Chapter 20
MAYA
"Ihave a surprise for you."
Jackson's standing in the kitchen doorway, keys in hand, that look on his face that means he's up to something.
It's been three days since the parking lot conversation, three days of stolen moments and careful touches and pretending around Emma that nothing's changed. Three days of feeling like I'm walking on air and drowning at the same time.
"What kind of surprise?" I ask.
"The kind where you need to come with me. Now."
Emma looks up from where she's feeding Ethan. "Where are you two going?"
"Library," Jackson says smoothly. "Maya wants to look at some nursing job postings, and the internet here has been spotty."
The lies from us come so easily now. I hate it.
"Okay. Have fun." Emma goes back to wrestling applesauce into Ethan's mouth.
I grab my jacket and follow Jackson to his truck. Once we're safely out of the driveway, I turn to him.
"Library?"
"I panicked."
"Clearly. Where are we actually going?"
He just smiles. "You'll see."
The drive takes twenty minutes, winding through streets I don't recognize until we end up downtown, pulling into the parking lot of the Hartford Museum of Art. It's Tuesday afternoon, and the lot is nearly empty except for a few scattered cars that probably belong to staff.
"The museum?" I ask.
"Not just the museum." He kills the engine, turning to face me with that same secretive smile. "The entire museum."
"What?"
"I rented it. For the afternoon. Just us."
I stare at him, my heart doing something complicated in my chest. "You rented an entire museum?"
"Yeah."
"Jackson, that literally breaks one of our rules. No romantic gestures."
"Fuck the rules." He's already out of the truck, coming around to open my door like he's done a hundred times before, but this time it feels different, weighted with intention.
"We adjusted them, remember? This is me acknowledging that you're not just someone I'm sleeping with.
You're—" He pauses, his hand finding mine. "You're everything."
My chest tightens. He still hasn't said the actual words, neither have I, but we're dancing around them, getting closer every day, and it's terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.
Inside, a woman in her fifties greets us with a warm smile. "Mr. Anderson. Everything's ready for you. You have the museum until five. Just let me know if you need anything."
Then she disappears through a side door, leaving usalone in the lobby.
"This is insane," I say, my voice echoing in the empty space.
"This is me taking you on a proper date. Even if nobody knows about it."
He takes my hand and leads me into the first gallery.
Modern art fills the walls with bold colors and abstract shapes that make you think rather than just look.
We wander through in silence, stopping when something catches our eye.
It strikes me how easy this is, how natural it feels to just exist beside him without needing to fill every moment with words.
"What do you think?" Jackson asks, nodding at a painting that's mostly red with jagged black lines cutting through the canvas like wounds.
"I think it looks angry."
"Yeah. It does." He studies it for another moment, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand. "Sometimes I feel like that. All this stuff inside that I can't let out."
I squeeze his hand, understanding. We're both carrying so much that we can't say, not yet.
We move to the next gallery, then the next, taking our time with each piece.
Classical paintings fill the walls here, landscapes and portraits from centuries ago, and there's something about being surrounded by all this history, all these moments frozen in time, that makes me feel both small and significant at once.
Jackson stops in front of a painting of a woman in a garden, surrounded by flowers in full bloom, her face tilted toward the sun.
"That one reminds me of you," he says.
"Why?"
"The way she's looking at the flowers. Like she's seeing something beautiful that nobody else notices." He squeezes my hand, his voice dropping lower. "That's how you look at the world. Even after everything that's happened to you, you still find the beauty in things."
My throat tightens. "Jackson—"
"I know. Not saying it yet. But I'm thinking about it." He turns to face me fully, both hands finding my waist now. "All the fucking time."
The yearning in his voice is almost unbearable. I reach up, touching his face, and he leans into my palm like he's been starving for it.
"Me too," I whisper.
We stand here for a long moment, just looking at each other in this empty museum, surrounded by art and silence and everything we're not ready to say out loud yet.
"Come on," he says finally, taking my hand again. "There's more I want to show you."
He leads me through gallery after gallery, and I'm struck by how much thought he's put into this, how carefully he's planned every moment.
