Chapter 19
JACKSON
Maya wakes up in my arms, and for a second, she's disoriented, eyes fluttering open, taking in my room and me lying beside her. Then her memory floods back, and her expression shifts from confusion to something harder to read.
"We fell asleep," she says.
"Yeah."
"Rule number one. Broken."
"Along with most of the others."
She sits up, and the sheet falls to her waist. Her curls are wild from sleep, and yet, she's never looked more beautiful. Morning light filters through the basement window, catching on her skin and making her look ethereal, like something I dreamed up and somehow got to keep.
"We need to talk," she says.
"I know."
"Now. Before Emma and Chase wake up, and I have to sneak back upstairs like a teenager."
I glance at my phone on the nightstand. 6 a.m. Emma's an early riser when she's pregnant, up by 6:30 a.m. most mornings to deal with nausea or cravings or whatever pregnancy throws at her that day.
We have maybe thirty minutes before the house starts moving, before the reality of keeping this secret crashes down on us.
"Get dressed," I say. "We'll go somewhere we can talk properly."
She doesn't argue, just pulls on her clothes from last night while I do the same.
We're both moving quietly, carefully, hyperaware of the sleeping house around us.
Every creak of the floorboards sounds like a gunshot.
Every rustle of fabric feels too loud. But we make it to the front door without an incident.
I grab my keys, and we slip outside into the cold. Snow from last night covers everything, fresh and unmarked. The world feels suspended, caught between night and day, and it matches the way I feel—caught between wanting her and actually having her.
The truck's freezing, and our breath fogs in the air while the engine warms up. Maya rubs her hands together, blowing on them for warmth, and I resist the urge to reach over and warm them myself. We're not there yet. Not quite.
"Where are we going?" Maya asks.
"Somewhere private."
I drive to the park near the arena. It's deserted this early, just snow-covered paths and empty benches and the kind of quiet that only exists in winter mornings before the world wakes up and remembers how to be loud.
I park near the overlook that shows the Hartford skyline in the distance, the buildings' dark shapes against the lightening sky.
I kill the engine, and neither of us moves.
The silence stretches between us, heavy with everything we need to say. I can hear her breathing, quick, shallow, and nervous. My own heart is pounding so hard I'm surprised she can't hear it.
"So," Maya says finally. "You've been obsessed with me for years."
"Yes."
"But you rejected me at my birthday party."
"Yes."
"I need you to explain that. Because from where I'm sitting, those two things don't make sense together."
I grip the steering wheel, my knuckles going white. This is it. The conversation I've been avoiding. The truth I've kept locked away because I thought it would hurt more to tell her than to keep it hidden.
"You were drunk," I say, the words coming out rough. "At your party. You'd had tequila, wine, probably more. And when you kissed me on that balcony, I wanted to kiss you back more than I'd wanted anything in my life. But I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"Because you couldn't consent properly. Because I wasn't going to take advantage of you when you were that drunk.
" I force myself to turn and face her, to look her in the eyes so she knows I mean every word.
"You deserved better than that, deserved better than me making a move when you weren't in a position to make a clear choice. "
She's staring at me, her brown eyes wide and glassy with unshed tears. The sun is rising now, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange, and the light catches on her face in a way that makes my chest ache.
"That's why you left?"
"That's why I left."
"I thought—" Her voice cracks, and she has to take a breath before continuing. "I thought you found me repulsive, that you saw me as just Emma's annoying friend. I spent a year thinking you were disgusted by me."
“Disgusted?” The word hits like a punch to the gut. “Maya, no. It’s the complete opposite. I’ve been in love with you for eight years.”
I’ve never said those words out loud before, never let them exist anywhere except in my own head during the darkest hours of the night when I couldn’t sleep because of her.
“What?” she whispers.
“Somewhere along the way, you stopped being Emma’s best friend and became…” I stop, trying to find words adequate for what she means to me. “You became everything. But you were Em’s best friend, and I knew if I said anything, it would complicate everything. So I didn’t.”
“Eight years ago?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve…” She swallows, blinking hard. “You’ve been in love with me for eight years and never said anything?”
