Chapter 31 #2
Jackson stepped back from both of us. “Then we stop.”
The words were simple. Firm.
Kevin looked at him.
Jackson lifted his hands slightly. “We stop.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, body still humming, heart jammed somewhere up near my throat.
Kevin took one slow breath. Then another.
“We talk first,” he said. “Really talk. Somewhere that isn’t here.”
“Your house?” I asked.
He looked at me for a second. “Not tonight.”
Right.
Too much.
Too fast.
He reached for his keys. “I’ll drive you home.”
“I have my car.”
“I know.”
Jackson nodded toward the door. “Go with him.”
I looked at him. “Are you okay?”
“No.” He gave me a tired half smile. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
Kevin’s jaw tightened, but this time it didn’t look like anger.
It looked like he wanted to believe him.
I grabbed my purse.
The three of us walked out through the back door, and for once, no one was sneaking.
It wasn’t easy. But no one was hiding either.
Kevin
I drove Lauren home in silence. I wasn’t mad, just too much in my head. Like if either of us said the wrong thing, the whole night would spill out between us and neither one of us would know where to put it.
Lauren sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap, staring through the windshield. Streetlights slid over her face one after another. Every time she blinked, I caught the wet shine in her eyes.
Halfway home, she said, “Thank you for stopping.”
I kept my eyes on the road. “I almost didn’t.”
“I know.”
She knew me better than I wanted to admit. Better than I made room for.
When we got to the house, she reached for the door handle, then stopped with her hand still on it. “Do you want me downstairs tonight?”
The basement.
The old arrangement.
The one that let all of us pretend there were lines where there weren’t.
Part of me wanted to say yes because it would make sense. The night had already cracked open enough. I could still feel Jackson’s mouth on mine, Lauren’s hand on my chest, the bar behind us, every second of it too public and too late to take back.
But the thought of Lauren walking downstairs alone made my chest tighten.
“Not tonight,” I said.
Her fingers loosened on the handle.
Inside, the house was dark and too quiet. Lauren went toward the bedroom first, then stopped in the doorway like she wasn’t sure she was allowed in.
I hated that.
I hated that I’d made her unsure in her own room. I also hated that sometimes I needed the distance. Both feelings were there at the same time with no answer.
“You can change in there,” I said.
She nodded and went into the bedroom.
I stayed in the kitchen and drank water I didn’t want. My phone sat on the counter. I picked it up before I could stand there pretending I wasn’t going to.
No messages from Jackson.
Of course there weren’t.
He was probably still at the bar, cleaning something that didn’t need cleaning, scrubbing the same stretch of wood until his hands hurt. That was what Jackson did when he couldn’t fix what actually mattered.
I opened his text thread.
For a full minute, I just stood there.
Then I typed.
We need to talk. All three of us. Not at the bar.
I stared at it until the words stopped looking like words.
Sent.
His reply came faster than I expected.
Jackson: Yeah.
One word.
Somehow, I heard all of him in it.
Lauren came back wearing one of my shirts, her hair down, her face scrubbed clean. She saw the phone in my hand and stopped.
“I texted him,” I said.
Her eyes widened a little. “Okay.”
“We need to talk. All of us.”
She nodded.
I set the phone down. “I don’t know what I can promise.”
“I’m not asking you to promise.”
“I don’t know if I can trust this yet.”
“I know.”
“I don’t even know what this is.”
Her mouth pulled at one corner. Sad. Small. “Yeah. Me either.”
That helped more than some perfect answer would have.
I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Lauren stayed by the dresser until I held out my hand.
She came to me.
I pulled her down beside me and didn’t kiss her. Not kissing her was the first decent thing I’d managed in hours.
We sat shoulder to shoulder, looking at the dark window across the room. Outside, the yard was still. The whole town asleep or acting like it.
“I thought wanting him meant I was losing you,” she said.
I looked down at our hands.
“Maybe I thought the same thing.”
“And now?”
Now I had no clean answer.
No map.
No sentence that could make betrayal, want, friendship, love, and the taste of Jackson’s mouth line up into anything decent.
Now I had Lauren beside me and Jackson’s one-word answer downstairs on my phone.
Now I knew stopping had been the first decent thing we’d done together since all this started, and even that knowledge felt thin enough to tear.
“Now we talk,” I said. “And nobody gets to run ahead of the truth.”
Lauren squeezed my hand.
She fell asleep without that careful stillness she’d been carrying for days — the one that said she was ready to be asked to leave.
I stayed awake longer.
Not because I wanted her gone.
Because I didn’t. I wanted Jackson there too, and wanting both at the same time should have scared me more than it did.