We stop in the sculpture garden, sit on a bench surrounded by marble and bronze figures, and he tells me about the first time he came here on a school field trip in third grade.
"I thought it was boring as hell," he admits. "Couldn't understand why anyone would want to look at old paintings and statues."
"What changed?"
"I grew up. Started seeing things differently." He glances at me, his eyes soft. "Started understanding that some things are worth slowing down for, worth really paying attention to."
My heart aches with how much I want to kiss him right now, but there are security cameras everywhere, and we agreed to be careful, so instead, I just lean my head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arm around me.
We end up in the contemporary wing, where the art gets weird and experimental. Jackson makes increasingly ridiculous interpretations that have me doubled over, and I realize this is what I've missed—the easy back-and-forth, the way we've always had.
"Okay, but seriously," I say, gesturing at a pile of neon-colored geometric shapes on the floor. "What is this supposed to be?"
"Clearly it's a commentary on the futility of modern capitalism," he says with mock seriousness.
"You don't even know what that means."
"Sure, I do. It means—" He pauses. "Okay, I have no idea what that means, but it sounded smart."
I laugh, shaking my head, and he grins at me with such open affection that my breath catches.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing. Just, I love seeing you like this. Happy."
The word love hangs in the air between us, and it's ridiculous, really—we've already said we've loved each other for eight years, but somehow saying "I love you" right now feels like crossing a different line.
We spend another hour wandering through the remaining galleries, our hands linked, shoulders brushing, and every touch feels charged with meaning. By the time we've seen everything, it's nearly five and my feet hurt, but my heart feels full in a way it hasn't in years.
"Thank you," I say as we walk back to his truck. "This was perfect."
"Yeah?" He opens the passenger door for me, but doesn't let me get in yet, crowding me against the truck instead. "I wanted to give you something good. Something that's just ours."
"You did." I look up at him, wishing more than anything that I could kiss him right here in this parking lot without worrying about who might see. "This was the best date I've ever been on."
"Better than that weird guy who took you to Applebee's?"
I laugh at the memory. "So much better than Applebee's."
"Good." He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering. "You deserve better than that, Maya."
The drive home is quiet but comfortable, his hand finding mine across the center console like it belongs there. I'm already dreading going back to pretending, back to being careful, but for now, I let myself just exist in this moment.
Back at the house, Emma's making dinner while Ethan tears around the living room like he's had six espresso shots.
She asks about the library, and I lie smoothly, talking about job postings I supposedly looked at while Jackson disappears to the basement.
Chase is already sprawled on the couch watching something on his phone, and we all end up eating together, playing our roles perfectly.
Later, after Emma and Chase go to bed, I'm restless. I can't sleep, can't stop thinking about the museum, about Jackson's face when he looked at that painting, about the way he held my hand like he never wanted to let go.
I wander downstairs to grab water and pass the laundry room. The washer's running, Emma must've started a load before bed, but sitting on top of the dryer is a jersey. Black and silver. Number twenty-five. The C on the chest.
Jackson's captain jersey.
I pick it up, the fabric soft and worn from multiple washings. It smells like detergent and faintly like him, and without thinking, I pull it on over my tank top.
It's huge, falls to mid-thigh, sleeves past my hands. I look ridiculous.
I also feel something I can't quite name. Claimed, maybe. Like wearing his number means something.
This is crazy, I think, but I'm already stripping off my tank top and sleep shorts, standing here in just the jersey and nothing else.
Then I head to the basement.
His door's cracked, light still on. I knock once and push it open.
Jackson is on his bed, looking at his phone. He glances up, and his entire body goes still.
"Maya." My name comes out strangled. "What are you—is that my jersey?"
"Found it in the laundry room."
"You're wearing my jersey."
"Yeah."
"Just my jersey."
"Yeah."
He's off the bed in three strides, hands gripping my waist, backing me against the door. It closes with a soft click behind me.
"Do you have any idea what you look like right now?" His voice is rough, hands sliding up under the jersey to find bare skin. "Wearing my number with nothing underneath?"
"Tell me."