Chapter 15
Pauline
I woke up warm in a way I hadn’t been in years.
Not radiator warm. Not blanket warm. This was skin-against-skin, breath-on-my-neck, arm-locked-around-my-waist warm—the kind that made your entire nervous system hum with the knowledge that you were held.
That someone was here. That for once in your life, you hadn’t woken up reaching for something that wasn’t there.
Jack’s body was curved around mine, his chest against my back, and I could feel his heartbeat through my shoulder blade—slow, steady, the rhythm of a man deep in sleep. His hand was splayed across my stomach, possessive even unconscious, his fingers warm against my bare skin.
I lay there in the grey morning light and let myself have it. Just for a minute. Just this.
Then I turned in his arms, carefully, only to find his eyes already open.
Blue. Clear. Watching me with an intensity that should have felt invasive but instead felt like the safest place I’d ever been.
“What?” I whispered.
His gaze moved over me—unhurried, thorough, like he was memorizing something. His thumb swept across my hip beneath the sheets.
“You’re still here.”
Something in my chest pulled tight. “Did you think I’d leave?”
“I’ve had seven years of practice thinking that.”
The honesty of it landed between us, vulnerable and raw. I reached up and traced the line of his jaw, feeling stubble scratch against my palm.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “You’re stuck with me now. Pillow lines and all.”
His mouth curved then he leaned in and kissed my forehead—soft, lingering.
A sound drifted from somewhere beyond the bedroom. Cabinets opening. Water running.
I grabbed the sheet and yanked it up to my chin. “There is a person in your apartment.”
“Housekeeper. Saturdays.”
“Jack. I’m naked.”
“She’s very discreet.”
“I am very naked in your bed and there is a stranger making breakfast noises.”
The grin he gave me was obscene—lazy and warm and completely unrepentant, the grin of a man who knew exactly how naked I was because he was the reason for it.
“Would it help if I told you she’s been with my family since I was twelve and has seen me in significantly more embarrassing situations?”
“Like what?”
“I once got my head stuck in a stair railing trying to prove I could fit through it.”
I stared at him. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Jack.”
“In my defense, Michael bet me fifty dollars.”
“You were almost an adult.”
“The fire department had to come. Mrs. Willow brought them lemonade while they worked. She’s seen things, Pauline. Your naked presence won’t even register.”
I was laughing now, the absurdity of it breaking through my embarrassment. “You’re telling me this to make me feel better, but actually it’s making everything weirder.”
“I’m an open book.” He kissed my shoulder. “A deeply flawed, occasionally stupid open book.”
The grin faded slowly, and he was studying me again—reading me the way he always did, looking past the surface into the tangled mess underneath.
“Do you regret it?” he asked quietly.
Last night. His mouth on my throat. My back arching off his sheets. The sound of my own voice saying things I’d never said to anyone. My body was still humming with it—every muscle loose and warm, a pleasant soreness between my thighs that made me aware of every shift against the mattress.
“I’m still recovering, actually.” I pressed my lips together against the smile threatening to split my face. “You might have to carry me to the bathroom. Several key muscle groups have filed a formal complaint.”
Heat flared in his eyes. “I could carry you.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m offering.”
“I know what you’re offering, and we both know that’s not how we’d end up in the bathroom.” I poked his chest. “We’d get distracted. There would be inappropriate shower activities. Mrs. Willow would hear things that would make her regret the lemonade.”
He laughed—and the sound settled something in my chest. Then, his hand came up to brush a curl from my forehead, and as his gaze held mine.
The air between us changed. Grew heavier.
“Can I ask you something?” His voice had taken a lower note now.
My heart climbed into my throat. “Depends.”
“Seven years ago.” His thumb traced my temple, barely touching. “I need to know why.”
The question that had been waiting in the corner of every conversation since I came back to California.
I sat up slowly, pulling the sheet around me like it could protect me from what was coming.
“Because I wasn’t enough for you,” I said.
He pushed himself upright. “What are you talking about?”
“I heard you, Jack.” My voice was steady. I’d had seven years to practice keeping it steady. “The party. Spring semester of your last year. You were outside with your friends—James, Davis, the whole entitled pack—I heard everything.”
