Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
“Start talking.”
Haleigh sat in the passenger seat of Jack’s black SUV, her back crammed against the door. She needed as much space as possible between them right now or she was liable to hit him again.
“I didn’t think he was that bad of a guy.” Jack’s bronze-brown eyes were all innocence as he glanced toward her. “Just a little… particular.”
“And that’s why you drove an hour to Providence without hearing from me. Because he seemed like a good guy.” Haleigh shook her head. “The dude is like a walking definition of the word ‘pompous.’” Even when he’d thanked her for passing the butter, Haleigh had felt like she’d somehow done it wrong.
“Okay. Fine. The dude’s kind of a toolbox.”
Haleigh threw up her hands. “ Why would you do this to me?” Everyone had been warning her to take this date-pocalypse seriously, but what about them ? Her sister’s party was in two months. Time was running out for her to secure a true plus- one. Someone she’d want to meet her family and spend a whole weekend with. “I could have been out with Brian. Actually having a good time.”
A muscle fluttered at the base of Jack’s jaw, and his hands tightened against the steering wheel. “He’s a reader. I thought you might click.” He was trying to keep his voice light, but Haleigh could hear the strain in it. She was not someone he could fake things to. Never had been.
“Bullshit. You didn’t think I would click with him. No one could click with that dude, except maybe the power source he plugs into every night.”
Jack chuckled at her words.
That only pissed Haleigh off more. She shoved at his arm. “This isn’t funny. You don’t think I’ve been on enough bad dates over the past month?” She waited two beats to see if he’d respond before continuing to rant. “You keep talking about how you’re going to win this thing. Win what exactly? The worst date award?” Haleigh rubbed her hands over her eyes, then let out a senseless yell. “You can cancel whatever else you had planned because I don’t trust you to set me up on another date now.”
That was it. The date-pocalypse was over. She’d fulfilled her part to the best of her ability. With the exception of Brian, it had all gone exactly as she’d expected, and she was ready to get back control over her life.
“Haleigh.”
“No. I’m done.” It was freeing, saying it out loud. “I know—” The rest of her words jammed back in her throat as Jack took a sudden left turn into an empty parking lot.
Haleigh glanced around. She’d been so busy yelling at him that she hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going, and now they were sitting across from a closed Target.
Jack dropped back against his seat and knocked his skull against the headrest. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?” She didn’t understand the emotion that was pinching at his face.
“Set you up.”
“Good. I really think Bri—”
“I don’t want to hear about Brian. I don’t want to hear about you out with other people.”
It felt a little like he’d punched her. He’d always seemed happy to have her rehash her dates and overanalyze them with him. He was always ready to commiserate. To come rescue her if needed. She’d never thought he found it tedious or frustrating. But here he was, dragging his hands over his five-o’clock shadow and groaning into his palms.
Tears pricked at her eyes, threatening to spill over.
“All those times I had to go pick you up—”
“I’m sorry.” She folded her arms and pressed them tight to her chest. “You could have told me, though. We’ve always talked about this stuff. I didn’t think anything had changed.”
His gaze caught hers, holding her still. “Hawaii changed everything.”
She startled. They never, ever broke Rule Number Five.
“Haleigh. It’s me. I’m your second date.”
For a good ten minutes, she stared at him across the interior of the SUV, their breaths loud in the silence. Her heart slammed against her rib cage. She had no idea what to say.
He didn’t want her to date other people because he wanted to date her. He wanted to try again.
It was the one thing she’d wanted to hear every day since they got back from Hawaii. That Jack was hers. And she was his.
Yet she was shaking, and her pulse was a drum in her ears. Both her hands had found her key necklace.
Jack watched her movements, read them, like she was his favorite book and he knew every line by heart. “I know we did everything wrong last time.”
“Jack…” Haleigh’s voice broke.
He held up a hand. “Please let me say this.”
She clutched her key tighter.
“I know we did everything wrong last time,” he repeated. “But we were kids and we weren’t thinking and I didn’t have my shit together.”
Her hand was resting on her knee, and he cupped it with his own. She stared down at their fingers. She’d always loved the way his were so much bigger than hers, how her whole hand could disappear under his palm. It made her feel safe, like he was somewhere she could seek shelter. Could be protected.
“You called me a mess.” She huffed out a breath. “A mess, Jack.”
His face tightened. “I know. And I’ve hated myself every day for it. I was the one who was a mess.”
