14. Jessica
Jessica
The bathroom floor was cold against my shoulder blades, and it wasn't helping.
Two in the morning. My sundress still on — the white one, the one I'd been wearing when Hunter kissed me, and my entire nervous system had been reorganized at a molecular level.
I could still feel his hand on my jaw. The pad of his thumb against the hinge of it and the way it had traced my jawline after — slow, deliberate, just for me.
I could feel the way his mouth had moved — certain, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world.
If I closed my eyes, I could feel his tongue sliding against mine, and the memory sent a pulse of heat through my stomach that tightened my abs and pressed my thighs together on the cold tile.
I could still feel the tremor in my own body and the grin I'd used to cover it and the way he'd looked at me when he said fuck — forehead against mine, breath ragged, the word pulled out of him against his will.
I'd cracked the joke because the alternative was standing there shaking.
And he'd let me have it because he'd felt the tremor in my jaw and loved me enough to let me cover it.
My lips were swollen and tender, and every time I pressed them together, I could taste him — beer and something warm and underneath both, something that was just Hunter. My mouth was addicted after a single exposure, and the withdrawal was going to be a medical event.
I pressed my palms over my eyes. It didn’t help.
Nothing was helping. I was Jessica Williams. I had pitched to rooms full of Fortune 500 executives.
I had talked down a vendor meltdown forty minutes before a black-tie gala.
I had once negotiated a contract extension on three hours of sleep and a UTI. I was unshakeable.
I was on my bathroom floor at two in the morning because a man had kissed me at a festival, and I couldn't get up.
I called Bobbie at three AM New York time. He answered on the second ring.
"Hang on a second, sweetie."
Shuffling. A creak of bedsprings. Footsteps on hardwood. A door closing — the bathroom, from the acoustics. The faucet ran for two seconds.
"Okay." His voice dropped to a whisper that wasn't really a whisper. "Honey, this better be an emergency because I have the hottest man in New York in my bed and I need to be back in there and ready when he wakes up for round three."
"Round three?"
"Round. Three." He let the words land. "His name is Marco.
Sous chef at that new Italian place in the Village.
Six-two. Shoulders like a Roman statue. He made me rigatoni at one in the morning, and then he made me see God on the kitchen counter, and then we moved to the bedroom, and I have not slept, and I do not care. "
"Bravo, Bobs."
"Thank you. He found me on a dating app I joined ironically. He messaged me a picture of his bolognese, and I said, Sir, anyone who can layer flavors like that can layer me, and here we are." He took a breath. "Now. What happened. Spill."
"I kissed Hunter."
Silence. One beat. Two.
"Oh my God." His voice went high. Then higher. "Oh my GOD. Hang on — I need to sit down. I'm on the edge of the bathtub. Okay. Tell me everything. No — wait. Let me get the visual." A beat. “Hunter with the jaw and the hands and the silence that makes your ovaries do backflips."
"He kissed me first. For show. Garrett was closing in and —"
"Skip the logistics. Get to the mouth."
"It was supposed to be a peck. His hand on my jaw, tipped my face up, one second — done.
And then he pulled back, and his face was right there and his eyes —" I pressed my forehead against my knees.
"His eyes, Bobbie. Like the peck had wrecked him and he was trying to put his face back together and couldn't."
"And?"
"And I grabbed his shirt and pulled him back."
“Jessica!"
"And there was tongue. So much tongue. And my teeth grazed his lip. And he made a sound."
"What kind of sound?"
"The kind that will get us discussed at the local diner for the next forty years. We did it in the middle of a public festival. In front of the cobbler competition. In front of Dorothy Sullivan's glasses."
"This is the hottest thing anyone has ever told me in a bathroom at three AM and I say that as a man whose kitchen counter is still warm."
He exhaled. "And how was it? The actual kiss. Paint me a picture."
"It was like being plugged into a wall socket.
You know when you've been cold for so long you've forgotten what warm feels like, and then someone puts their hands on you and your whole body wakes up?
