Page 89 of A Heart Worth Finding
“Well, if anyone understands the pressure of being the youngest child by a wide margin, and having successful older siblings, it’s me.”
Jessica smiled at him, the knot of tension in her chest easing slightly. She’d never had someone she could speak to so openly about her feelings of inadequacy.
“I love Logan and Berkley,” she said. “So much. But compared to them, I feel…” She paused, searching for the right word, though she wasn’t sure there was a single word that could encapsulate all of the ways she felt inferior to her siblings. “Inconsequential isn’t the right word, because it’s so much more complicated than that, but it’s the best I can do.”
“Being a teacher is just as admirable as being a lawyer,” Jack said softly, his words a balm on her slightly jagged edges.
Jessica only nodded, swallowing hard, the tips of her hair swishing around her shoulders, caressing her bare breasts, and Jack’s attention strayed long enough for him to drop a hand to her chest and brush a thumb along the soft underside.
“I sort of started my own tutoring business in high school, when I realized I had a knack for helping others learn. But even before that, when I was in elementary and middle school, I was fascinated by my teachers. I loved how teaching styles varied from person to person, and how fine the line was between a good teacher and a bad teacher, between passivenessand assertiveness. Between genuinely caring about whether or not your students were fully grasping the material, or letting them fend for themselves. I took an active interest in how my classmates were faring in their studies the older we got, and by eighth grade, I was hosting study sessions at my house so often that I had other parents reaching out tomyparents, asking if they could schedule one-on-one sessions with me for their kids.”
“That’s incredible,” Jack said. “To be so young and yet know so confidently what you want to do. The world always needs more teachers.”
“They need more professional hockey players, too,” she said, shooting him a cheeky grin, suggestively trailing her fingers over the ridges of his abs.
He responded by rolling on top of her, and they didn’t speak for a long time after that.
“Are you sure I can’t talk you into keeping in touch after this?” Jack asked from beside her, a little breathless from their recent joining. Thankfully, the second time was much more pleasurable than the first.
“I’m sure,” she said, giving him a sad smile. “You know it’s better this way.”
“It’s not,” he said. “There are these things called cell phones, you know. They have this really cool feature where you can talk to people from thousands of miles away. You can even see them!”
She swatted playfully at him, her hand remaining resting on his bicep. He flexed a little, and she giggled. It would be so easy to give in to him, and while every fiber of her being begged herto reconsider, she knew snipping those threads connecting them was the best option—theonlyoption.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “We’re about to start college, and we have the whole rest of our lives ahead of us. I just…it scares me how much I care about you already, and we’ve known each other for four days. I can’t risk bringing this home with us and it blowing up in our faces down the line. Not when I have so many things I want to accomplish. And I can’t be the thing that holds you back from giving everything to your own dreams.”
The look on his face told her he didn’t like it, but he understood where she was coming from. Instead of answering, Jack settled his hand on Jessica’s lower back and pulled her closer, his body already stirring once again with her nearness.
“How about we make a pact?” she said as he set to nibbling on her earlobe.
“What kind of pact?” he asked against her skin, and she tilted her head to give him better access.
“A pact where if, at some future date, the universe decides to bring us back together, and we’re both unattached, we give this a real shot.”
Jack pulled away to truly study her, and she lost herself in his crystal blue gaze.
“Seriously?” he asked, surprised. Jessica nodded. “So you’re saying, if we go home and in two months, I randomly run into you on the streets in Philly, you’ll agree to date me? Or at the very least give me your number?”
“That won’t happen,” she said quickly. “But yes, that’s the gist of it.”
He answered before she’d even finished talking. “Yes.”
Jessica tipped her head back and laughed, shaking both of their bodies with the force of it. He pressed a kiss to the underside of her jaw.
“You didn’t even think about it!” she said, sliding her hands into the hair at the base of his skull and pulling. He responded in kind, wrapping the length of her hair around his fist and tugging, and Jessica would be damned if the sting didn’t make her eyes roll back in her head, falling just on the good side of the pleasure versus pain line.
“I don’t have to think about it,” he said, giving her a one shoulder shrug. “If it was up to me, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation because you’d stay in my life after we left. So if this is what you want, then this is what I’ll give you.”
Jessica sighed. “This is what I want.”
“Then you’ve got it. Should we shake on it?”
“Wait!” she said as he extended his hand, then rolled them so he was once again on his back, and she straddled his lap. It was a dangerous position, one that could easily pull Jack’s attention away from her face and down, down, down. But he surprised her when his gaze remained locked on her eyes.
“What?” he asked, his thumbs pressing into her hip bones.
“There has to be rules.”
