CHAPTER 24 JACKSON
JACKSON
I stare up at the ceiling of the hotel room, tracing the wood grain on one of the exposed beams that runs the length of the room. I sat with Lottie down in reception after I finished up with Adeline, listening to her talk about the history of the lodge while she folded spare linens.
She inherited it from her mother, who inherited it from her mother before her.
Over and over, handed down through generations, always to the eldest daughter.
Us oldest daughters, Lottie had laughed, we carry enough trauma to be excellent micromanagers, it turns out.
Fate has a funny way of shaking out, don’t you think?
Fate. The slip of the word was enough to make me pause, hands frozen over a well-loved cherry red table napkin, mid-fold.
But then Lottie had chirped happily on about the recent renovations and the refurbishments that took into consideration the existing structure, and the thought slipped away.
I was eager to lose myself in a conversation instead of sitting firmly planted in my own head, and Lottie seemed to know it.
The lodge maintained most of its original pieces. Like the exposed wood beams and the fireplaces in every room. What she could salvage, she meticulously maintained for longevity. That has been important to her. To keep what she could.
“I figured if it’s got good bones, why not.” Her hands worked easily over the worn red napkins. Folding once and then again. Muscle memory. “It’s nice to hold on to some things, hmm?”
I stare at the beam now and imagine what it must feel like. Holding something up for over a century.
“Stupid,” I mutter to myself, dragging a hand over my face. These are the asinine thoughts that usually haunt me anywhere between one and four in the morning, twisting with the sharper ones until it’s a never-ending stream of chatter in my head.
I roll to my side and grab my phone from beneath the spare pillow with a sigh, careful to keep it tucked under the blanket so the light from the screen doesn’t wake Delilah.
I didn’t come back to the room until I knew she’d be asleep.
I don’t know why. I think I was afraid to face her.
Or maybe I was afraid of what she’d see when she looked at me.
Luckily she was curled into a ball at the very edge of the mattress when I slipped through the door, a wall of pillows between her space and mine.
That damn pillow wall is another thing that’s twisting at me. Last night we didn’t bother, but tonight Delilah thought she needed it.
I swipe open my phone and scroll to my messages. The latest is from Camille—unanswered, of course.
I know you don’t trust me, it says. And for good reason. But I’d like another chance.
Another, right after it. Lighten up, Jackson. If I mess up, you can tell me I told you so.
Like that’s what I’m worried about. Being right. I want to be wrong about her more than anything else, but it’s hard to forget the little boy with a hungry stomach, waiting in the kitchen for someone who never showed up.
Adeline had called tonight near tears, wandering around the issue until she finally confessed that all the girls in her friend group were having their mothers attend the midsemester leadership brunch.
It’s a wound I’ve never been able to fully patch for them, and my usual assurances felt like dust on my tongue.
I darken the phone, but the words stay illuminated above me. They blink slowly, like a buzzing neon sign on its last breath, flickering brighter and brighter.
Lighten up, Jackson.
Lighten up, Jackson.
Lighten up, Jackson.
I dig the palms of my hands against my eyes until I see spots, trying to push it away. I hate when my brain sticks on a thought, its rusty claws digging in until I hurt.
Camille says she wants to be involved in the girls’ lives. Adeline and Penelope are old enough to make their own decisions, but I’m having a hard time putting them in a position where they could get hurt.
Like I was. Over and over and over again.
Lighten up, Jackson.
“Jackson?” Delilah’s sleepy voice drifts through the dark. The violent swirl of cyclical thoughts eases. Sheets rustle, a pillow shifts, and one brown eye peers at me from her side of the bed. “Are you back?”
After I sat with Lottie, I wandered to the couches at the back windows in front of the fireplaces. I did some random administrative work on my phone. Doomscrolled a bit. I didn’t realize how late it was until the sky was inky black on the other side of the wall of windows.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “I’m here.”
She makes a soft sleepy sound. All I can see of her is a lump beneath the blankets. I know she sleeps with her hands tucked under her cheek, curled on her side. She stole the extra quilt from my side of the bed, but I don’t mind. I want her to be warm.
She yawns. “Can’t sleep?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I rasp.
“Okay,” she whispers.
She grows silent and I feel myself holding my breath, waiting for her to say something else.
Disappointment curls in my gut when her breathing evens out again, her socked feet shifting beneath her stolen blankets.
It’s nothing but the hiss and pop of the logs burning low in the hearth and the dwindling gusts of wind whistling through the trees outside.
The worst of the storm has passed now, over twenty-eight inches of fresh snow in twelve hours.
Everything is still and quiet. Hushed, in the way only snow can do. Sometimes the middle of the night feels like the loneliest time of all, the minutes stretching into hours and the dark pressing in from every side.
Delilah grunts and then shifts, sitting up on her side of the bed. She reaches for the small lamp on the table and slaps at it until the room fills with its soft glow. She squints at me, messy hair and pink cheeks. A yawn cracks her jaw open wide and she digs a fist against her left eye.
It’s cute as fuck.
She settles, blinking slow and long, still caught in the webs of sleep.
“Come over here,” she says.
“What?”
“Grab my computer from the desk”—she points toward the table stacked with various notepads, candy wrappers, and empty coffee mugs—“and come over here.”
I swallow, the sound of it loud in my ears. “Come over . . . where, Delilah?”
She pats at the space next to her.
“I don’t know if—”
“Jackson,” she sighs, impatient and grumpy and sleepy and soft and so damned beautiful my heart climbs up to my throat.
“If you don’t come over here, I’m going to come over there.
