CHAPTER 25 DELILAH
DELILAH
I wake up pinned to the mattress, Jackson half on top of my body, his face in my neck and both of his arms wrapped around my middle. There’s no way his hand isn’t numb, wedged under me like that, but he doesn’t so much as stir as I shift and yawn beneath him.
We don’t have a broadcast until the afternoon radio show, followed by a quick spot on the four o’clock news.
Now that the storm is spreading out to other parts of the state, our appearances here at the lodge will become less frequent.
As soon as the roads are clear and safe, we’ll head back to Baltimore and do a couple of closing segments for the partnership, and that will be that.
The official end of Jackson and Delilah, Weather Together.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand, swiping it open and checking my email.
It’s nothing but discount coupons for the ice-cream shop down the street from my house, a reminder to bring my car in for an oil change, and a collection of spam emails I’m too lazy to unsubscribe from.
My thumb hovers over one of the social icons as I mentally debate if I want to open that can of worms. I’ve been largely avoiding the apps since Jackson and I were caught with our hot mics, but curiosity wins out.
I click in, and my eyes immediately widen.
Bright red notifications ring the bottom of my screen. A frankly terrifying number of them. Gianna did mention the online community was engaged, but she failed to mention the sheer volume of people speculating about the nature of my relationship with Jackson.
Jackson grumbles above me, shoving his face more firmly into my neck. I scratch my fingers through his hair absent-mindedly, urging him to settle while I scroll. He’s a deep sleeper when he finally falls into it. I don’t think he moved once last night, holding me like his favorite teddy bear.
I glance through the topics.
Do we think this Jackson and Delilah thing is a publicity stunt? Or did they actually get caught?
Yesterday’s Broadcast—Any clues??
Did you see his HAND around her WAIST?
Matching ski goggles!!! Please I am unhinged!!!!!!!
Aiden won’t say anything about it on Heartstrings
Leaked audio remix
I click into the last one, curiosity burning through the center of me. It has the most likes out of any of the posts, a shiny gold star next to the topic title. When I click into it, there is no caption. Just a play button with an embedded audio file.
I raise it to my ear, hoping to listen discreetly, but sound blasts through the speaker instead.
Jackson’s voice, low and breathy, “Kiss me, Delilah. Please.”
A heavy bass line fills the background as it repeats over and over.
Kiss me, Delilah. Please.
Kiss me, Delilah. Please.
Please, please, please.
Jackson groans into my neck while I fight with my phone, desperately trying to turn it off.
“What are you doing?” he mumbles. He raises his head and blinks blearily. “What the hell is that noise?”
“I don’t know!” I cry, trying to close out of the app.
But I only turn the volume higher. Whoever made this audio used the hitch in my breath right before I kissed Jackson as some sort of percussion echo.
It’s creative, if not wildly mortifying.
I didn’t think anything would be more embarrassing than all of Baltimore hearing me kiss Jackson, but here we are.
Jackson reaches up with a grunt and grabs my phone, muting it. The ensuing silence is the loudest thing I’ve ever had to endure. My cheeks are on fire.
He drops his face back to my neck.
“Did someone remix our leaked audio into a dance track?” he asks.
I shift, tossing my phone back onto the nightstand.
I debate lying. I debate rolling out from under him and locking myself in the bathroom.
I debate walking directly into the lake.
But he’s warm and I’m comfortable and my grandpa always said honesty is the best policy, so—“Yes,” I say.
I pause. “Do you want to know how many likes it has?”
His sigh is long-suffering. “Am I going to be baffled or humiliated?”
“Probably a combination of both.”
“Then, no. I’m good.”
He shifts again and his hips slot in between my splayed thighs, his head turning so his cheek is flat against my breasts.
His body is deliciously heavy, pressing me down into the mattress.
Smooth lines and warm skin. He settles with a little groan, and something thick and hard presses against my inner thigh.
My face feels like it’s about to melt off.
It’s morning, I try to rationalize. This is normal.
But I just listened to him panting into a microphone, begging me to kiss him set to a Phil Collins drumbeat, and rationalization has no hope against my desire to jump his bones.
I relax beneath him. His hand shifts, his thumb tracing down the line of my neck. He makes a small, bitten-off sound when I arch slightly. I doubt I’d have heard it if we weren’t tucked together.
