Page 44 of Until You Say Stay
Instead, I slide my hand to the nape of her neck, feeling the silky strands of her hair between my fingers as I grip her firmly. She doesn’t pull away. She leans into my touch, swaying toward me like gravity’s pulling her in, like she can’t help herself any more than I can.
“Jack…” she whispers, and my name on her lips is like a spark catching dry tinder.
I pull her closer, my other hand finding her waist, and her hands immediately fist in my shirt. I dip my head, drawn to her by something I can’t fight anymore and don’t want to. Our lips are so close I can feel her warm breath, can smell that perfume she wears that’s been driving me insane all night. I want to pin her against this railing and hike that skirt up around her waist, fake relationship be damned.
My grip tightens in her hair, tilting her head back just enough to make her gasp. Her lips part, inviting me in, and I’m a heartbeat away from claiming her mouth with mine. I cansee her pupils dilate, feel the way her body arches toward me, desperate for contact. Desperate forme.
“Uncle Jack! Lark! Daddy says it’s dessert time!”
Chloe’s voice shatters the moment completely. We spring apart so fast that Lark stumbles backward and I have to grab her arm to steady her. My heart’s pounding like I just finished a race, and Lark’s breathing fast, her cheeks flushed.
“Coming!” Lark calls back, but her voice cracks slightly. She clears her throat, tries again. “Be right there!”
We stand there as Chloe’s footsteps retreat back up the path, the sound of her shoes on stone fading. Neither of us says anything about what just almost happened. We both just start walking back to the house with at least three feet of careful distance between us.
Dessert is Alex’s chocolate mousse, which is one of my favorites, but I barely taste it. Lark and I are trying so hard to act normal that we’re borderline being weird about it. We contribute to conversation when directly spoken to, laugh at Chloe’s silly jokes, but that almost-kiss sits between us like a third person at the table that only we can see.
Finally, people start leaving. Dom has an early client at the gym tomorrow morning. Maren and Calvin need to get home to let their dog Laila out. Everyone’s hugging goodbye, making plans for next week, and then it’s just Lark and me walking to where I parked the bike.
The night air has cooled considerably, the crickets chirping loudly in Theo’s perfectly manicured lawn. Lark hugs her arms around herself as we walk down the driveway. Neither of us mentions what happened at the gazebo.
She climbs on the bike behind me, settling onto the seat with a careful distance that doesn’t last once the engine roars to life. Her arms slide around my waist, tentative at first, then tightening as we pull away from the curb. Every inch of her pressed against my back feels like fire.
As we wind through the roads back into Dark River, her thighs bracket mine, her chest against my back, hands splayed across my stomach. I try desperately to focus on the road, on the cool night air whipping past, on anything but the woman holding onto me.
She’s been through enough already. That asshole ex-husband of hers did a real number on her confidence, made her second-guess her music, her talent, herself. The last thing she needs is me complicating her life when she’s finally getting her shot at her dreams.
And what could I offer her anyway? I’m just passing through Dark River temporarily, waiting to get back to Europe. Back to racing full time after fucking up my own contract. I’ve never stayed anywhere long, with anyone. She deserves better than a guy who ruins everything he touches, who can’t maintain a relationship longer than it takes to change a tire.
When I pull up to her building, the yellow security light casting harsh shadows across the parking lot, she climbs off the bike, smoothing her skirt. I kill the engine, and the silence feels heavy between us. She pulls off the helmet, shaking out her hair, and hands it back to me.
“Thanks for bringing me to dinner. Your family is great. Really great.” She shifts her weight, eyes darting around, looking everywhere but directly at me.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
She bites her lip, and I hold my breath, not sure if I want her to bring up what happened or not. Part of me hopes she will, just to clear the air and acknowledge it. A bigger part hopes shewon’t, because I don’t trust myself to do the right thing if we actually talk about it.
“So, uh, goodnight. I’ll talk to you later,” she says instead, clearly deciding to pretend nothing happened.
“Goodnight,” I say, feeling both relieved and disappointed. Then she’s gone, disappearing inside before I can say something stupid that I can’t take back.
I sit on the bike for another long minute, engine off, trying to get my body under control. The almost-kiss keeps replaying on loop in my head. Her lips parting. My hand in her hair. How close we came to crossing a line we can’t uncross.
I drive home too fast, taking the corners aggressively, trying to burn off this energy coursing through me. The wind whips at my face, but it does nothing to cool the heat under my skin. The arrangement was supposed to be simple but nothing about this feels simple anymore.
September can’t come fast enough. Or maybe it’s comingtoofast. I don’t know. All I know is I’m fucked. Because whatever this is—it sure as hell isn’t fake anymore.
CHAPTER 12
LARK
My guitar rests across my lap, phone propped precariously against a stack of books on the living room floor. I’m cross-legged, trying to record the bridge section for a song I wrote last night when sleep was impossible. My fingers find the chord progression again, and I’m about to hit record when my phone buzzes loudly. The notification covers half my makeshift recording setup.
Jack:Need to go over Miami stuff. Can I stop by?
We’ve seen each other exactly twice since the almost-kiss at Theo’s gazebo three days ago—once at the gym, and once at the coffee shop for a very public lunch—and both times we pretended absolutely nothing happened. Which is the right move. The smart, mature move. Even if I keep replaying that moment on an endless loop, when he leaned down and I went up on my toes and we were so close I could feel his breath warm on my lips.
God knows I wanted desperately to kiss him, and much more than that. Every time I think about it, which is approximately every four minutes like clockwork, my heart does this ridiculousracing thing that makes me feel like a teenager with her first crush instead of a grown woman who should absolutely know better.
