Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
Haleigh’s eyes burned as she opened them.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried as hard as she did last night. Jack had held her the whole time, tightening his arms to quell the shakes of her sobs. Once she’d practically cried herself to sleep, he’d helped her to bed and kissed her good night gently on the head.
Something about that kiss had felt deeply intimate. Like they’d crossed some sort of threshold. Like things between them had changed yet again.
Sniffling, Haleigh rolled over, hoping to see the outline of his sleeping form beside her in the dark. She was ready to wrap herself around him and breathe in that sense of safety and security he always offered.
Instead, when he saw she was awake, Twinkie sat up and his tail thumped against the mattress. His terrible dog breath puffed in her face as he panted, but she let him lick her nose anyway.
Haleigh realized as she got up that she was still wearing her interview clothes, and a fresh wave of tears threatened to wash over her.
She took some calming breaths and tried to let Jack’s words from last night seep into her. She was brave. She would figure this out. Every step she took was a step forward, even if it didn’t lead her anywhere. And he’d be there right beside her.
She shed her suit for a clean pair of Jack’s boxers and his oversized hoodie. He’d left her phone on the nightstand, and when she touched it, a bunch of texts from Brian stared back at her. Most of them were asking about her interview.
Her heart thudded against her chest as she stuffed her phone in the sweatshirt’s kangaroo pocket. She’d answer him later.
Jack’s blackout curtains were a little too effective, and Haleigh hissed against the sunlight pouring into the living room like a vampire that had just woken up.
He smiled at her from the couch. His bed pillow was bunched at one end, two blankets folded next to it.
“Did you sleep out here?”
Jack nodded.
Haleigh rubbed at her dry eyes. Why did crying always leave you feeling so hungover? “You could have shared the bed with me.”
He shrugged. “I’d rather you be awake to tell me that.”
Haleigh was too tired, too wrung out, for his brand of kindness right now. A sob threatened to burst from her throat.
Jack patted the couch. “Sit. I’ll get you some breakfast. Then you can go home and change.”
“Why?” All Haleigh wanted to do was sleep.
Jack’s grin was wide with excitement. “Because you are clearly in desperate need of the arcade.”
The loud electronic twang of video game soundtracks greeted Haleigh and Jack as they pushed through the doors to Gamers’ Delight. They’d been coming here since they were kids, and yet the place always looked the same.
It was Saturday and the arcade was filled with screams as kids chased each other around the ball pit and battled over games. Harried parents sat slumped in the rows of tables by the snack counter, some scrolling on their phones, others scanning the crowds to keep track of their offspring. One dad held a bucket of tokens out to his kids as they bolted by. Each boy would dip their little hands in, their fingers brimming with fake bronze, not stopping long enough to yell thank you, as if their father was basically a bank teller.
Jack placed a twenty on the counter and retrieved two cups of tokens.
“I’ve got this.” Haleigh dug into her purse.
He pressed her bag closed, her hand still stuck inside. “One good thing about my job is that it pays decently. Now,” he said, glancing around. “What do we play first?”
She shook her head. “There’s only one choice, Jack.”
“No.”
“The Highlander of arcade games.”
“No.”
“Prepare to have your ass whooped in a PG, nonsexual manner.” Haleigh was already headed for the back of the building.
Toward Skee-Ball.
She stopped at two adjacent, unoccupied lanes and faced Jack with a wide smile. “You can go first.” The last time they were here, Haleigh had scored a perfect nine hundred her first go-around, and Jack had refused to take his turn altogether.
Bickering over games was so them, so normal, that the muscles in Haleigh’s back began to ease. She’d fought Jack the whole ride over, but now she was glad he hadn’t let her win. The screaming, the loud music, the canned electronic voices coming from the games, Jack standing there smiling down at her, it was exactly what she needed to help her move on from her failed interview.
“I will waste one token on this.” Shaking his head, Jack gripped the first fist-size ball sitting at the end of the ramp. He spun it in his hands a few times as if to warm it, then began adjusting his aim.
Presumably the game was called Skee-Ball because the ramp angled up like a ski jump, with a large central pocket worth ten points, and smaller ones at increasing distances ranging from twenty to fifty. The two far corners held the hundred-point pockets—Haleigh’s favorite targets.
Jack rolled the wooden ball up the ramp with too much force. It flew wildly to the right.
“You’re not even trying,” Haleigh whined. Who wanted to wipe the floor with someone putting in no effort? That was like falling in boxing before your opponent got in a hit.
“I’m reserving my energy for games where winning is an actual possibility.” His next three attempts landed in what was essentially the gutter—the lowest hole.
Haleigh thumped his arm with the back of her hand. “Stop shooting for the pity points.”
“They’re my balls and I will roll them where I want to.” At the sight of Haleigh’s eyebrows arching, he shook his head. “Don’t you dare make that dirty somehow.”
Too late. “Aren’t you supposed to be… I don’t know… better at getting things in holes?”
Jack’s expression grew wicked. “Maybe I’ll show you how good I am tonight.”
Haleigh choked. Heat rushed to her face, and she had to shift her legs. The throatiness of his voice had gone straight to her center.
He slipped an arm around her waist and leaned in to kiss her head, but Haleigh tipped her face so their mouths met in stead. Her fist burrowed in the front of his shirt, keeping him close.
They’d kissed plenty of times, but this one felt different. Jack’s mouth took hers like a claiming, opening wide, breathing her in, his tongue pushing against hers. It was like he wanted to mark her as his.