“Good morning,” he slurs, and I laugh, scratching my nails against the back of his neck. It’s unfair that I’m enjoying this so much. A handful of lazy seconds in a sleep-warmed bed, thin light filtering in through the window.
I like that I get to hear the first words out of his mouth. I like the way he’s holding me. I like the way his hips keep rolling against me, my nipples pebbling beneath my shirt, the space between my legs wanting to shift and roll and grind.
His warm breath tickles the spot beneath my ear. I squirm.
“What time is it?” he asks, his voice like sandpaper.
“Around eight.”
I can practically feel the way his brain and body come back online, a tension rippling from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. The easy, soft motion he was moving against me with is replaced by an unnatural stillness, his hips shifting away.
I sigh.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I did.”
“I was led to believe that was unintentional.” He settles his palm against my hip, squeezing. “How bad is it?” he asks.
“What? The social stuff?”
He nods. “I haven’t looked. Aiden has alluded to it and the girls said something about DECKSON, but—”
I laugh. “DECKSON?”
He pinches me gently in admonishment. “Is there a lot?”
I think about that blinking red number in the bottom corner of my phone screen. “Define . . . a lot.”
Jackson groans.
Another soft laugh eases out of me. “People are probably just engaged because we’re on their television screens twice a day,” I assure him. “And on their radios in between. They’re fixated, but it’ll pass. It always does.”
It’ll pass for everyone. The guy who made that audio remix. The girls debating Jackson’s hand placement. The rest of the city of Baltimore.
Jackson.
I press my lips together. “We don’t have anywhere to be this morning.
I thought you could use the extra sleep.
” I pause, still smarting a bit from when he left to take that call.
It’s silly, and I have no reason to be. He’s allowed to keep his private life .
. . private. We’ve made no promises to each other. I hold no expectations.
I keep my hands moving through his hair. “Is everything okay back home?”
Jackson blinks. He’s still halfway asleep, by the looks of it. “Yeah,” he rasps. He drops his head back into my neck and makes a pleased little sound. “It was my sister, Adeline. But she’s okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else and I tell myself that it’s enough. It’s enough that he came back last night. It’s enough that he let me help him when he couldn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to unpack his family baggage.
Jackson shifts, his arms tightening around me.
“She’s having a hard time at school,” he says, still in that rough, slow way.
Hope flares in all my secret, soft places. “Yeah?”
He nods, his nose nudging at the soft skin of my neck. “Yeah. It’s hard for her that she doesn’t have a mom she can count on. I try to be everything she needs, but—”
He sighs heavily instead of finishing that thought.
“But you can’t be her mom,” I finish quietly.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Yeah.”
I know what that feels like. To want something so desperately, while not wanting it at the same time. To feel that ache so sharply when everything is changing around you. To have one good parental figure who loves you with his whole heart, but still feeling like you deserve more.
“I could—” I cut myself off quickly, rubbing my lips together. I have a nasty habit of injecting myself into situations where I’m not wanted, and I refuse to do it with Jackson.
Jackson leans up on his elbows above me. “You could?”
“Never mind,” I say easily. Deflect, my brain screams. Change the subject. My fatal flaw is offering too much of myself, too soon, and Jackson is quite literally trapped in a room with me. Now is not the time. I smile. “Do you want room coffee or do you want to wander downstairs?”
“I’d like to finish this conversation.” Jackson pulls one of his arms out from behind my back, pushing my hair off my forehead. His hand lingers under the curve of my ear, thumb rubbing. “What were you going to say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper.
“It matters to me.”
I exhale a harsh sound, feeling stupid. “I was going to say if she needs someone to talk to—someone who gets it—I’d be happy to.” I pause. “I’ve been where she is. Maybe I could help.”
Jackson doesn’t respond. He remains quiet long enough for me to regret both saying something about it and bringing it up while he’s got me flattened against this bed. I want to scurry off to a corner. I want to launch myself into the stratosphere.
“When we get back?” he finally asks. His eyes search mine. “That’s when you want to talk to her?”
I don’t necessarily see how timing is relevant, but—“Yeah,” I say. “I could also talk to her on the phone, while we’re here, if you wanted. But sometimes these conversations are better to have in person.”
He digs a knuckle into his cheek, then presses his palm into the mattress at my hip. I roll slightly into his arm, but he doesn’t move.
“But the first time you said it,” he clarifies, “you meant you’d talk to her back in Baltimore.”