Jack’s face went blank, like his brain was reaching back through years of memory, trying to locate the exact moment that had ruined everything.
“Someone asked about me—the girl with the curly hair who was always with Claudette.” I could still hear it.
The ice clinking in expensive glasses. The lazy, overfed laughter of boys who’d been handed the world and thought it owed them entertainment.
“And you said—” My throat tried to close.
I forced the words through anyway. “You said I was nobody. Just Claudette’s friend. That I’d always had a crush on you.”
I watched recognition dawn across his face—he sat up straighter.
“They laughed,” I continued. “And you laughed with them. And then I went back to my dorm room and spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how I’d been stupid enough to think a guy like you would actually want a girl like me for real.”
“Pauline—” His expression turned pained.
“The next day you showed up at my door asking me to be your girlfriend. Officially. Publicly. And all I could think was that you wanted to make it official now? After hiding me for months and letting your friends think I was a joke?” My hands were fisted in the sheet.
“So I said no. Because I didn’t want to be any other joke or prank you might have planned with your friends. ”
The silence that followed was enormous. Jack’s jaw was tight, his hands pressed flat against the mattress on either side of him like he was trying to anchor himself.
“That conversation,” he said finally, and his voice was thick with emotions, “is the single worst mistake I have ever made in my entire life.”
“You don’t have to explain anything now—”
“No. Listen.” He shifted closer but didn’t touch me—like he needed me to hear this without the distraction of his hands on my skin.
“Those men were predators. They didn’t date women—they traded stories about them and ranked them like cars or watches or some other thing to acquire and show off.
” His eyes were blazing now, all the control stripped away.
“James especially. He was—Christ, he was cruel. The things he said about women, the way he talked about them like they were only worth what they could offer him—”
He stopped. Breathed. Started again.
“If he had known for one second that you mattered to me, he would have come for you. He would have made your life hell just to watch me react, because that was the game.” His eyes pooled with regret. “I told them you were nobody because if they believed it, they would leave you alone.”
My breath caught. To say I’d never imagined this would be an understatement.
The story I’d carried for seven years cracked down the middle, light bleeding through a place I’d kept sealed shut.
“I kept you secret because you were the only thing in my life that felt real.” His voice cracked slightly.
“The only thing that wasn’t performance or obligation or my father’s expectations.
Being with you felt like breathing after holding my breath for years, and I would have let every one of those friendships burn before I let them put their filthy eyes on you. ”
Something broke open in my chest—a locked door I’d been guarding for seven years, suddenly swinging wide.
“I was a coward, I asked you to be mine because graduation was already approaching,” he said. “I thought it was safer that way.” His eyes met mine—raw, stripped bare. “And you said no. And I have spent every day since trying to understand what I did wrong.”
“We lost seven years,” I whispered, the words coming out broken. “Over a conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear.”
“Over me being too much of a coward to just tell you the truth.”
“Over me being too proud to ask why.”
I was crying now. Jack reached for me, pulling me against his chest, and I went willingly, collapsing into him because holding myself together was suddenly impossible.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured against my hair. “I’m so goddamn sorry.”
“I thought you were ashamed of me.”
“I was terrified of losing you.” His arms tightened.
We held each other while the morning light strengthened beyond the windows. His heartbeat was steady beneath my ear. My tears soaked into his skin.
When I finally pulled back, my face was a disaster and my eyes were swollen and Jack was looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“It was completely my fault.” He wiped my cheeks with his thumbs. “Can I make it up to you?”
“How?”
“Well.” His mouth curved. “I was thinking we could start with me never letting you doubt how much I want you ever again. Then maybe work our way up to me spending the rest of my life proving I’m not a complete idiot.”
“That’s a long-term plan.”
“I’m good at long-term plans.”
I kissed him. Tasted salt and morning and all the lost time we could never get back. He kissed me back slowly, his hands cradling my face with a gentleness that made fresh tears spill over.
“I’m here now,” I whispered.
“You’re here now,” he repeated, like he was letting it become true.