Every nerve I have came online at once. His mouth was —" I pressed my palm over my eyes.
"He kisses the way he does everything, Bobbie.
Slow. Focused. Like I'm the only thing that needs his attention.
I'm ruined. No man is ever going to kiss me again without me comparing it to that and finding it catastrophically insufficient. "
"You're welcome."
"For what?"
"For telling you to go back to Texas. You're welcome."
"That is not what you said."
"It was the subtext. I'm very sophisticated." A beat. Then the air shifted — the Bobbie pivot, ridiculous to real. "Jessica." Quiet now. "What's happening in your chest?"
"I'm scared," I said. My voice came out small.
The smallest it had been in a decade. "I'm scared because it wasn't fake, Bobbie.
When I pulled him back, it wasn't for show, and we both knew it, and now I can't put it back in the box.
The box is gone. He kissed me, and I tasted him and my whole body —" I stopped.
Swallowed. "I think I'm in love with him.
I've been running from it for fifteen years, and the kiss blew every wall I had left, and I don't know how to do this.
I don't know how to let someone in like that. "
Silence. Long. Bobbie breathing on the other end.
"Jessica Lee Williams." His voice was tender now — stripped of the camp, stripped of the drama, just the raw warmth of a man who had held me through a decade of New York and who had been waiting for this call since the day I left.
"Sweetheart. You already let him in. You let him in when you were twelve.
Everything since has just been you standing in front of a door you already opened and pretending it's closed. "
I sat on the cold tile with the phone against my ear and my eyes burning and my hand gripping the bathmat, and I didn't argue.
I didn't deflect. The joke was gone. It had been gone since Hunter's forehead touched mine and he said fuck in that wrecked voice, and the truth had been standing between us, breathing like its own living thing.
"What do I do?"
"You stop running, honey. You stop performing. You look that man in the eye, and you tell him what you just told me. And then you let him do what he's been trying to do since you were twelve, which is love you back."
"What if I ruin it?"
"What if you don't?" A pause. "Jessica. That man said yes to being your fake boyfriend without hesitating.
He stood in front of his family and said I'm protecting her like it was the simplest sentence in the English language.
That is not a man who's going to run. That is a man who's been standing still waiting for you to stop running long enough for him to catch you. "
My eyes were streaming. The tile was cold. The truth was warm.
"I love you, Bobs."
"I love you too, you disaster. Now, let me get back to Marco before he cools down. Call me tomorrow. I want updates. I want details. I want to know exactly what he’s packing.”
I chuckled. ”Goodnight, Bobbie."
"Goodnight, babe. And don't sleep on the bathroom floor. It's bad for your back and worse for your dignity."
I hung up. I didn't sleep. But I got off the bathroom floor.
The days after the kiss were a slow electrocution.
The Summer Garden Party. White lanterns between the oaks. I was mid-conversation with a venue coordinator when Hunter appeared behind me, and his hand settled on the small of my back, and my lungs forgot how to expand. The woman beside me touched my arm. "You okay?"
"Fine." I grabbed my water glass. His thumb shifted against my spine, and my hand tightened on the crystal until it protested.
He leaned closer. His mouth brushed the shell of my ear. "You've got something on your —" His thumb came up and traced the corner of my mouth. Slowly. "Lipstick," he said.
My eyes locked on his. His thumb was on the corner of my mouth. His gaze dropped to where he was touching and his eyes went dark and the garden party became wallpaper. He pulled his hand back. Slowly.
"Got it," he said. And walked away.
I stood there with my water glass and my heart in my throat, and the coordinator was asking me something about the October schedule, and I couldn't remember what month we were in.
Sunday dinner. The bread basket. Our forearms brushed reaching for it at the same time — bare skin against bare skin, the rough hair on his arm grazing the inside of my wrist — and a jolt of electricity tore through me so hot and so sudden that my hand spasmed and the basket lurched and a roll escaped and bounced off Maisie's plate and Maisie said, "It's okay, Jessie, bread is unpredictable. "
The table laughed. I laughed. Hunter didn't laugh.
