Page 97 of Wait for Him

I'm smiling. I can feel it on my face, stupid and enormous, as I open my eyes and reach for her.

Rose is staring up at me in panic.

She's still on her knees, but everything else about her has changed. The confidence is gone. Her eyes are wide and glassy, and I watch the reality of what we just did settle over her in real time. She shakes her head once, then again, like she's trying to physically undo the last twenty minutes.

"Rose—" I tuck myself back into my shorts and drop to my knees in front of her, pulling her into my arms. "Don't. Don't do that. We didn't do anything wrong. We're fine. Don't shut me out."

"How can you say that, Jackson?" She pulls out of my arms and gets to her feet, putting the whole width of the room between us in three quick steps. "You're married! God, what was I thinking? My brother. Oh. Oh god." Her hand presses against her mouth. "I'm so sorry. This was my fault."

"Rose, please. Let me explain."

"No," she won't look at me. "Please, just go back to your seat, Jackson. This never happened."

This never happened.

Yeah. This shit again.

Five minutes ago, she had my tie around my neck and my name in her mouth, and now she's putting us right back into that fucking box while my skin is still humming with the evidence that we were here.

No.

Fuck.

Not again.

I run a hand through my hair, trying to find the words that'll stop her from doing this, but my brain has abandoned the building. All I've got is the wreckage of what might've been the best twenty minutes of my life and Rose standing six feet away trying to make it disappear.

"Rose—"

"Please."

Her voice cracks around the word.

She's pleading now, arms wrapped tightly around herself, and that does what the guilt couldn't. Rose doesn't plead. She commands. She negotiates. She argues until everybody else in the room forgets they ever had a position of their own. But she doesn't stand in front of me looking this scared and ask me to please leave her alone.

I can't make her carry my feelings on top of whatever is happening inside her right now.

So I hold her gaze for another second, hoping she'll take it back and already knowing she won't.

Then I nod.

And I leave.

The door clicks shut behind me, and it sounds nothing like it did when I locked it.

I spend the rest of the flight to New York in my seat with a drink I never touch, her panties still balled in my pocket like proof that the thing she's already decided never happened absolutely fucking did. Rose stays behind the closed door, and no matter how badly I want to go back there, I know I don't have the right to knock after she asked me not to.

Jessica doesn't ask.

I don't offer.

Somewhere over Tennessee, I finally stop checking every thirty seconds to see if the door has opened.

It never does.

Rose

I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror on that plane, let alone face Jackson or the flight crew. Disgust sits heavy in me, not for what we did exactly, but for the fact that I let it happen at all. That I let go. That for a handful of minutes I set the whole thing down, the control I've built my entire life around, and just took what I wanted. This thing between us has been building for so long, and every time we slip it costs me a little more of the story I tell myself about who I am.