Chapter Nineteen Emily
Chapter Nineteen
Emily
“Someone’s coming in the back door,” Jack says, snapping the lid of the laptop shut and standing. “I thought you said he was coming tomorrow?”
“That’s what Shirley said! What are we going to do now? I was bluffing earlier. I only bought eight boxes of Girl Scout cookies! That’s not nearly enough to keep me out of jail.”
As I’m frantically whining, Jack has placed his hand on my lower back and is pushing me toward a closet we passed in the hallway. He opens it and nudges me inside with the coats and cleaning supplies. He follows right behind me.
The closet is so small, we barely fit in here together.
My heart is racing but quiets a little when I shine the flashlight up and see Jack’s lazy smile. I’m not here alone. I’m with Jack.
We listen silently as the back door opens and there’s the sound of someone humming that we both recognize. Bart hums eighty percent of every day.
“It is him!” I whisper, and Jack presses his finger to my mouth.
He leans in, his breath sliding against my jaw as he whispers in my ear, “Don’t panic. We’re not caught yet.”
Oh, but I’m fully committed to panic by now. I’ve only been in here thirty seconds and I’m already cramped in a suffocating way. A hanger is pressing into my shoulder blade and my hip is jutting out at a strange angle. It’s so dark, and if Jack weren’t in here with me, I’d be hyperventilating.
“We’re going to have to wait until he goes to bed and then we can sneak out,” he says once again into my ear, and the only positive part of this experience is that we’re so close. I can feel his words as they rumble through his chest.
We’re both marble statues in the cramped closet as we listen to Bart hum around his kitchen, opening and closing cabinet doors. I think he’s making something to eat. My stomach growls in response and Jack looks down at it, making a hush expression. When we hear Bart’s footsteps getting closer, Jack clicks off the flashlight and we hold our breaths. What if he opens this closet? I might not have gotten fired for the email, but I sure as hell will get fired for breaking and entering his home. I’ll make sure Jack doesn’t, though. I’ll bargain and beg and plead. Anything to make sure he doesn’t lose his job.
Bart’s footsteps continue to approach and it’s now I realize that Jack is holding the laptop under his arm. Shit. If Bart goes in his office, he’s going to see that it’s missing. Why didn’t Jack stop us from doing this? This was a terrible decision. It was thoughtless, it was—
Jack’s hand presses into my lower back, pulling my hips flush with his. “ Breathe, ” he tells me as quietly as the breeze. “I can feel your heart racing. It’s going to be okay.”
My lungs release a breath. Tension flows out of my muscles. It’s going to be okay. I’m always the one promising that sentiment. I happily take on the responsibility of everyone’s burdens because I only ever feel good when I’m being useful to someone. But hearing those words whispered softly to me…it’s heaven.
And the best part is, he’s right. Bart doesn’t go into his office. His footsteps fade in the direction of his living room and then we hear the sound of his TV clicking on. I sigh and Jack’s hold around my waist loosens. Safe for now.
Knowing he’s out of visual range, Jack clicks the flashlight back on and shines it around the minuscule space and then sets it up against the wall. He looks around like he’s hoping a second bedroom will spring out of nowhere, and when he verifies it’s really just this little closet, he lowers himself to the floor, legs extending out and sandwiching my feet. His shoes touch the opposite wall.
He looks up at me and wordlessly pats his thighs.
I frown. He smiles and pats again. He lifts his right eyebrow and tilts his head in an “It’s going to be a long night” expression. I’m almost one hundred percent sure that sitting on his lap would be a very bad idea given the current state of my feelings toward him. But I also know that standing in this position for any length of time is going to destroy my back.
I tentatively shuffle around and lower myself to his lap, pretty much squatting so I don’t put my full weight on him. Jack huffs a chuckle at my nervous energy, takes my hips, and pulls me down firmly into his lap. His arm wraps around my abdomen like a seatbelt. There. Problem solved. Just my body sitting on Jack’s body. No big deal.
Except it’s a very big deal. His thighs are firm beneath my ass and the weight of his forearm is downright erotic. We’re so close and personal. I’ll never be able to erase the feel of him from my mind.
With his arm still around me, he leans over to grab the laptop, places it in my lap, and opens it.
Outside the closet, sounds of a game show blast. It really can’t be good for Bart to listen to the volume that high. But inside the closet, Jack fulfills my wish from that drunken night in my living room. I need you to fix it. His finger moves across the track pad as he opens Bart’s email account and scrolls down the list of unopened emails until he finds mine. There it is.
He selects it, then sends it to the trash. And because Jack is competent and doesn’t leave ends undone, he then goes to the trash bin, selects my email once again, and permanently deletes it.
I take in a deep breath, then let it out in one final rush.
It’s done.
“Your book is once again your own,” he whispers, silently closing the laptop and setting it aside.
“Thank you.” I twist a little to look at him over my shoulder.
“You’re welcome. But you could have done it on your own.”
“I know.”
“But you wanted me here?”
I swallow and grin. “And you wanted to help me.”
