Chapter 6
Caleb
She ghosts me for three days after the kiss.
Not in an obvious way, but in an efficient way, which, from Jasmine, feels worse. She doesn’t like digital shit. But our Thursday review gets moved to email. My eligibility paperwork comes through the team portal with a note that says see attached and nothing else.
And…she starts taking the west stairs.
I give her two days. On the third, I go find her, because I’ve never once in my life left well enough alone, and I’m sure not starting now over the only thing I actually want.
She’s in the stairwell. Top step, knees up, with a lunch she doesn’t seem to be eating. When the door opens, her shoulders jump to her ears, drop when she sees it’s me, then climb right back up, which is new, and which I hate.
“You can’t be up here,” she says.
“We did this bit already. I liked it better the first time.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before my father called, and I remembered who I am.” She won’t look at me. “We’re done, Caleb. It was a mistake, I said so at the time, and I’m ending it before it turns into the kind of mistake that we can’t fix.”
“Okay.”
That gets her to look up. “Okay?”
“You don’t want this, we’re done. I’m not gonna chase a woman who’s telling me no.” I lean back against the rail. “But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re scared. Those aren’t the same thing, and I think you’re too smart to pretend they are.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t tell me what I am.”
“Then you tell me.” I keep my voice even. “Tell me you didn’t feel that kiss all the way down to between your legs. Tell me you don’t want it, and I’ll walk down these stairs and be a name on your caseload for the rest of the year. Go ahead.”
She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. Her thumb’s running across the seam of her jeans, fast. I’m stressing her out, but I can’t care about that. I need her not to be afraid, at least not of me.
“That’s what I figured,” I say, gentler.
“I hate that you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Read me as if you think you know me.”
“I’m not pretending to be an expert on Jasmine Dixon. It’s just that I notice things. We covered that.”
“That’s worse, somehow.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Wanting it isn’t the point.” Her voice cracks.
“You don’t get it. He’s not just my dad.
He’s the only person I have. No mom, no friends, no backup.
Just him and this job, and the only reason he keeps me close is that I’m useful.
The day I’m a liability instead of an asset, I’m gone.
I’ve watched him cut off people he’s known twenty years for less than this.
” She finally looks at me, and her eyes are wet and furious about it.
“You’d be risking some time on the ice. I’d be risking the only family I’ve got. Those aren’t the same risks.”
And there it is. The truth. It’s not about her self-imposed set of rules or the optics. She’s not scared of getting caught. She’s scared of being alone and abandoned, and that’s a valid ass fear.
“You’re right,” I say. “They’re not the same. Yours is worse.” I sit with that for a second, because she deserves me actually sitting with it. “I’m not gonna tell you you’re wrong to be scared. You’re not. But I’ll tell you what I am, since we’re being honest.”
“What?”
“Everything I touch for too long ends up on fire. Ask people from the three schools I’ve been to.
” I make myself hold her eyes. “You’re the most careful thing I’ve ever been near.
And it’s obvious, I should be the one walking away, for your sake, and a little for mine, but I keep not doing it.
So if you want to be the smart one for both of us, I won’t fight you.
But don’t tell me it’s because you don’t want it.
Lie to your dad. Lie to the team. Don’t lie to me.
You never have to lie to me, Jasmine, no matter what your truth is. ”
She’s quiet for a long time. The bad fluorescent light over the landing ticks. She hates that light. I wish I could rip the fucker out for her. I watch her decide to ignore it.
“I don’t want to stop,” she says finally, so low I almost miss it. “That’s the problem. I have run the scenario six different ways, and the answer keeps coming back the same, and I hate it.”
“Yeah.” I almost smile. “Me too.”
“So what do we do?”
“We’re careful.” I shrug. “Real careful. We’re already good at it. You’ve been invisible your whole life, and I’ve spent mine watching for the thing that’s gonna hurt me before it knows I’m there. Between the two of us, we’re built for a secret.”
That gets the corner of her mouth to turn. Barely.
“I’d need rules,” she says.
“Of course you would.”
“I mean it. Actual rules. I don’t know how to do anything without them. Without a structure, I’ll spin out and ruin it myself before my father ever gets the chance.”
“So we make rules. Go. Rule one.”
She straightens up a little, and I watch the fear hand the wheel over to the part of her that organizes things, which is the part that keeps her alive.
“Nothing in this building during work hours,” she says.
“Little late for that. I kissed you in a conference room on Tuesday.”
“Rule one starts now.”
“Fine. Rule one.”
“Rule two. Nothing in writing. No texts that say anything. If my father ever has a reason to look, there’s nothing to find.”
“Done,” I say quickly. “I hate texting anyway.”
“I mean it. Nothing cute. Nothing a person could screenshot and hand him.”
“Jasmine, I have never sent an emoji in my life.”
“Good.” She smiles. “Stay that way. Rule three. The second this actually threatens his program or your eligibility, it stops. No discussion. You go back to a name on my caseload, I go back to invisible, and we never speak of it. After all, this is not a forever thing.” She says it fast and flat, like ripping tape.
“I need you to agree to that one out loud.”
It was hard for me to hear, and it bothers the fuck out of me more to say, but I realize it’s the deal that will keep whatever this is between us alive. “Agreed.”
“You agreed to that fast.”
“You needed me to, so I did.”
She blinks, like that doesn’t compute, like a man doing a thing just because she needed it is foreign to her.
“Okay, then, that’s it,” she says after a second. “That’s the list.”
“That’s your list.” I wait until she’s looking somewhere near my face. “I have my own rule.”
“You don’t get a rule.”
“Oh, I definitely get one.” I lean forward.
“You don’t disappear on me. The in-your-own-head kind.
If shit gets too loud, you tell me, and I get you out.
You don’t grin and bear it alone to keep me from finding out you’re a person.
Three days of disappearing to the west stairs is the kind of thing I’m talking about. You don’t get to do that.”
She stares at me. For a second, I worry I’ve blown it.
“That’s not really a rule,” she says, thick. “That’s just asking me to let you in.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Fuck buddies don’t typically need to be let in.”
“Oh, are you an expert on fuck buddies?” My shoulders stiffen imagining her under anyone else but me.
“...Fine.” She swallows. “But add rule four. You stop bringing me sugar packets where people can see. It’s conspicuous.”
“Then what can I do?” I ask, slightly annoyed after hearing all of the things we “can’t” do.
Then she does a thing I don’t see coming, and I see most things coming. She tears the sandwich in half and holds the bigger piece down two steps to me.
“You didn’t eat,” she says. “You get a tone when you don’t eat.”
“I don’t have a tone.”
“You sure as hell do. Take the sandwich.”
I take the sandwich. We eat in the quiet for a minute.
“This is going to end badly,” she says. Not dramatic. Just stating it, like a forecast.
“Maybe.”
“You’re supposed to argue with me.”
“Can’t. It’s a rule, remember? I don’t lie to you.” I take a bite. “That one’s mine and yours both, turns out.”
She almost laughs. Almost. I’m counting it anyway.
I sit on a concrete step under a light she hates, eating half a tuna sandwich with the crusts cut off, next to a girl who just agreed to risk the only family she has on me.
The rules created as guardrails for this relationship should feel like a leash. Every set of conditions anybody’s ever read me has felt exactly like one.
But this is the first set I want to keep.
We’ve got rules now. A whole careful little setup to keep one beautiful, terrified, brilliant woman safe from her own father and from me.
It’ll hold everything together until it doesn’t.
I already know which one of us is gonna be the reason.