“We’d had this amazing, magical week, and then you just,” Haleigh shook her head, “you blamed that, blamed us. You ruined it.”
He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I… It felt like us being together is what caused me to hurt you. If we hadn’t been having sex, we wouldn’t have slept in, and then we never would have fought. I never would have lashed out at you.” He lifted their twined hands to his mouth and pressed a whisper of a kiss to her fingers. “I never wanted to see that look on your face again.”
Haleigh didn’t have to have seen herself in a mirror to know what she would have looked like that day. Her expression must have been just as cracked, as broken, as her insides when he’d hurled that word at her.
“I’ve loved you for pretty much our whole lives,” he confessed. An echo of what he’d said to her that first night.
The words were a poison and an antidote. Everything she’d ever wanted to hear, and everything she feared.
Dropping his head back against the seat, he cut his gaze to the windshield. “I never thought you felt the same. And then you were there, in that white dress, telling me you loved me, and reason just…” He flicked a hand toward the window. “… left me. You were all I could think and feel and smell and see. I wasn’t clearheaded.”
His fingers tapped the steering wheel, faster and more erratic this time. Haleigh pressed a hand to his bicep.
“I’ve always blamed myself, you know, for us never getting together for real. Why would you want to, after what I said, how I acted?”
Haleigh’s fingers clasped his arm a little harder. “But I could have talked to you. I knew you felt awful, but I let it come between us.” Leaning forward, she rested her forehead against his shoulder. The fabric of his puffer jacket was cold against her warm, warm skin.
She banged her head lightly against him. “Can we agree neither of us handled it well?”
She felt his body shake as he huffed out a little laugh. “Fine.”
She straightened up, but this time she didn’t stretch the distance between them. “Why are you telling me this now?”
He scrubbed a hand over his beard. Haleigh’s fingers itched to feel the scrape of that five-o’clock shadow against her skin.
“You’ve never really seemed serious about dating. I’ve been able to be a coward all this time because I never thought things between us would actually change. And this dating experiment seemed like it would be more of the same. But then I saw you after your first date with Brian. And then I saw you two together. It made me realize that if I didn’t do something, I’d lose my chance.”
Haleigh cocked her head. “So you set me up on the worst date of all time?”
He snorted. “I hoped it would help you see me.” His brow furrowed, his boyish face growing serious. “As an actual option, I mean.”
Haleigh had always seen him. She wanted to tell him that, but he kept going.
“I couldn’t stand watching you have a connection with someone else.” He reached out and cupped her face with one of his large, warm palms. The carefulness in his touch made Haleigh’s insides ache. “Because I belong to you. Not all those other people. Me. I’m yours. ”
Reaching out, Haleigh snagged his open jacket in her hands and pulled him toward her. His hand guided her face to his lips.
His kiss was shy. Tentative. Each movement of his mouth a question.
Haleigh answered with more pressure, more certainty. Her hands dropped his coat to scrape through his beard, up the back of his neck, fingers tangling in his hair.
I’m yours. It was the only thought in her head, and she tried to show him that she wanted to be his too, opening her mouth to his tongue, pressing her chest to his, gripping his light brown curls.
When they finally separated, their breaths were ragged, their faces flushed despite the cold outside. Jack’s expression was as dazed as Haleigh felt.
“We can’t…” She shook her head, her hand drifting back to his coat, hanging on, like she couldn’t let go. Like he might drift away. Or this moment would disappear, become smoke like a dream in a movie. “We have to take it slow.” The words cleared her head a little and reminded her of everything that was at stake. She couldn’t be impulsive. Couldn’t jump in headfirst and hope she didn’t meet the bottom too fast. They’d done that last time, and look where it had gotten them.
They kissed one more time, then Haleigh sat back against the seat. Her eyes searched his face for the one last thing she needed to know.
He tilted his head at her in question. “What?”
“So you’re not dating Dylan, then?”
A laugh burst from his mouth. “Where would you come up with that?”
Haleigh glowered at him, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s not that ridiculous. You talk about her a lot. I see you texting her. It would make sense for you to want to set me up if you had someone.”
“There’s no one you have to worry about. For me, you’re it.” Jack took her hand back in his like he was swearing an oath. Then he raised her palm to his mouth.
Shivers danced up Haleigh’s spine at the flutter of his lips on her sensitive skin.
“I hope,” he went on, staring up at her through his brown lashes, “you’ll let me convince you that I’m the one for you, too.”