“I did.”
“Why?” I ask, hopeful to be granted the answer my heart is secretly looking for.
His eyes drop to my mouth, and my skin warms. “That day when I flirted with you on my motorcycle, and you thought I was someone else…it gave me a taste.” His eyes lift. “And then that night when you needed someone, I realized it could give me a real shot at becoming more than just your nemesis, and I wanted to take it. I wanted to be your friend.”
“My friend. ”
We are both well aware that friends don’t sizzle with this kind of tension. Friends don’t look into each other’s eyes like this while one friend is on the other friend’s lap.
He smiles. “Give or take.”
The back of his knuckles finds my jaw to brush the softest touch across it. Longing coils around my spine and tenses my thighs. His palm settles on the juncture of my jaw and neck, right over my hammering, traitorous pulse. It speaks to him loud and clear.
“Why didn’t you say goodbye to me?” I didn’t realize that question was still hovering so close to the surface until I ask it.
His brows pull together behind his glasses. “When?”
“When you left Rome, to move with Zoe to Nebraska.”
“Did you want me to?”
I’m not quite ready to answer that honestly. “You said goodbye to everyone in the school but me. Everyone. I even came outside to see you off. Just in case. But you didn’t even look in your rearview mirror at me.”
I hate how vulnerable that makes me sound. It conjures a memory of me standing in the parking lot with my chin held high, completely unnoticed by Jack as he drives away.
He looks devastated. “I didn’t know you were out there. I would have stopped.”
“But you didn’t even come find me for one last fight.”
He nods. “That’s because I purposely avoided you.”
“Oh.” I want to scramble off his lap and find distance now, but Jack’s seatbelt arm won’t let me yet.
“Because that’s the exact moment I started to realize I was a shit human who had gotten myself into a big mess.”
“What—”
“Emily…I didn’t want to say goodbye to you because the prospect of my last encounter with you being one where you looked apathetic to my leaving—I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And that startled me more than anything.” He shakes his head. “I was marrying someone else and avoiding saying goodbye to you because it was going to hurt. The morality of that alone was bad. And I thought—I hoped that if I just moved to Nebraska and went about my life it would be okay. I’d forget about you.”
“But you didn’t?” I ask with two scoops of hope in my voice.
“No. It felt wrong being so far from you.” I know what he means. It’s a sensation I felt but wasn’t able to explain. A wrongness. The feeling of he was there, and I was here, and it wasn’t supposed to be that way, even if we were enemies. We were always supposed to be near each other.
Jack stares at me and I stare at him, and we’re lost in this vortex of what do we do now?
“Emily…” he whispers.
“Jack…” I respond, and twist around a little more to face him.
We hang like professional acrobats in this torture. There’s no escaping it tonight. I’m hiding in a closet with my (ex-)nemesis, and it’s time to face the facts: I want him, and he wants me.
His eyes are on my mouth, our pheromones are clogging up the air, and we only have seconds to hammer out the details. “I…I feel like we should think this through, but…”
I inch closer. “But it’s hard to think when you have a mouth and I have a mouth.”
“Exactly,” he breathes out, his thumb sweeping across the tender skin just outside the corner of my lips.
“Let’s think tomorrow.”
He shakes his head lightly, fingers sinking into my hairline. Quicksand is pulling us under. “You won’t avoid me?”
“I’m a grown woman, Jack. I know how to let whatever happens in a closet stay in a closet.”
His eyes wander all over my face and neck like he’s deciding where he wants to start. With his hand still on my jaw, he dips forward and presses his mouth to mine. It’s an immediate hit of heat. A head-to-toe sweep of pleasure. I suck in a breath through my nose and hook my arm around Jack’s neck.
He pulls away and then presses in again. It’s even better the second time. The kiss is deeper, our mouths open a little. It’s cute. Like saying into a mic, test, one, two, three. I really like his mouth. His lips are soft and full without being too much. At the first touch of our tongues, I feel his smile—his teeth against my lip—and it turns the Christmas lights on in my heart. Jack just tasted me, and…it made him happy. I make him happy.
But then Jack’s mouth slants over mine in a kiss that erases the word cute from the slate. It goes from soft and sweet to hungry and spicy. It comes with a challenging sweep of his tongue that I immediately match and then lob my own back with a nip of his lip. Jack groans and I put my hand flat to his solid chest to feel it. I’m chasing sensations and collecting them all in my pocket for later.
I can’t get close enough now, for me or for Jack. His hands go to my torso, where he’s nudging me to turn and face him. I shuffle around as quietly as possible and straddle his lap, knees on the ground. No sooner than I’m seated, he pulls me in tightly against him, wrapping his arms fully around me. I run my hands down the expanded muscles of his back as our mouths explore and claim and tease. Of course, I think like a lightbulb illuminating in my head. Of course it would be this way with him.
When Jack rolls his hips into me, and I feel just how much he wants me, a blowtorch singes a line down my spine. I am hot and needy in a way I’ve never experienced before.