And when I do, I’ll take up all your space and steal your blankets.
” She arches an impertinent eyebrow. Fuck. “Make your choice.”
“You already steal my blankets.”
A smile teases at her mouth. “Yes, well. I’ll take all of them. And you’ll be clinging to the edge of the mattress shivering.”
Knowing I’m putting myself in a ridiculously tempting position, but thoroughly unable to resist, I dutifully throw back my blankets and shuffle over to the desk.
I grab her laptop, then watch as she tosses the top quilt back and pats at the flannel sheet beneath.
The pillow wall goes next and then it’s just Delilah in the middle of a cozy-looking king-sized bed, her shirt slipping off one shoulder.
“Sit,” she demands. “We’re going to watch a movie.”
My eyes flick to the clock on the mantel. “It’s two in the morning.”
“So it is.” She yawns again, shimmying down in her blanket nest while she powers up her computer. “I bet I’ll last through the opening credits.”
“You don’t have to be awake,” I tell her, still standing at the edge of the bed. “You can go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure you will, but fine isn’t good and I want you to be good.” She pats the bed again. She’s wearing a gray T-shirt with a dancing chicken nugget on it. I didn’t see it when I came in earlier, the blankets already tucked high around her neck.
I stiffly slip into the place next to her, my thoughts still tangled up.
It’s hard for me to let people see me like this.
Firmly cemented in the middle of an anxiety spiral I don’t know how to battle my way out of.
I cross my arms over my chest and my legs at the ankle.
It’s uncomfortable as fuck, but so is this tight, anxious knot, right at the base of my neck.
“I don’t do this on purpose,” I say, trying to explain myself. I hate that I’ve made her worry. That this . . . thing I can’t change about myself is keeping her up now too. “I’d sleep if I could.”
Delilah doesn’t look at me, still navigating across her desktop. In a shock to absolutely no one, she has roughly ten thousand icons, arranged in no clear order, spread out across her screen like a handful of stars.
“I know that,” she says absently.
I drag my hand through my hair, feeling self-conscious and stupid. I try to joke it off. “I’m just naturally difficult, I guess.”
Delilah turns toward me. Soft eyes and soft hair and a soft downward tilt to her mouth that I want to press my mouth to until I soften too.
“You’re not difficult,” she says quietly. “You just haven’t had anyone take care of you.”
Then she hands me a pillow, shimmies down in the bed, and plops her computer between us like she didn’t just find all my bruised spots with a single statement. Like she didn’t just crack me open, reach her hand inside my chest, and squeeze.
“Press play when you’re ready,” she orders.
She chooses Casablanca.
“This is a stupid movie,” I say somewhere around halfway through, Delilah’s shoulder pressed to mine.
Any attempt at maintaining space has been demolished by Delilah’s wiggly, relentlessly moving leg and her sheer inability to not be a blanket hog.
I’m fighting for my life on my side of the bed, and she only settles when my thigh is pressed to hers.
She keeps drifting off, the crown of her head tipping against my chest before she rouses herself again, trying to pretend like she’s engaged in the worst love story of all time.
“I beg your pardon,” she says, all cute and indignant. “This movie won the Oscar for Best Picture.”
I snort. “Shakespeare in Love also won an Oscar for Best Picture. It’s hardly a litmus test.”
She props herself up on her elbows, looking more awake than I’ve seen her for the past hour. Her knee jostles the computer.
“Did you just insinuate that the absolute masterpiece that is Shakespeare in Love is not a good movie?”
I grab the laptop and move it closer to me. “It won against Saving Private Ryan.”
“Which is a depressing and violent movie.”
“A really excellent depressing and violent movie.”
She huffs and grumbles something under her breath, throwing herself back into her pillows. Her foot kicks my ankle, and I’m not entirely sure it’s an accident.
I cover my laugh with a cough. “Did you say something?”
She rockets back up next to me, sending the computer toppling again, and digs one finger into the middle of my chest. “Love stories aren’t stupid, Jackson.” Another poke. “War movies aren’t automatically better and more serious just because people are . . . losing limbs on a beach.”
I curl my fingers around her wrist and lower our hands to the bed between us.
“Delilah,” I say. “Baby.” Her cheeks go pink at the endearment I meant as a tease but that falls out of me like a secret. My ears go hot as I rub my thumb over hers. “I think it’s possible you’re delirious.”
“I’m not.” Her mouth turns down. “Why do important things have to be things that hurt us? Why can something only be valued and held in high regard if it’s . . . dark and damaging? Why can’t we keep the bright things? The lovely things? Why can’t those things be special too?”
“We can keep whatever you want, Delilah,” I say, trying to ease some of the tension that’s settled across the lines of her body. I shift our hands so we’re palm to palm. “Soft things are important too. Of course they are.”
She studies me, suspicious. “Yeah?”
I nod.
“You haven’t always thought so,” she accuses.
She’s right. About a month ago, I probably would have argued with her until I was blue in the face. That softness has no place in important things. But—
“I think I’ve learned to appreciate a little color.”
Her face splits into a grin that makes my chest hurt. “Like hot pink?”
“Yeah. Like hot pink.”
And honey brown and whatever shade Delilah’s bottom lip is after I’m through kissing her. A dangerous thought to have at two in the morning, when all of her is tucked up against all of me, blankets piled on top of us.
I straighten the computer and we watch as Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman meet on a rain-drenched tarmac. Delilah sighs next to me, her head drifting back to my shoulder. Our hands are still clasped together between us and I let my eyes grow heavy.
Like this, night doesn’t feel so lonely anymore.