Page 67 of Fighting For You
Her mouth dropped open. “Um, tonight?”
I nodded. I couldn’t have been clearer, and if she didn’t want to see me again so soon, I wasn’t going to cry about it. But I also wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t want to see her again—maybe with a smaller crowd around us, and maybe without our friend Catherine popping in to provide excellent service. Patience I had in spades, but I also didn’t haveto wait anymore, did I? And our schedules were awful during the festival, so if we both had time, we should take it.
She pressed her lips to the side, then chuckled lightly. “Okay, sure. Yes. I’m free tonight after eight.”
“My place around eight-thirty?” An odd tunnel vision hit me as I said the words, the surreal feeling of inviting her to dinner at my house a moment of fantasy. And yet, my feet were on the ground, and our hands brushed as she exited while I held the door.
It was real.
Her “See you then” clinched it as we walked out into the gorgeous, chilly fall morning.
Eight-thirty. My place. Just the two of us and Bones.
I didn’t bother hiding my smile as I made my way toward the office, even if I knew Kenny was lying in wait.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Jess
Jack’s pace was a little faster than I preferred, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I could keep up okay and the day was too beautiful to be spent inside, so bless him for suggesting an outside activity.
I always planned on being in a suit, especially when there were all kinds of swanky events on his schedule, but the detour was welcome and exactly why I kept a bag of other outfits in my car for assignments like this. An A-lister is gonna do what an A-lister wants to do and you better be ready. All it took was one time for me to go hiking in a regular underwire with someone I was assigned to a while back, and from then on I’d learned to always be prepared with appropriate spandex and footwear.
“Do you normally run here?” Jack slowed and puffed out a breath.
“It’s not my favorite form of exercise, but Ido it a few times a week.” I inhaled through my nose, grateful it wasn’t as cold as it had been when the day started.
He laughed. “So then, yes. You do.” He huffed loudly. “I need to live in the mountains so I don’t have this shortness of breath anytime I come back and try to walk upstairs.”
I chuckled. “I mean, we’re doing an eight-minute mile right now…”
“I swear I get winded standing up from dinner. It’s pathetic.” He seemed genuinely bothered, but in a kind of self-deprecating way that made him that much more appealing.
“You realize it’s science, right? Not a matter of fitness?”
He made a dismissive sound that reminded me of Beast.Jude.My stomach fluttered and I swallowed down the nerves.
He’d asked me out for dinner tonight like it wasn’t weird—like he wasn’t embarrassed to seem too interested.
I hadn’t dated since Kurt had left me—simply hadn’t wanted to. Maybe that was why I compared everything to my time with him. Kurt’s pursuit of me had always felt extremely targeted and purposeful, like he had a goal in mind and that goal was me on his arm, in his life, in his bed.
If only I’d realized that once he’d gotten me there, locked into all the roles he’d imagined for me, he’d gotten bored. He just hadn’t been man enough to admit it and cut me free.
Between Kurt’s determination and my need to hurry up and nail down a secure relationship where I belonged, it wasn’t a complete mystery how I let so much mediocrity between us slide. Had there ever been even a fraction of the fire between Kurt and me like there waswith Jude?
No comparison. I’d never felt so distinctly desired and… sought after as I had this morning with Jude.
Our time together was water cupped in his hands and it’d seeped out through the cracks all too soon. Instead of saying, “Oh, well, let’s do it again next weekend,” he’d been too eager to take another scoop and hold it close, protecting the well there. He’d had no patience to wait.
His impatience had always bothered me—it was one of many qualities I’d taken as a personal failing. I’d never considered how delicious it could be when directed at me.
“You like living here? You’ve been here for a little over a year, right?” Jack asked, breaking through my odd thoughts.
“About eighteen months now. And yes, I love it here.” We pounded the paved trail tracing the edge of the Silver Ridge Resort property for another quarter mile, and then I added, “It’s the first place that has ever felt like home.”
After a few minutes, he slowed so I did the same. We walked, cooling down as we neared the resort’s buildings again.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever had a place that felt like that,” he said.