I nod, feeling my forehead scrunch. “Yes. That is the place we live.” I rub my lips together. “But if I’m making you uncomfortable, or crossing a line, I—”
“What about me?” he cuts in, unwilling to let me finish my thought. “Will you see me back in Baltimore?”
“You are her guardian, right?”
“Delilah.”
I grin. “You still work at the radio station, right?”
“Delilah.”
Something thick lodges in my throat. He’s asking for honesty while keeping himself safe. I can still be the brave one, if that’s what he needs. “I’d like to,” I whisper. “I think we make a pretty good team.”
His answering smile is slow. A little bit bashful. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I think so too.”
“Contrary to what some parties initially believed,” I add.
Jackson drops his forehead back to my chest with a groan. Then he tilts his head and peeks up at me from one startling blue eye. “Didn’t you say I had the personality of a wet paper bag?”
“Wet piece of cardboard,” I correct. “And hey. You’re not wearing your glasses. I just realized.”
“Contrary to what some parties believe,” he snipes, “I do not wear my glasses and a three-piece suit to bed.”
I snicker. “You also don’t sleep hanging upside down in the closet.”
He heaves a sigh. “Everyone always nags me to switch to contacts, but—”
“No.” I am immediately, inexplicably defensive. “I like the glasses.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “They make you more you, if that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t, but it feels like a compliment.” He grins. “So I’ll take it.”
“It is a compliment.” My heart ka-thumps in my chest. I can’t believe I ever thought this man was cold and unfeeling. “Can you see without them?” I ask.
He shakes his head, his eyes roving over my face. “Not really, no. Just . . . smudges of color.”
“What colors am I?”
He angles my face toward his.
“Pink, gold—” His fingers tangle gently in the ends of my hair and pull. He smiles at me. “Brown.” His thumb drags over the curve of my cheek. Lower, down to my mouth. “Red,” he whispers, tugging slightly until my lips part.
He keeps his thumb there, across my mouth. My breathing grows shallow. Jackson licks his lips, staring hard at mine.
“You’re so beautiful,” he tells me. “Sometimes I get mad about it.”
I blink at him. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m not.”
And then he drops his mouth to mine, kissing me quiet.
It’s different from the rest of them. It’s not a distraction and it’s not impulsive.
It’s a choice. A decision made. He kisses me slow and careful, the same way the water moves down in the lake.
Steady and deep. He keeps his arms bracketed on either side of my head, my hands slipping around his biceps while my thighs hug his sides.
I’m surrounded by him. His warm breath and pounding heart and his skin pressed to mine beneath the tangle of blankets.
I arch beneath him but he doesn’t stray from my mouth.
He doesn’t push for more. I toy with the hair at the nape of his neck and I feel his lips twist into a half-moon smile against mine, amused.
I make a helpless, happy sound and he echoes it back, deeper and rougher.
An ache blooms the longer he kisses me, a sharp want that pulses and spreads.
“This is how it should have been,” he says against the curve of my jaw. “From the very start.”
“I don’t know about all that.” I press my head back into the pillows, giving him more room. “I kind of like the way we started.”
He leans back. “All that arguing?”
“Mm-hmm. It makes me feel like I know all the shades of you.” I reach for his glasses on the nightstand.
“Here,” I say, unfolding them, taking extra care with the part I accidentally snapped during our run-in at the station.
Jackson ducks his face down so I can slide them over his ears.
I do it carefully, smiling at him when they’re in place.
He blinks at me from behind the thick lenses and—this is nice. Being here. With him.
“Delilah,” he starts to say, “I think I—”
The rest of his sentence is stolen by the sharp flare of every light in our room. They turn brighter for half a second before they snuff out completely. Even the tiny green lights on our devices go dark, the cheery fire that’s been roaring in the fireplace for days sputtering out with a hiss.
We both freeze, staring at each other.
“Was that the power?” I whisper.
“Yeah, I think so.” Jackson pushes himself to his knees and looks over his shoulder, then out the window.
Beyond the frosted glass is a downward slope to the lake, dotted with strings of golden globe lights.
I can see the glow of them when I’m lying in bed, the light fighting from beneath a foot of snow.
All of them, like stars caught in the rocks of the cliff.
Those lights are dark now. There’s nothing but snow as far as I can see.
“Looks like it might be out for the whole lodge.”