He was looking at the place on my wrist where his arm had touched me.
The muscle in his jaw was working, and the corner of his mouth was fighting something that might have been a smile and might have been the same thing I was feeling, which was my skin still buzzing where he'd touched me like I'd stuck my finger in a socket.
"Louisa, these rolls are a health hazard," I said. "There should be a warning label. A waiver, at minimum."
Louisa swatted me with a dish towel. The table moved on.
Under the table, Hunter's knee pressed against mine.
Deliberate. Warm. His thigh was hard against my knee.
I pressed back, and neither of us moved away, and the contact sat there through the rest of the meal — a steady, secret current running between us under the table while above it we passed dishes and talked about Maisie's latest bear research and pretended we weren't on fire.
At a Harvest Festival walkthrough, I turned to check the speaker angle and caught him across the community hall — leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, lips parted, jaw soft, his eyes tracking over me with an openness that prickled across my skin.
Starting at my face. Dropping to my mouth.
Coming back with something in them that had no business being in a public building during business hours.
"Take a picture, Hunt."
He didn't laugh. Didn't smile. Held the look — steady, unhurried — and the joke died in my throat. I looked away first. Shoved my shaking hands in my pockets. My whole life, I had refused to look away first when someone stared. But this time, I did.
The heat wasn't the thing taking me apart. I'd been handling how gorgeous Hunter Blackwood was since Dottie's Diner.
The thing that was taking me apart was what happened when his arm went around me, and my body stopped fighting.
Sunday dinner. His arm along the back of my chair, his hand resting against my shoulder.
And my body — my body that had been clenched and coiled and holding the room since the first day I walked into a New York boardroom — exhaled.
Something deep in me unclenched. My shoulders sank away from my ears.
The muscles along my spine softened. My jaw — my jaw that I'd been holding tight for so long I'd forgotten it was clenched — went slack.
I felt the mask loosen, the professional Jessica Williams sliding off like a coat I hadn't known I was wearing until someone made the room warm enough to take it off.
Louisa was telling a story about Dorothy Sullivan and a pie disaster at the 2017 church bake-off.
The table was laughing. Maisie was on Clay's lap, making sound effects.
The fire was crackling. Hunter's thumb moved against my shoulder in slow passes, and I wasn't performing.
Wasn't managing. Wasn't scanning for exits or calibrating my laugh.
I was just sitting in a warm kitchen with his arm around me, and my body was still.
My breathing had slowed to match his — deep, even, the rhythm of a body that trusted the room enough to stop monitoring it.
My hand found his knee under the table and rested there.
His free hand covered mine and squeezed once, and I closed my eyes for three seconds.
And those three seconds were the most peaceful thing I'd felt in ten years.
Still. The most terrifying word for a woman who'd spent a decade in motion.
Because stillness meant putting down the armor and the jokes and the decade of I'm handling it.
Putting it down meant admitting the weight had been too much.
And Hunter's thumb on my shoulder was making me brave enough to do it and the bravery was so enormous that my eyes stung and I had to pick up my water glass to cover the fact that a man's thumb at a Sunday dinner had almost made me cry.
My apartment. Late. Cold coffee on the counter. Laptop open and untouched.
I closed it. Turned off the light. Lay on the couch in the dark with my hand pressed flat against my sternum where my heart was hammering — insistent, pressing outward like it was trying to get to him through bone and distance and all the paper walls I'd built between us.
I was falling in love with him. The denial had run out of road. My body had known since Dottie’s, probably even before then. My mouth had known since the festival. And lying on my couch in Copper Creek with his taste still on my lips, I didn't want to run anymore.
That was the terrifying part. Not the fire. The staying.
Somewhere across town, Hunter was carrying the same fire. I knew it the way I knew my own heartbeat. And I was going to have to be the one to say it first. I was the loud one. He was the quiet one. That had always been the deal.
I pressed my face into the cushion and grinned. Private. Nobody to perform it for. Just a woman who was terrified and in love and finally done pretending otherwise.