Chapter 28 #3
Instead of answering me, he took a step back, putting some space between us that made my stomach drop out from under me.
“I just keep feeling like you’re holding back from me.
And I know it’s going to take time for you.
I swear I’m not trying to put pressure on you…
I just haven’t felt right for a little bit, but I’ll get over it. ”
“Why though? What brought this on?” I pressed, wanting nothing more than to pull him back into me.
Jackson chewed his lower lip before running both his hands through his hair. “You haven’t wanted me to stay over,” he muttered softly. “Why don’t you want me to stay?”
“It’s not that I don’t want you to…” I said slowly, truthfully, but the reality was a dagger ready to slice through us both if I let it go, and I was so fucking tired of bleeding.
“You know I’m not a good sleeper, and I don’t want to keep you up or wake you too early. You have enough of that with Weston.”
Hazel eyes whipped to mine, and just with one look I knew he saw right through me. “Is that really the issue? You’re worried I won’t sleep well next to you?”
I desperately wanted to tell him yes. To let him believe that the biggest obstacle that laid between us was my inability to sleep through the night.
But when I looked into his eyes, I saw the ever-changing seasons that blanketed this property, and all the birthdays and holidays we’d yet to celebrate together.
I saw a future I’d never let myself picture before now swirling in those green-brown eyes, and I knew I couldn’t lie to him.
“It’s his bed, Jackson… The bed I shared with him.”
The words were like a sledgehammer to my heart, and they seemed to shatter just as much of me as they did him, and I fucking hated it. He shifted his jaw back and forth, sucking at his teeth as he tried to pick through the pieces of the wreckage left behind from the bomb I’d just dropped.
Seeing him like this tore at me like thorns raking across my skin in shallow cuts that burned and ached. All I wanted was to hold him. To let him know that even if there were pieces of my past I couldn’t let go, the future I wanted with him meant just as much to me now.
“I think I knew that,” Jackson finally whispered after a moment, his words soaked with every ounce of emotion he was holding back. He rolled his lips between his teeth, and when he lowered his eyes from mine, every shattered and broken piece of my heart screamed out. “So where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, my voice barely audible.
Jackson started to pace, and if I’d been in any better state of mind, I might have poked at him slowly turning into me, but the heavy thump of my broken heart against my ribcage was too much to ignore.
I watched him as he made fragmented patterns with his walking before he abruptly turned back to look at me. “Does it have to be?”
The question caught me off-guard, and my confusion must have been evident because Jackson followed it up with, “The bed. Does it have to be his bed? Can we not… I don’t know, think of it as your bed?”
A slow creeping sensation of something unsettling built in my gut, like the shifting sand of an hourglass sinking below me. “I—I don’t know…”
“Can we try?” Jackson cut in, an edge of desperation to his voice that set off all sorts of alarms in my head. “You were hesitant about taking your wedding ring off, but we found a compromise, didn’t we?”
“That’s true,” I conceded, still not feeling on steady ground but wanting to alleviate this trepidation and doubt Jackson held.
“Then let’s try. I’m just a man asking his boyfriend to let me stay the night because I’m supposed to be mucking out stalls in Block B tomorrow, and I’m closer here than I am at the bunkhouse.”
Warmth bloomed quickly inside me, temporarily blocking out all the slithering, crawling feelings that pricked along my nerves. “Boyfriend?” I asked, unable to hold back the soft tilt to my lips.
My favorite dimple popped into existence as Jackson’s lips spread into his signature grin. “I mean, I think I quite like the ring of it. What do you think?”
“Yeah. I think so, too.” I agreed and watched as he made his way over to me in two strides.
His arms wrapped around me and pulled me into a kiss that felt like a holy experience.
Every cell in my body roared its approval at the rightness of having Jackson’s body against mine and his kisses on my lips.
When he pulled away a short moment later, he rested his forehead against mine, and I wished with everything I had that I could keep breathing the same air as this sunshine boy for as long as I had left. His lazy smirk was disarming, so when he spoke, it took a second for the reality to set back in.
“So, you’ll let me stay over and we can sleep in your bed tonight?”
My throat clicked as I swallowed, and I wondered if he heard it from how close we were. “Okay.”
Jackson’s smile was a bright, beaming thing, and I fell into the comfort of his lips crashing against mine in his excitement to ignore the sinking sensation that once again settled inside me.
Those pieces of my heart that belonged to Raleigh screamed a storm was on the horizon.
And I was hoping they had the wrong forecast.