Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
Jack packed for their trip to Hawaii like they were going to be backpacking through an uncharted island.
Haleigh couldn’t help but laugh as she watched him pull fourteen pairs of underwear, two sweatshirts, three jackets, four sets of shorts, jeans, and khakis, two bathing suits, ten T-shirts, a flashlight, a full-size first-aid kit, enough pairs of socks for everyone at the hotel to get one, bug spray, sunblock, two boxes of granola bars, and mace from his suitcases and tuck them into their various homes throughout their hotel room.
“Where do you think we are?” she quipped.
No wonder he’d needed to check a bag. Meanwhile, Haleigh had fit a week’s worth of clothes and necessities into one carry-on and her oversized purse. She planned to surrender to the unruly waves in her hair, let her skin feel the sun’s touch makeup free, and live her best life in a set of loose, flowy tops and dresses. Anything else she needed, she’d find at the hotel store or in one of the towns in Maui.
“You won’t be making jokes if we find a tarantula in our room like in that episode of The Brady Bunch .” Jack rested the bug spray on his nightstand as if he was sure this would become a reality.
Haleigh laughed louder. “When have you seen The Brady Bunch ?” That show was older than her mom.
“I did a lot of research for this.” Jack shrugged. “That might have included watching a lot of Hawaii Five-O and sitcoms where they vacationed on the islands.”
“You are the king of dorks.”
Jack grinned. “And you love it.”
They spent the afternoon out by the pool, then had a late dinner at the hotel restaurant, where Jack somehow managed to convince the bartender they were twenty-two and on their honeymoon, securing them far too many delicious fruity drinks to pair with their fried rice and shrimp.
Afterward, they made their way down to the beach. Haleigh refused to close her eyes on her first day in Hawaii without slipping her bare feet into the Pacific Ocean.
As they stumbled their way onto the sand, Jack grabbed her hand. He had done the same a hundred times before, but everything about this felt different. The way his thumb traced her knuckles, sending sparks up her spine. The feel of his heightened heartbeat against her wrist when he pressed their clasped fingers to his chest.
They were far enough away from the bustle and the lights of the hotel that the moon painted silver into Jack’s light brown hair, and the stars winked at Haleigh like they knew all her secrets.
She slipped off her sandals and hiked her white maxi dress to her knees. Her mind was a little floaty from the alcohol, and Jack’s closeness, and the reality that they were hundreds and hundreds of miles from all the things that stressed them out. Here they could be just Haleigh and Jack: no anxiety, no money worries, no school pressure.
As she slipped her feet into the water, Haleigh asked the universe to stay in that one moment forever. The blue ocean was warm on her toes, and the air smelled like salt and nighttime and Jack. Small waves tickled her ankles, and Jack’s fingers caught pieces of her hair that twisted in the breeze.
He smiled at her like she was everything. It filled her chest to bursting.
They were both so lost in each other that they didn’t notice the clouds roll over the stars, only felt the raindrops as they splashed onto their skin.
There was no point in running for the hotel. It was too far away. Instead, they sheltered under a nearby palm tree.
Jack leaned against the trunk and pulled Haleigh into his arms, circling them around her waist. His chin came to rest on her head.
Haleigh inhaled deeply. Everything smelled clean and new. There was nothing to hear but the rhythmic drum of the drops against the ground, as if the whole world had stopped to watch the sheets of water dance in the wind. She wished her brain was ever that quiet. That peaceful.
Warmth brushed her cheek as Jack brought his head to her shoulder. “You look amazing right now,” he whispered.
“I look like a drowned rat.”
“The best damned looking drowned rat I’ve ever seen.”
Haleigh snorted. She tipped her face to the side so she could see his. “What’s gotten into you today?” They’d been best friends since the first day of second grade, when they’d shared the front of the bus and bonded over how superior it was to every other seat. They had few boundaries and fewer secrets after all these years. But something about being here, about the way Jack looked at her with new eyes, spoke with a new rasp in his voice, felt heady and ripe with a promise scary and exciting at the same time.
His eyes slipped closed. “I’m tired of pretending.”
The words trapped Haleigh’s breath in her throat. “Pretending what?” Her whole world suddenly felt like it was teetering on the edge of a needle. Whatever he said next might send her soaring with the stars or plummeting toward hard earth.
“That I don’t want to hold you like this every time I’m near you.” The confidence in his voice broke Haleigh’s knees. If she wasn’t already in his arms, she’d probably be on the ground.
“Jack…”
His lips were so close to her ear that every breath was a warm kiss to her skin. “I’ve loved you my whole life,” he murmured. She could barely hear him over the rain. For a second, she was sure she’d imagined it.
Then he said it again. I’ve loved you my whole life.
Haleigh’s insides caught fire. They were words she’d wanted for as long as she’d understood what bloomed that painful ache in her chest every time he was near.
She spun in his arms. She was going to kiss this man. And she knew she would never be the same afterward.
He cupped her cheeks in his strong hands, telling her without words that he wanted to give her everything she wanted to take.
Their breaths were already ragged when their mouths met. Years of longing turned them into feral things, each of them clutching, grasping, their mouths desperate to capture the other. Haleigh wasn’t convinced they wouldn’t end up naked on this beach, entwined together, rain, sand, and all.
In the end, they made it to their room, but neither of them slept, not until the blush of dawn had crept far over the horizon.
