I want it so much.
I wanthim.
I love him.
Jack threads his free arm around my waist, drawing us together. I think he might kiss me—I need him to kiss me. Until there’s nowhere for this decades-old anger inside me to run. Until it has to die and leave me whole again.
But Jack doesn’t kiss me. He leans in so close our noses brush. Then he speaks, and it’s almost the same. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, setting my jaw, keeping everything old and ugly inside. And I’m not subtle about it. The movement should dislodge his hand from my face. But even though he doesn’ttighten his grip, as his brow furrows deep, his hand remains, intense concentration lining his face.
He needs a straight answer.
But I can’t give him one and I loathe myself for it.
“Sol.” He tries again as I stare past him to the window and the moody wash of morning light hitting the pewter tankards too nice for the bar downstairs. “I need to know you’re okay. At least tell me that.”
“I’m okay, Jackie.” It sounds wooden, even to me. But Jack’s frustration is easier to take than unpicking decades of mess tied up in a man I wish I could hate. “I just…I have to sort some stuff out today. I’ll be better after, I promise.”
“I don’t need you to be better.”
“Well…” I force myself to look at him. To let him pin me with his gaze. “I’m gonna try anyway. No harm in that, eh?”
I reach for a smile.
It’s not there.
And Jack doesn’t smile either. He just stares and stares and stares until a horn honks from outside, and he exhales, riding out the impact of the sudden noise, staying present while I hawk-eye him for signs he might not. “I’m not fucking done with this.”
I swallow. Throat tight. Constricting. As if he’s my executioner, not my best friend in the world. “I know.”
Another beat passes. Maybe two. Hurt and bewilderment haze Jack’s eyes, but more commotion from outside breaks the spell and he drops his hand from my face to my shoulder, squeezing before he steps off. Before he’s gone, and the sudden space he leaves behind swallows me up.
I miss him.
And it’s more than losing his physical presence. More than the shadows on his brain. It’s the canyon I’ve put between us when fate has already taken so much. The trust I can’t givestretching with every minute I’m away from him, expanding to something so wide and cold I can’t bridge it.
Tell him.
About my dad.
About that night all those years ago that means all the firsts we’ve had these past few days aren’t firsts for me—for us both—at all.
I know I should.
I know I will.
Real intimacy needs truth.
But every path feels rigged right now, and even if Jack’s ready for it, I don’t know if I am.
He loves you.
And I love him. But I can’t stand beside Jack without everything else collapsing at my feet. Without my life dragging him down, and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to keep moving without purging some of this hurt from my body. A thought that becomes literal so fast it catches me off guard.
I run for the bathroom and stumble to the sink, retching as my body joins the universe in telling me what a mess I’m making of every day and night I’ve spent on this earth.
Dramatic.