Jack is all that matters to me tonight and this thing I’ve kept from him all these years sits like a stone beneath my tongue.
I turn my head to look at him. His face is soft with sleep, like it was when I was so damn scared he’d never wake up. But he’s going to wake up from this and Christmas or no, with the stretch and burn of him still raw inside me, I’m out of rope, for anything and everything except the truth.
Tell him.
I’m going to. As soon as he wakes up.
Which isn’t all that long. An hour. Maybe two. And it’s nearly dawn, which lets me know just how long we spent fucking last night.
Jack groans and forces his eyes open. Waits a beat before he looks at me and his lips rise.
Then he sees my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“Did you sleep?”
“What? No. Jack. Please. Ineedto tell you something.”
The repetition catches Jack before he slips into care mode. He sits up on one elbow, studying me with eye movement a touch too rapid.
Let him wake up first.
But I can’t. Life keeps steamrolling me and a profound sense that I’m running out of time is so strong I almost choke on the next words I speak. “We hooked up before you got hurt.”
Jack goes still.
So so still.
Computing the words as the worst of his frowns descends his face. “What…what does that mean?”
“What I said.” I bring my knees to my chest, as if my legs can save me from this biblical mess. “We hooked up the night before your last deployment. We were drunk as shit, but it happened, and it meant something, and I should’ve told you about it a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I keep my gaze on my folded arms, Jack’s flat tone a razor to my ravaged heart. “Because you didn’t remember us being anything but mates, and I didn’t want to?—”
“Didn’t want towhat?”
Force it. Corner him with a truth his brain couldn’t see. Make a claim on him when he needed so much more from me.
I shake my head. “You woke up looking at me like I was the only fixed point in your world. And you needed that stability more than anything else.”
Jack says nothing. Silence fills the void between us and I know he won’t break it.
So I keep talking even as my voice cracks and breaks. “I kept hoping you’d remember on your own. That you’d wake up one morning and it would just…I don’t know, click. And when it didn’t, there was always something bigger than me sitting you down and saying, ‘oh, by the way, either you’re into me all of a sudden or Guinness makes you gay.’”
My laugh comes out wrong.
Tainted. Shredded.
Dead from the inside out.
I force myself to face Jack’s harsh gaze. “It was just one time, but I should’ve told you, and I’m so sorry I didn’t.”
He stares at me as though I’ve changed the shape of the moon. His silence becomes thick enough to drown in, and?—
The door kicks open. Hits the wall. Sev tosses my phone onto the bed and glowers at me so violently Jack leans forward oninstinct, shielding me with his body. “Don’t fucking throw shit at him.”