One of his hands slid down her back and over her ass, clutching it and pressing her flusher to him. If they’d been anywhere less public, Haleigh would have been writhing against his thigh, but she forced herself to step away before parents complained.
After another kiss, this one soft and lingering, he headed off toward Burger Time. Haleigh watched his shoulders as he lumbered away. She loved the broad spread of them. And how perfectly proportionate they were to his frame. He was soft yet solid. A mountain you could lean on comfortably. She was having a hard time not thinking about how he looked naked and how much she wanted to be pressed against his warm skin. To feel him everywhere.
Good god, she needed a cold shower.
For the next half hour, Haleigh tried to lose herself in Skee-Ball, sinking the ball into pocket after pocket, enjoying the comfortable rhythm of being good at something. Especially after that interview. Even if all she was doing was building piles of tickets she’d inevitably hand off to a kid on the way out, it was a relief for her brain to quiet down, to just be, for a little while.
When she ran out of tokens, she finally wandered off to find Jack. Which, thanks to his height, wasn’t a difficult task. She’d barely taken two steps before she spotted his head bobbing over the claw machine near the arcade’s entrance.
She peered around the glass, her eyes popping wide at the size of the token bucket Jack was currently digging into. “Oh my god, there’s like a gazillion dollars in there.”
Jack concentrated on the mechanical claw as he shoved a new token in the slot. “More like fifty,” he mumbled distractedly.
Haleigh’s heart skipped. Why was he spending that much on arcade tokens? There was nothing in that claw machine but a bunch of cheap stuffed animals, a decade-old iPod (did people even use those anymore?), and some costume jewelry.
She swallowed the urge to point this out.
“I’m on a mission.” Jack’s gaze was homed in on the pile of prizes at the bottom of the machine.
“For what?”
“You’ll see.” Though he wasn’t looking at her, his mouth tipped into a roguish grin. All he needed was the proper suit and he’d fit right into an historical romance as the misunderstood duke who’d lost his fortune.
Jack nodded at her wad of tickets. “What are you up to?”
“Trying to decide which unsuspecting youth gets this treasure trove.” She waved her winnings. “But maybe I’ll keep them this time and buy you that giant stuffed unicorn.”
That got his attention. He stared at her with pleading eyes. “Please do not send me home with more toys for Twinkie to destroy. He ripped that enormous bear in half like two days after I brought it home and the carnage took me forever to clean up.” He grimaced. “I’m still finding stuffing in the most random places.”
Haleigh huffed out a breath. “Fine. But then you have to tell me what you’re doing.”
“You’ll see,” he said again.
He returned his focus to the game. His tongue poked out from his lips as he stared at the claw, as if willing it to move with his mind. With the amount of precision he was putting into this, one would think he was defusing a bomb. Only when the claw was in the right position did he jab the button on the joystick to lower it. It shot into the pile, clicking loudly as it closed. Jack’s eyes were wide with anticipation.
But with each inch the claw retracted on its tether, prizes slipped between its fingers, until it was empty.
Jack sighed, jammed another token into the machine, and started the whole process again.
Haleigh slid a little closer to him. “Seriously, what are you doing?”
“Trying to win something.”
“Thank you for that, Captain Obvious.” She rolled her eyes. “ What are you trying to win?”
An employee paused to watch Jack for a moment. “Dude, you’re still at this?”
Jack swore under his breath, the claw empty again.
“Still?” Haleigh echoed.
“He’s gone through like two cups of tokens already.”
That had to be almost forty dollars. “Jack.” Haleigh grabbed his arm and shook it. “What do you so desperately need from this machine that you can’t buy online?” And probably for cheaper.
“It’s the principle of the thing. I want to win it. It means more.”
“Win what?”
Jack sighed. The sound was almost gloomy. “That one.”
He pointed to a pale blue narwhal sitting at the top of the pile. It was a little bigger than Haleigh’s palm, with a silver horn and a giant smile on its face.
“Marshmallow,” she whispered. That was what she’d jokingly named it months ago, when she’d first spotted the toy in the machine. She and Jack had been sharing a frozen Coke as they headed out, and she’d stopped short at the sight of the cotton candy–shaded creature.
At the time, it had reminded her of when they’d seen that narwhal statue as kids. Now it reminded Haleigh of their last date.
“You’re trying to win Marshmallow?” She said it gently, as if this moment might shatter otherwise.
Jack’s eyes flicked toward her. “You wanted it. And you were so upset yesterday.” His voice had this softness to it that snaked right under her skin and into her veins, that made every part of her tingle. It was almost reverent, like he was speaking a tightly held secret. “Plus, I know how in awe you are that these things are real.”
“Jack.” He shouldn’t waste his money on her. Even if she wanted Marshmallow. “You don’t have to do that.” She gripped the edge of the bucket to see how many coins were left inside. “Can you cash these back in?”
“I want to make you happy.” Again, that soft deepening of his voice.
“You do.” No one made her happier. Even when she was sobbing her eyes out, there was no one she wanted to be with more than Jack.
As he continued feeding coin after coin into the machine, like he would not rest until that blue narwhal was in her hands, Haleigh realized she’d made her choice. It took another ten minutes, but Marshmallow was peeking out from the top of her purse by the time they left the arcade.
As they settled into his car, Haleigh set her hand on his leg. When he looked over at her, she hoped her expression said everything he needed to hear.
And just in case it didn’t, she whispered, “Jack, take me home.”