Page 62 of And Now, Back to You

Delilah’s mouth twitches. “I asked you a question.”

“Could you repeat it?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She gives me a bemused look. “Give me a bit to get all of this under control.” She gestures to her wet hair, then her towel-clad body. I have to bite the inside of my cheek. “And then we can go meet Mark downstairs. I want to plan out our shots, then review the talking points for our broadcast.”

I blink at her. Hearing her talk about preparation and organization is almost worse than seeing her in a towel.

“What?” she asks.

I blow out a heavy breath. “I think I like you,” I say with a sigh. That’s what this off-balance feeling is, isn’t it? The way I can still feel her hand in mine. The way I want to feel it again. I scratch at my eyebrow. “I don’t really understand what’s going on with me.”

Delilah laughs. “You don’t have to sound so mad about it. I like you too, if that helps.”

My shoulders relax. “It does.”

The look on her face is tender. Understanding. “This wasn’t part of your plan, was it? Actually enjoying your time with me?”

I hesitate, then nod.

She bites her bottom lip. “You and your plans.”

She disappears into the bathroom, only to poke her head out again a second later.

“It was the thing about the talking points that did it for you, wasn’t it?”

I drag my hand over my mouth, watching her. Immediately, I think of her smiling on the other side of a dingy diner booth, a cherry red straw caught between her teeth.

“Among other things,” I admit.

“Such a weirdo,” she says again, but I see her face before she shuts the door to the bathroom.

She’s smiling.

AIDEN VALENTINE: It sounds like our friends out west are settling in for the storm. More updates to come.

[pause]

AIDEN VALENTINE: I, personally, am very interested in what happens next.

CHAPTER 15

DELILAH

There’s a pattern to Jackson’s on-air anxiety.

He spends the morning taking meticulous notes on the forecast, rubbing his eyes every so often beneath his glasses, nudging them up with his knuckles. Rubbing his thumb over the bridge of his nose. A flurry of anxious activity and then . . . stillness. He grows more and more quiet as we approach our broadcast time until he eventually turns completely silent. He sets up our shot on the small deck that loops around the back of the property, his movements jerky and agitated. I chatter away, but it’s like he’s slipped beneath the surface, sinking down to a depth I can no longer reach.

Eventually, I stop trying, coordinating with Mark while Jackson gazes out at the view. He looks like something from a conservation catalog, standing there at the edge of the deck. Hands braced against the red-paint-flecked railing, his shoulders one sharp line. Blond hair a smudge of gold against the dark forest that spills out beneath our feet, all the way to the wide expanse of the lake, stretching out, out, out to the horizon.

It’s beautiful.

It’s also incredibly sad.

I hate that Jackson doesn’t trust himself enough to do it right. That he’s stuck in his own head, likely caught in a loop.

That he doesn’t trust me enough to help.

Mark pulls me to the side, doing a half-assed job of pretending to fix my earpiece while Jackson does his best impression of a baroque statue six feet away from us.