“I didn’t think I had the right.”
She’s shaking now, hands gripping her thighs, breath coming fast like she can’t quite get enough air. I want to reach for her, but I don’t know if I’m allowed yet. I don't know if touching her will make this better or worse.
“When I kissed you at my party—”
“I wanted to kiss you back so badly it hurt. But you were drunk, and it wouldn’t have been right. So I left. And I hated myself for it—hated that I couldn’t have you, hated that I’d hurt you by leaving, hated all of it.”
“You kept my photo.”
"I couldn't let you go. Even knowing I should.
Even knowing it was selfish. I kept it, and I looked at it, and I—" I can't finish that sentence.
She already knows what I did with it, walked in on me last night with my hand wrapped around my cock and her image in my other hand like some kind of perverted prayer.
"You could've told me the next day. Could've explained why you left."
"And said what? 'Sorry I rejected you, but I'm in love with you and have been for years'? That would've gone over well."
"It would've been better than letting me think you were disgusted by me!"
Her voice cracks on the last word, and the tears spill over, tracking down her cheeks.
"I know. You're right. I fucked up." I run my hands through my hair, pulling at the roots in frustration at my own stupidity. "But by the time I realized I should've explained, you'd stopped answering my texts, stopped visiting. It was clear you wanted space, and I wasn't going to push."
She's quiet for a long moment, processing, and I watch the emotions play across her face. Pain. Confusion. Understanding. More pain.
"So at my party, you rejected me to protect me."
"Yes."
"And you've been in love with me this whole time."
"Yes."
"Then why, when I showed up here… why didn't you say something then?"
"Because you were falling apart. You'd been raped, fired, and lost everything.
The last thing you needed was me adding my feelings to the pile.
" I meet her eyes, holding her gaze even though it hurts.
"You needed help, support, someone steady.
Not someone complicating things by confessing his feelings. "
"So you agreed to the arrangement knowing you were already in love with me?"
"I agreed because you needed to reclaim your body, needed to heal. And if that meant I had to pretend my feelings didn't exist, then that's what I'd do."
"That's why you've been so careful. So patient."
"You deserved someone who'd let you set every boundary, make every choice. Your trauma isn't mine to center." I reach over and take her hand, threading our fingers together. "And I’d do it again.”
She's crying so hard her shoulders shake, and I pull her across the center console without thinking, just needing her closer, needing to hold her while she falls apart.
"I've loved you since I was eighteen, Jackson."
My heart stops. Everything stops. The world narrows down to just her face, her voice, those impossible words hanging in the frozen air between us.
"What?"
"I've been in love with you for eight years, too.
When you rejected me at my party, it broke me.
When I showed up here, and you were living in Emma's basement, it was torture.
And when you agreed to the arrangement—" She's crying harder now, face buried in my neck, words muffled against my skin.
"I thought you were just being nice, helping me heal because you're a good person. I had no idea you felt the same way."
"Maya—"
"We're idiots. Complete fucking idiots. Eight years. We could've had eight years."
"I know."
We sit here in my truck, both crying, both processing this revelation. Eight years of wanting each other in silence, of thinking the feelings were one-sided. Eight years of missed opportunities, misunderstandings, and pure stubborn stupidity.
The weight of it settles in my chest, all that wasted time, all those moments we could've had.
I think about every Christmas she visited, every birthday party, every casual interaction that felt like torture because I wanted so much more and thought I could never have it.
Thinking about the year after her birthday party, when she stopped coming around, when I thought I'd ruined everything, and there was no way back.
"So what do we do now?" she asks finally, pulling back enough to wipe her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"I don't know. The rules—"
"Fuck the rules. They were stupid anyway." She wipes her eyes again, leaving mascara smudges on her cheeks that I want to kiss away. "I'm done pretending this is just physical."
"Me too."
"But Emma—"
"We can't tell her yet. Not like this. Not when everything's so new." I squeeze her hand, and I feel her squeeze back. "But we can acknowledge this, that we have feelings, that this isn't just an arrangement anymore."
"What is it then?"