Page 71 of And Now, Back to You

“Did you want your scone, or can I have it?” she asks.

“You can have it,” I tell her.

I’m pretty sure I’d give Delilah whatever she wants.

DELILAH STEWART: And a special hello and thank you to our friends at Wolf’s Lodge, helping us ride out the storm.

DELILAH STEWART: You guys make some of the best blueberry scones I’ve ever had.

DELILAH STEWART: What did you think of the scones, Jackson?

JACKSON CLARK: I don’t know.

DELILAH STEWART: You don’t know?

JACKSON CLARK: Every baked good I’ve received has mysteriously disappeared.

CHAPTER 17

DELILAH

I wake up when the mattress dips.

Sheets rustle and then a pillow falls on top of my head. I push it away, groggy, squinting into the light that filters in from behind the curtains.

My pillow wall is in shambles around us, my arm slung over Jackson’s waist. He’s half-reclined on the bed, watching me, frozen with one foot planted on the floor.

“Were you trying to sneak out of bed?” I slur, letting the pillow fall back over my face. I’m not used to waking up with someone else. I’m disoriented and still more than seventy-five percent asleep.

I feel his body tense and then relax under my cheek. A gentle tug on my hair. His fingers, maybe.

“Yes,” he says quietly. He hesitates. “But you are surprisingly strong.”

I rub my cheek back and forth over his T-shirt. I’ll probably be humiliated about this in an hour, but right now I feel soft and hazy and warm. Weightless. “And you are surprisingly comfortable. Do you use fabric softener?”

“Of course I do.” Another gentle tug at my hair, right behind my ear this time. I peek open one eye and can just barely make out his face. He’s staring at the top of my head with a half smile, his glasses slightly crooked.

“I didn’t know hair could defy the laws of gravity,” he says, his voice hushed.

I snort. “Not true. I looked through your toiletry bag, remember? I saw your hair products.”

“Fair point.”

He keeps combing gently through my hair and I keep using him as a pillow, the both of us caught in some hazy in-between. It’s mundane and magic. Outside this room, cold presses at the windows and a storm settles over the lake, but in here it’s just us. The gentle press of his fingers against my scalp. The rise and fall of his chest. The rasp of his breathing and the smell of his shampoo on the pillows. It fills a particular ache I didn’t even know I had. It’s entirely possible I’m still dreaming. A thought that is disrupted when Metallica starts playing—loudly—from my nightstand.

I groan immediately, loud and petulant, flopping off of Jackson.

“That’s an interesting ringtone.”

“I didn’t choose it.” I slap blindly at the nightstand, knocking over the hotel phone and sending the television remote skittering across the floor. “It’s Gianna.”

His face is open, curious. A pillow line on his cheek. “Gianna?”

“She works in research at the station. Hold on a sec.”

I finally manage to grab my phone, answering the call with a slide of my thumb. “Hello?”

A pause. “I forgot what a mess you are early in the morning.” A wrapper crinkles in the background. “Weird,” she says, mouth half-full. “Considering you’ve been doing early-morning broadcasts for, like, five years.”