“Abby,” he says firmly, reaching out to cup my chin. I try to resist, but he manages to get me to turn my face to look at him. “I didn’t mean it that way. And you’re wrong. Idon’thave a lot of girls over here. You’re the first person I’ve been with in…Well. A very long time, actually. I didn’t mean to make you think that I was making light of it, because I wasn’t. Last night…” His eyessoften, his thumb stroking absently against my jaw. “Last night was amazing. It was amazing because it wasyou, okay?”
I feel my breath catch; I’m not at all prepared for this little speech of his. It goes against everything I thought I’d ever known about Jack. I feel a little shitty now, having made assumptions. Hadn’t I just come to the conclusion over the last week that Jack might not be who I thought he was?
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I’m just…I don’t know how to do this.”
“What?” he says with a chuckle. “Get off?”
I shove his hand away, rolling my eyes again. “I can do that just fine.”
“Oh, I know you can,” he says suggestively, leaning in to press a kiss to my cheek. “I’d show you again just how much if you’d let me.”
I’m happy to be sitting, because if I were standing, my knees might get a little weak. I’m not at all equipped to handle the full brunt of Jack Baker at his flirtiest. Especially not with the memory of his mouth between my legs and his come all over my belly.
“Aren’t you afraid of things getting weird since we’re currently living together?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Not really. We’re both adults. It doesn’t have to be weird if we don’t make it weird.”
“And you’re sure this isn’t some sort of twisted way of getting back at my brother about Lila?”
He looks offended then, rearing back like I’ve slapped him. “What? No! Abby…” He scrubs a hand down his face. “I know I joke a lot, and I rarely ever say the right thing—my brain doesn’t always spit out what I want it to say—but those were always justjokes. Nothing more. I would never actually do that to Ian. Or to you, for that matter. I would never use you like that.”
I stare back at him, feeling a knot unwinding in my chest. There’s no way of knowing if he’s telling the truth, but his eyes are wide and earnest, and his lips are pressed into a tight line, like the mere thought of it upsets him.
“Okay,” I concede. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” he says. “You don’t have to apologize to me.”
I hang my head, feeling unsure all of a sudden.
I hear Jack sigh. “Stand up, please.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” he says. “Stand up.”
I do so slowly, not really sure where he’s going with this, so when his arms come around me as soon as my feet hit the ground, I’m taken completely by surprise.
“I know you have a hard time trusting people,” he says softly. “And with good reason. But I would never hurt you on purpose. I know I can be really stupid sometimes, well, most of the time, but I—”
“You’re not stupid,” I say with a huff, and despite my best efforts, I feel my arms go around his waist of their own accord. “Don’t call yourself that.”
He chuffs a laugh against my hair. “I can be known for it sometimes.”
“You’re not,” I assert.
“Last night was special to me,” he says quietly. “I mean that.”
I swallow thickly, worried that confessing this will come back to bite me, but the words are already out of my mouth before I can stop them. “It was for me too.”
“Yeah?”
I nod into his chest. “Yeah.”
I can practically feel his smile, and there’s a part of me that wants to say fuck this breakfast he made and drag him back to bed after a speech like that, but a sudden buzzing against the counter jolts us apart.
“My phone,” he says. He reaches for it, frowning when he looks at the screen. “It’s Ian.” He grimaces in my direction. “Wow. This is awkward. How am I supposed to talk to him when I had my mouth on you last night?”
“Well, maybe don’t tell him that part,” I say, wrinkling my nose.