His mouth leaves mine to graze his teeth down the column on my throat, and I let my head fall back to expose every inch for him—arching as his fingers take over where his mouth can’t reach. And as he traces over the subtle curve of my cleavage, any last kernels of my good judgment turn into crushed coals, sparking embers through my veins.
I want his mouth on me again, so I tip forward and take it, sliding my fingers into his hair as his hand savors and learns me. Need builds in the base of my spine and my body snaps into autopilot. It demands that our clothes be off. It insists on taking as much contact and friction as possible.
“How do you feel this good?” he says, words scraping over my jaw.
“Vitamins.”
His chuckle is decadent, and I swallow it up.
Jack smells like green body wash, is morning-cup-of-coffee-warm, and touches like a mythological god that can heal. Our kisses are too frantic to belong in this quiet closet. They’re punctuated with jagged breaths and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep our movements to a minimum. I slide my hands under his shirt, over his chest, and brushing against the necklace lying against it. It’s a thin gold chain today with a little heart on the end. I want to take a sledgehammer to the walls of this confining space to spread his long body out on the floor so I can appreciate all of it with complete focus.
Jack’s gaze lingers on my hair for two beats before his hand is releasing my clip and letting my hair fall down my back. His private smile whispers triumph. And then his fingers move to toy with the little white buttons of my shirt that begin right between my cleavage, undoing them with swift magic all the way down to my belly button while he kisses me. “I love this shirt. I’ve been dreaming of popping these buttons open since I first saw you in it tonight.” His rough palm glides over my shoulder as he pushes the fabric aside. “I love that it matches your red nails. They drive me insane.” At his thorough exploration of the terrain under my shirt, I have to bite my lips together to keep from making sounds that would get us caught. Conscious thought is a struggle, though.
I have never felt so wonderfully outside myself while doing this kind of thing before. Usually I’m always thinking through the logistics, overly worried about the next step. But I couldn’t form a strategic thought right now if I tried. The only word pulsing through my mind is Jack.
His name winds down through my ribs and narrows my focus on the place where our bodies meet. Where we’re moving against each other and nearly lost to the world entirely. And that’s when the TV turns off. The sudden drench of silence is as loud as an alarm. The floor creaks beneath us ever so silently and Jack and I go still as death. We’re both taking in shallow, frequent breaths, listening as Bart snaps his recliner shut and then tracking his heavy footfalls out of the living room, down the hall, and then finally, up the stairs.
With every thud against the floor, the need holding my body hostage recedes a little. Finally, when all is silent again, I meet Jack’s gaze. His hand is still holding my breast and at this point, it just feels comical. He gives me a lopsided, apologetic smile that dips into my stomach before he’s sweetly tugging my shirt back onto my shoulder. One by one, I watch as he buttons me back up.
We share a look and one final soft kiss before I peel myself from him. With hands on my hips, he helps me stand. Wobbly legs are my factual evidence that what just happened was real.
Water starts rushing through the pipes in the walls and we both decide Bart must be getting a shower. Now is our moment to escape. I open the closet and step out into the dark hallway, waiting as Jack replaces the laptop on the desk. We silently pad through the house and out the back door once again, locking it behind us. And when we’re back in Jack’s SUV, all I can think is that it should have been more difficult. All of it: the sneaking, the breaking and entering, the closet hiding, and then of course…the making out. I am convinced that with anyone else, it wouldn’t have worked.
But with Jack, I’m starting to realize, everything just feels right.
It’s a short drive home, and we’re both quiet during it—busy contemplating our next steps. Whatever that was back in the closet, it was good. And it’s not finished.
Jack pulls into his driveway, puts his SUV in park, and then turns to look at me, lit only by the moon and stars. “So…” he says.
“So…” I respond.
We’re incredible with words.
And again, my heart picks up. In the silence, we’re saying so much. I’m not ready for this night to be over, and neither is Jack. Which is why he leans in to kiss me again. I promised I could compartmentalize anything that happens in the closet, but this is very much outside the closet.
I don’t get the chance to worry any further, though, because Jack’s phone starts ringing on the console between us. The screen lights up with the caller ID: MOM. Jack looks at the time, frowns, then says, “I’m sorry—I need to take this. She never calls at night.”
“Of course,” I say, meaning it, because if anyone will be sympathetic to familial responsibility, it’s me.
“Hey, Mom,” Jack says after answering the call, and I can’t help but melt a little at how soft his voice is now. “Everything oka—”
He frowns again, deeper this time. “What did he say before he left?” Jack opens his door and gets out, closing it behind him like he wants privacy.
And I sit in the SUV for two more minutes before I remember that I have my own house next door. I climb out, register Jack’s concerned expression, and then give him a gesture that says I’m going home. I’ll see you later.
He surfaces from the evidently heavy conversation with his mom to look disappointed by this turn of events. We both know there’s no recovering the mood after this, though. And maybe it’s for the best.
But then he gives me a quiet smile and presses his phone to his chest to muffle his words as he says, “Good night, Goldie.”