Jack had planned an entire week of activities, only half of which they ended up doing.
It was the first time that they’d ever been this alone together, and Haleigh and Jack were happy to dedicate every second to exploring each other’s bodies.
On their last night, they lay beside each other in bed, fingers woven together, the remains of their room service discarded on trays at the end of the mattress.
“What are we going to tell people about our trip?” Haleigh asked.
Jack’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“They’re going to expect pictures and stories, and we barely saw half of Maui.”
“We snorkeled with turtles,” Jack pointed out. “And hung out on the beach.”
“Jack, we saw the inside of our shower more than the Pacific,” Haleigh quipped.
“Do you regret it?” he asked softly.
“Fuck no.”
Those two small words reignited the hunger in his brown eyes, and before Haleigh could ask logical questions about what would happen when they got home and what they were to each other now, Jack was sliding the trays off the bed and shucking his T-shirt and boxers.
Haleigh swallowed as he made his way toward her. She loved everything about his body. How tall he was. The broad spread of his shoulders. The thick, solid columns of his arms and legs. The downy patches of brown hair that lined his chest and trailed down his round belly toward his length, already at attention before he’d even touched her.
Her head was empty of everything but want by the time he kneeled at the end of the bed. Cupping her ankles gently, he drew her toward him until her open thighs flanked his hips. From there, he crawled the rest of the way up her body slowly and methodically, kissing every inch of her skin, running his tongue languidly along her stomach, her breasts, her neck, as she shivered and writhed against him. When he finally entered her a few minutes later, Haleigh was more than ready.
She had no idea what time they finally passed out in each other’s arms, but it seemed way too early when Jack called her name.
“Whatsgoingon?” she slurred, rolling over. It took her a moment to rub the sleep from her eyes and really see his face.
He looked… undone. Not in the way he had the night before when he’d used the last of their stash of condoms, when he’d murmured her name into her neck like it was a holy word as he shuddered against her.
The Jack in front of her was disheveled, pacing, unable to catch his breath. He kept stacking and restacking the magazines on the coffee table as if that could fix whatever was wrong.
Worry smacked her alert. “What’s going on?” she repeated.
“We were supposed to be at the airport two hours ago.” Jack dragged his hands through his hair hard enough that Haleigh feared he’d tear some out. He stared at her with wide eyes. “We didn’t set an alarm. We’ll never get another flight out today. We’re going to be stuck here another night.”
Haleigh scooted up against the headboard and offered him a small grin. “I wouldn’t complain about another night in paradise.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “We’re not going to get to campus until Tuesday now. Classes will already be back in session.”
“So we miss one day.” It was college. Most of Haleigh’s professors didn’t even take attendance.
His face snapped toward her. “Are you serious?”
Haleigh shrugged.
“I have that huge econ test Monday.”
“You’ll make it up. Or we’ll find another way home.” Haleigh grabbed her phone and started searching for new flights.
Jack’s body stiffened. “I know you don’t care about anything—”
Haleigh froze. What the heck did that mean?
“How does me not freaking out equal me not caring? This is a hiccup, Jack. Life is full of hiccups.” Spreadsheets and calendars and routines made things manageable for him, but life sometimes refused to be managed. Sometimes it took your plans and shit all over them. Jack didn’t know how to deal with those moments. How to be flexible. She was trying to be that for him. Why didn’t he see that?
“This is not a fucking hiccup. Missing that flight is going to screw up everything. We’re going to have to pay an extra day at the airport for parking. Monday is my biggest class day. And work. I have work this week.” Jack scraped his palms down his face. “You might have no problem being a mess, but not all of us can live that way.”
Haleigh jolted.
That word. Mess. It lodged in her chest like a splinter with a broken tip. Haleigh wasn’t quite sure she’d ever get it out.
It was the one thing she never wanted to be, and Jack knew that. She’d fought against it every day since Joey gave her the nickname Disaster Girl in third grade, when Haleigh had left her room a mess for so long that a sandwich forgotten under her bed had begun to do science (very pungent science).
Jack had always seen through her chaos to who she really was. Or so she’d thought. Now, though, she wondered if she’d always been Disaster Girl to him too. A tornado to his calm.
In the end, they were able to find new flights home. But that moment in the hotel room, those words Jack had thrown so carelessly at Haleigh, broke something. The whole trip back, Haleigh couldn’t look at him. He barely acknowledged her.
A chasm stayed wedged between them for months after that. They texted now and then, but no one called. They didn’t hang out. For a while, Haleigh feared she’d lost her best friend and her biggest love in one day.
Eventually the distance finally became too much, and Jack showed up at her apartment door. He apologized for what he’d said, and at first, Haleigh assumed he meant calling her a mess.
But then he went on. “I shouldn’t have crossed that line. I should never have told you how I felt. I was too drunk. And I’d been holding it in for too long. I never meant to break us.” His voice rasped with emotion.
Haleigh had to sit down. He regretted telling her he loved her. He regretted having sex. He regretted making them more than what they’d been.
They were all the things Haleigh didn’t regret. But she couldn’t tell him that now.
Instead, she proposed the rules. That night, over pizza and garlic knots, they wrote them out, each keeping a copy. By the time Jack left, Haleigh had coiled her love back into her chest. Locked it in a box that she hid deep within her heart.
And just like Hawaii, she and Jack never spoke of it again.