Chapter 22 Isla #2
The hostess takes one look at Jack and smiles like she knows exactly who he is. Of course she does. Of course this is the kind of place where he already has a face people remember. Slutty little show pony.
He slides into the booth and waits. For half a second, it looks like he expects me to sit beside him. I don’t. I take the seat across instead, because that feels safer, and then I’m immediately irritated with myself for needing safety in a booth with my husband.
My fake husband.
When the waiter comes over, Jack orders something smoky and expensive-sounding, without even glancing at the menu. I ask for whatever takes the least amount of effort to make.
Jack’s eyes flick to my fidgety hands. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, then roll my eyes at myself. “I’m just not great at this, I think.”
“At drinking?”
“At being out,” I correct. “At celebrating. At doing anything that isn’t work.”
He leans back, studying me. “You do realize you’re allowed to have a life that isn’t just Mirabelle?”
“I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve been walking the rows with Elsie, having tea dates with the girls. I’m a real person with real interests outside of stripping and crisis management.”
He chuckles, loud. “That’s all well and good, but you still look like you’re bracing for impact.”
“Just following my own rules, aren’t I?”
His brows lift. “You mean the rule you imposed because you might turn to dust if my fingers so much as brush your elbow.”
My drink arrives in a pretty glass with a dried blood orange on the rim. I take one cautious sip, then another, and the burn in my throat makes my shoulders drop a fraction.
He watches me. It’s that same look again, the one I can’t decide if I hate or crave—rapt attention without expectation.
“I have been kind of a loser about it.” The words surprise me as they leave my mouth.
“Making that rule. Asking you to be less yourself when I know for a fact it isn’t natural for you.
I was just worried that we might blur the lines and that it would be that much harder when this all comes to an end. ”
He waits for me to continue. I take another sip, then set the glass down carefully.
“What I’m trying to say is that I revoke the rule. You can touch me,” I blurt. “I mean, if you must.”
His eyebrows climb. “If I must?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say quickly. “I just mean, I’m not going to enforce it because it’s outlandish, and I know it is, and I’m aware I’ve been making things harder than they need to be.”
He beams. “Is that not what I tried to tell you?”
“Are you going to take the white flag or not?”
“I’ll take it,” he says, and then his hand is on my knee under the table, calm and warm through my pants.
I look down at the spread of his fingers, at the tiny shift of his thumb like he’s gauging whether or not I’m about to pull away. I don’t. What I do instead is feel every part of me flare awake, as if my body has been waiting for exactly this to remember how badly it wants.
I push his hand off and sit up straighter. “Okay. Enough.”
He laughs quietly, which is deeply unfair when I’m the one trying not to come apart in a cocktail bar.
I take a longer drink than I need, then set the glass down hard enough to make the ice jump. “Wow, that’s good.”
He tips his head. “We should dance, shouldn’t we?”
I huff. “I just got done dancing.”
“You’re right,” he says far too easily, the grin already telegraphing trouble. “You stay there. I’ll handle it myself.”
Before I can stop him, he’s out of the booth and heading for the little stretch of open floor near the bar where two couples are swaying.
He rolls his shoulders, catches the beat, and starts moving. He’s smiling, but not with that easy public charm he uses on half the town. This one feels more private than that. More pointed. He’s doing it for me, and he doesn’t particularly care who knows it.
I laugh despite myself, my face hot, something in my chest loosening.
Then two women drift toward him, one from each side. They have long hair and tight dresses, the kind of confidence that comes from knowing exactly what they look like under the low light. Desirable.
I can see the moment it happens. They clock Jack. That body, his face, the whole irritating package that screams for attention. Then they decide they want in on whatever he’s doing.
One of them puts a hand on his arm.
Jack’s smile slips. He looks more inconvenienced than interested, which should probably satisfy me. But it doesn’t. Not at all.
Something sharp flashes through my chest instead, fast and territorial, and before I can stop to examine it too closely, I’m out of the booth and walking straight toward him. Toward them.
“Hey,” I say, loud enough to cut through the music.
Jack turns. His eyes move over my face once, quick and assessing. He doesn’t step away from the women, but he doesn’t give them anything, either. He only waits.
I catch his wrist and tug. He comes along without a fight.
The second we’re out of their orbit, he leans down and says, right against my ear, “Thought you were relaxing.”
“I changed my mind.”
He laughs softly. “You’re sexy when you’re jealous.”
“That wasn’t . . .” I start, then let the sentence die. I’m too tired to keep lying in circles. “I can be a lot worse than that, you know.”
His hand settles at my waist. “I’d like to see it.”
I swallow. The music moves up through the floorboards and into my legs. The room is dark enough that no one seems to be paying us much attention, but I still feel exposed, as though every feeling I’m trying to hide is visible at my throat.
“There was this one time last fall,” I say. “At the cider thing on the green. You were flirting with one of the volunteers right next to me. Told her you liked her legs in cutoff shorts.” I let out a short breath. “I was wearing the same damn pair.”
“I remember.”
“I hated it.” The admission tastes like pride and humiliation all at once. “I knew I didn’t get to hate it. We weren’t anything. We were only . . . us. But I still felt it. Like you were mine to lose.”
His hand shifts lower, settling more firmly at my hip, and holds there. “I’ve felt that, too,” he says, quieter now. “Wanted you to myself, even when I had no right to. Still do.”
My pulse kicks hard. “Still shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I go tight, gaze slipping away. “You know why.”
“I don’t think I do, Isla,” he says. “We’re married, are we not?”
“That’s . . . that isn’t real.”
His hands slide along my waist, then higher, then back down again, mapping the shape of what he’s allowed to touch now that I’ve opened the door a crack. The pressure of his grip is firm and dizzying. When his fingers tip my chin up, I let him.
I let my head fall back, too. I let my body follow where he leads.
He draws me in, dipping me enough to arch my spine. His mouth hovers near my throat, so close that I can feel the warmth of his breath. So close that every other thought drops out of my head.
If he kissed me now, I would let him. More than that, I would want him to.
He eases me upright again, and now there’s restraint written all over his face, painful in its effort. “You’re right,” he says softly. “It’s all been fake, hasn’t it?”
The words hit harder than they should. Mine, handed right back to me.
My thoughts scatter. I want to take it back. I want him to take it back, too. I want to close the distance between us, rise onto my toes, and kiss him just to find out what happens when I stop being careful. When I let myself want something all the way through.
But wanting, for me, has always come with a cost.
He must see the fear win out. He must feel the exact moment I retreat, because the heat of him disappears and the space between us opens wide and fast.
Then he says, “Let’s go home, freckles.”
And I visibly, helplessly, deflate.