You,” she said.
A tiny sip of air slipped into Jack’s lungs, but he wouldn’tfully breathe until he was sure. He held her gaze, willing her to remember and silently begging.
“Yes, me.”
Gemma didn’t take her eyes off him. He felt her probing his face, his chest, his arms, and his hands resting on his thighs. He sensed himself standing on the edge of an abyss. She could push him into it with a single question,Who are you?,and the words would feel like a temporary death sentence exactly like they had every day before as he fell. But then, ever determined, he would start the torturous climb out of the dark abyss back into the light that was Gemma Peters.
He felt her light already like a patch of sun bursting through the clouds, and he silently hoped with all his strength that he could stay in it. He kept quiet, waiting,hoping, and feeling his battered heart soldier on until Gemma’s face split into a brilliant smile.
She flung herself off the couch and landed in his lap. He fell over backward, and suddenly she was on top of him, kissing him breathless with the stage floor at his back.
He threw his arms around her and held on with everything he had. Relief washed over him like a downpour after endless drought. The feeling was so profound, he felt his throat tighten and a tiny tear pinch out of his eye. He let her envelop him, her warm body small but solid on top of his, her hair a curtain around them. He kissed her and kissed her and was so consumed, he kissed the empty air where she had been before he even noticed she’d scrambled to sit up.
She straddled him and reached for his arm. Her fingers closed around his wrist and she jerked her hips to twist herupper body in a way that stirred something near the base of his spine. “What day is it? You told me this thing is never wrong, right?” she said.
He was too dazed from being tackled to realize she was looking at his watch.
She sucked in a gasp and turned to him with her mouth agape. Her hair was a golden, tousled nest around her flushed face. He’d never seen her so beautiful before. “Jack.” Light danced in her eyes, setting the bronze shimmering. “It’s Friday.”
He snapped out of his daze and sat up. “Itis?” He reached for his own wrist and looked at his watch, the most accurate piece of technology he’d ever owned.
She was right. The date had moved.
“It’s Friday!” he shouted right in her face.
She rocked back laughing but didn’t make it far before he grabbed her and kissed her senseless. He held her in his lap, her knees pressed into the stage floor on either side of his legs and his hands in her hair. They clung to each other in a delirious tangle of joy and relief.
“For a second, I thought you didn’t remember,” he slurred against her mouth.
She pulled back and smiled at him, wiping a tear off his cheek, and not even asking why he was crying. “Of course I remember! I was just confused as to why I woke up outside with a kink in my back,” she said with a laugh. She let go of him to push her fists into her spine. It loudly popped and he leaned forward to press a kiss to her chest, which she’d shoved in his face. “I can’t even remember the last time I slept on a couch.”
Jack bent his neck to the side and felt it crack. “Yeah, I’ll be paying for that one for a while too.”
“Part of the endless bounty of being in your thirties.”
Jack laughed as she buried her hands in his hair, which he was sure was as messy as hers, if not worse. He held on to her hips and felt her wiggle against him. He knew he needed her to get off him soon unless they planned to completely defile the stage at the Bowl—which, he realized, they probably wouldn’t have been the first couple to do.
Gemma placed her hands on his shoulders. “So, now what? We’re free. What do we do?”
He lifted a hand to smooth her hair and shrugged. “Anything we want.”
Her smile would have knocked him down if he hadn’t already been sitting. “Hmm,” she said as she looked out at the stadium over his shoulder. Her optimistic gaze seemed infinite, as if she were looking off into an unknown but thrilling future of possibilities.
Jack desperately wanted to be part of every one of them.
She turned her smile back to him with a promise in her eyes that he would be. “How about we start with breakfast? I know a great coffee shop nearby.”
EPILOGUE
The moment Gemmahad been dreading for two weeks was finally upon them. She’d tried with all her might to pretend it wasn’t looming over everything like a big, sad cloud—and she’d done a really good job of it for the most part—but there could be no more pretending. The time had come.
