CHAPTER 20 DELILAH #2
My stomach twists. “That’s not how it’s been between us,” I whisper.
He stares up at me, his eyes so blue they look black. “That’s how it’s going to be,” he promises.
He kisses me again, ending the argument. Conversation. Whatever this thing we do with each other is. We kiss and kiss and kiss each other, my hands scrabbling for purchase, the most delicious sounds rumbling from his chest to mine.
He drops his head back with a grunt, his cheeks a bright pink, his glasses crooked on his nose. “Inside,” he says, chest heaving where I’m spread over the top of it. “I need to get you inside.”
I reluctantly peel myself off him and Jackson follows, slower, pressing up to his knees and then his feet while he brushes snow off his coat.
I try to help but I only manage three lazy swipes across his torso before he catches my wrist, towing me into him, bending me backward as he kisses me again.
I sigh into his mouth, warmth pulsing through my body.
He kisses me so good.
It’s all so good.
I wrench my mouth away, panting into the warm skin of his neck.
“We need to stop.” I laugh a little bit. “I can’t feel my nose.”
Somewhere above me, he nods, then grabs my hand with his.
Jackson tugs us back through the parking lot and into the lobby, the door slamming shut behind us, making me flinch. He steers me to the corner by the elevator and deposits me there, my body more than content to let him lead.
“Be right back,” he says.
I reach for him, hooking one hand in the pocket of his coat. “Where are you going?”
He steps back to me, thumbing gently at my cheek. A reassurance, apparently, that I desperately need.
“Your sled,” he says. “We left it outside. I’ll be right back.”
He leans forward and gives me a quick peck on my nose before striding across the lobby, yanking open the door, and disappearing outside.
The silence is jarring after the roar of the storm, my face and my hands prickling with feeling as the warmth slowly returns. It feels like my brain is doing that too. Sharp, painful bursts of awareness.
You shouldn’t have done that, my brain whispers. You’re sinking deeper into a mess you won’t be able to find your way out of.
Professionally. Personally. Emotionally. There’s no guarantee that any of this works out in my favor.
And isn’t that what I came out here to do? To put myself first, finally. To make the right choices.
Oh god. What have I done?
Jackson reappears, dusted in snow. Hardly a handful of seconds, but enough to have reality creeping in.
“I put it in the van,” he tells me. “Your doughnut is safe.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, distracted. My head is busy doing the calculations, trying to figure out what this means. Putting together the pieces of the equation and coming up with an answer I don’t really like.
He holds out his hand and I slip my palm against his, inexplicably feeling like I want to cry as he tugs us to the elevator. I stare at his shoulders as I walk behind him, then the toes of his boots as we stand awkwardly inside.
I have feelings for Jackson. Real ones.
And Jackson is not an impulsive man. He’s rational. A planner. I’m worried our kisses have tumbled into some sort of . . . exposure therapy for him. If this is another distraction for him while he figures out how fun he can be in the mountains, I’m not sure I want to be a part of it.
He presses the button for our floor, and we don’t say a word to each other. He seems to understand I’m working through something, the only concession the light bump of his thumb over my knuckles. He watches the red numbers slowly tick up and I stare at our blurry reflections in the mirror.
It’s the most unbearable three minutes of my life.
The bell dings and I follow numbly after Jackson, my gloved hand in his. Jackson fumbles with the key card to our room and I try to push away the intrusive thoughts that rise like angry bees.
I have a lifetime of being forced into other people’s too-small boxes. I have scars and bruises across my heart from every time I’ve been underestimated, undervalued. And I’ve made it so easy for Jackson to do the same.
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.”
I’m too mixed-up. I’m leading with my heart, and my heart has only ever gotten me in trouble. I need to take some time to decide. Any choice I make tonight won’t be a good one.
Jackson seems to realize it at the same moment I do. His face settles into calm resignation. “All right,” he agrees softly.
And that makes it harder. A thousand times harder. How well he seems to realize what I need in this moment. That space is the very best gift he could possibly give me.
“I’m going to get ready for bed now, I think,” I say quietly. I tug my hat off and twist it between my fingers. It’s damp from the snow. I’m sure my hair is bearing the brunt of the natural forces outside. I smooth it back self-consciously. “We have an early broadcast tomorrow.”
Jackson nods, studying his feet. “Yeah.”
“I’ll just—” I hike my thumb over my shoulder, pointing at . . . something. I really don’t know. I feel like I’ve fallen through the floorboards into an alternate universe. When did I become the person that weighs the consequences?
Maybe we’re both different people out here in the mountains.
I move around Jackson and fumble with the zipper of my coat, cursing under my breath when it gets jammed halfway. I yank at it and then yank again, frustrated tears burning behind my eyes when it doesn’t budge.
“You stupid piece of—” I grunt and yank again, my hands shaking. “Come on.”
Hands cover mine.
“Let me,” Jackson says quietly.
“You don’t have to—”
“Delilah,” he says. “Let me.”
I let go of the zipper, my arms dangling loose at my sides.
He bends his head to get a better look, then plucks the small tab between thumb and forefinger, tinkering.
He tugs it one way, then the other, his glasses slipping down as he investigates my jacket.
Then he does some sort of twisting motion and it’s free, tugging slowly down, the release of each metal clasp loud in the otherwise quiet room.
Jackson pushes the material off my shoulders without a word, the jacket landing with a heavy thump at our feet.
He stares at me in the dark, his breathing slow and steady. He’s waiting, I realize, for me to stay stop. To push him away. But I don’t want to do either of those things.
He slips two fingers into my bulky pink snow pants and tugs at the little elastic cord, loosening them.
He goes down to his knees in front of me, urging my snow pants off my legs.
I stare hard at the top of his head and suck in a sharp breath.
When is the last time someone touched me like this?
When has someone ever been this careful with me?
I stumble when he gets to my ankle. His hand reaches up, guiding mine to his shoulder.
“Here,” he says, head still bowed. His forehead brushes against my thigh. “Hold on to me while I get your boots.”
He works at the laces and tugs them off my feet. One and then the other, my hot pink snow pants following until I’m standing in front of him in my slightly damp sweats. Jackson stays on his knees, his palms coasting up the back of my calves. He squeezes, then sighs and leverages himself back up.
He’s reassuring me in the way he knows best.
Not with words, or empty statements that go around and around. But by taking care of me.
My eyes go prickly and hot.
“Thank you,” I manage, my voice tight.
He nods, already moving over to his suitcase, discarding his own layers with efficiency. He picks up my jacket and drapes it over the back of the armchair with his, and I stare at the material folded together while I grab dry pajamas to change into.
We’re silent as we climb into bed, just the rustle of blankets and the click of the light on the nightstand.
It doesn’t escape my notice that Jackson waits until I’m settled to flick it off, the room in shadows and warm, golden light from the fireplace.
Twenty minutes ago we were standing curled together in the middle of a storm and now we’re in bed, a perfectly polite three feet of space between us.
I pull the quilt over my shoulder and tuck my face into my pillow.
I’m almost asleep when his rough whisper carries across the space between us.
“Delilah?”
I jolt beneath the blankets and stare blearily across the pillows. He shifts them until I can see his face, then tosses them off the bed. Out of reach. He’s curled on his side with one bare arm wedged under his pillow. Smooth, easy lines. A half-moon to match mine.
“Yeah?” I rasp.
He shifts, getting comfortable.
“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.”