A Lot
By the time Penelope gets to his apartment, she has turned one stupid, survivable misunderstanding into a full internal government collapse.
Not even on purpose.
That’s the worst part.
It had started an hour ago with a text she’d read in the exact wrong mood.
She’d had a long day, the kind that left her skin too thin and her dignity hanging on by one fingernail, and she’d texted him something embarrassingly soft and domestic:
[Penelope]
I cannot stop thinking about your forearms and your chest hair and the whole leg situation and would appreciate immediate intervention.
Followed by:
[Penelope]
Okay! Great. Perfect. I’ve obviously overplayed my hand and will now be changing my name and moving quietly to another region.
Followed, seven minutes later, by:
[Penelope]
No reply to either message is such a strong artistic choice, honestly. Very bleak. Very European.
His reply had come while she was standing in line for coffee, already feeling mildly insane:
[Jack]
Need one hour where nobody needs anything from me or I’ll chew through drywall.
Objectively, obviously, clearly, that had not been about her.
Subjectively? To Penelope’s very balanced and reasonable nervous system? It had landed like a notarized notice of emotional overuse.
Then she’d done what all stable people do and replied:
[Penelope]
hahaha totally
And absolutely did not mention that her stomach had fallen through the floor.
Then, because the universe hates her specifically, she realizes he’d left his laptop, hoodie, and Pad Thai leftovers from lunch in her car, so now she’s at his apartment anyway, carrying all three like some deranged little errand goblin.
She hears his laugh through the door.
Warm, loose, familiar. The one that usually does good things to her blood pressure.
Tonight it just makes her bristle.
Then, from inside, Jack says, laughing, “No, she’s a lot.”
Penelope stops dead in the hallway.
Oh.
Oh, excellent.
Great. Perfect. Lovely.
She opens the door—knocking would have been weird; they’re way past that now.
Jack is in the middle of his living room in his chair, one hand still near his phone on speaker on the side table, head turning at the sound of her coming in. His face changes immediately when he sees her—surprise first, then delight, then confusion as he clocks her expression.
“Hi?” he says.
Penelope sets the pad thai down on the counter with ceremonial care.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she says brightly. “I love hearing my performance review live.”
There’s a beat.
Then the phone on speaker crackles and a voice—Cal, because of course it’s Cal—says, “Oh no.”
Jack closes his eyes briefly. “Cal, hang up.”
“Godspeed,” Cal says, already laughing.
The line clicks dead.
Jack looks back at her. “Penelope—”
“No, no, carry on,” she says, shrugging her tote off her shoulder. “I actually love this for me. Very efficient. Why communicate with your girlfriend when you can simply debrief her like a difficult weather system?”
He stares at her for half a second.
Then his mouth twitches.
That makes it worse.
“Do not laugh,” she says, pointing at him.
“I’m not—”
“You are. Your whole face is doing that annoying thing where it acts like I’m being adorable while my internal organs are actively filing a grievance.”
He presses his lips together. Badly.
“Oh my God,” she says. “You are.”
“Pen—”
“No, I’m so glad, actually,” she says, already in motion, pacing two furious steps into the room and then back out again because there isn’t enough floor space for what her pride is trying to do. “This is useful information. Great to know I’ve become A Lot. Capital letters. A category. A burden with earrings.”
His shoulders are shaking now. He is losing the battle.
“I said one thing—”
“You said several things, actually,” she fires back. “First you said you needed one hour where nobody needed anything from you, which, rude. Elegant. Subtle. Then I come here like a charity delivery service with your hoodie and your little pad thai and your little computer—”
“My laptop?”
“Yes, ugh, keep up—” She tosses the laptop onto the couch. “—and then I hear you in here like no, she’s a lot.”
Jack looks up at the ceiling. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You completely misheard—”
She laughs once, humorless. “Well, I didn’t think you were in here saying ‘no, she’s a delight’ in a really weird accent.”
That gets him.
A real laugh barks out of him before he can stop it.
Penelope gapes at him.
“I hate you,” she says.
“No, you don’t.”
“I currently do a little bit.”
“You absolutely do not.”
She folds her arms. “You told your brother I’m too much.”
He rubs a hand over his face, still grinning like this is the best thing that’s happened to him all week. “I did not tell Cal you’re too much.”
“You literally said, and I quote, ‘No, she’s a lot.’”
“Because Cal said, ‘How is she funny and hot? That feels greedy,’ and I said, ‘I know. She’s a lot.’ That was a compliment, you lunatic.”
Penelope goes still.
There is a tiny, horrible pause in which she realizes there might, in fact, be a world in which she has kicked open his door and staged a psychotic little tribunal over half a sentence.
She narrows her eyes anyway.
“That sounds fake.”
He laughs again, helpless now.
“I’m serious.”
“I know,” he says, which is somehow worse. “That’s the problem.”
She glares at him.
He’s smiling so hard it’s lighting up his whole face now, all that fondness fully visible, not even trying to hide. Which should calm her down. It does not calm her down. It just makes her hotter and more humiliated.
“And the text?” she demands.
“What text?”
She stares at him. “The need one hour where nobody needs anything from me or I’ll chew through drywall text? Ringing any bells?”
“Oh my God,” he says, laughing again. “Penelope.”
“What.”
“That was about work.”
“Well, congratulations,” she says. “It was beautifully timed.”
He’s shaking his head now, rubbing his mouth like that might physically hold the laugh in.
It doesn’t.
“Oh, I’m glad this is funny,” she snaps.
“It is a little funny.”
“It’s not funny.”
“You showed up armed with leftovers and emotional artillery because you heard like five words through a door.”
“I heard enough.”
“You absolutely did not.”
She huffs out a breath and grabs his hoodie off the counter. “Fine. Great. Amazing. I’ll just go before I continue to be a lot in your immediate vicinity.”
She turns.
He catches her wrist.
Not hard. Just enough.
“Penelope,” he says, laughing outright now. “Knock it off. Listen to me.”
She twists back toward him, scandalized by his tone, by the fact that he is still amused, by the fact that some deeply traitorous part of her is also thrilled he’s this unbothered.
“Don’t ‘Penelope’ me,” she says.
“You are being spectacularly normal about this.”
She lets out a shocked noise. “That is so rude.”
“It’s accurate.”
She tries to bat his hand off her arm.
He doesn’t let go.
“Jack—”
“Listen.”
“Stop laughing!”
“I’m trying.”
“You are doing a terrible job.”
He’s leaned a little too far forward in the effort to catch her, one hand on her wrist, the other braced badly, chair angled half on the edge of the rug.
Penelope shoves at his shoulder—not hard, more offense than force, the world’s least convincing act of violence.
It’s enough.
The chair tips.
There’s a split second where both of them realize it at the same time.
Jack’s eyes widen. “Oh, for—”
And then he’s gone.
Backwards and slightly spun in one graceless, spectacular movement, chair and man and dignity all taking the scenic route to the floor.
The sound that comes out of Penelope is half gasp, half snort.
Then Jack is on the rug, the chair half twisted under him, and she claps a hand over her mouth.
He looks up at her from the floor.
She loses it.
Not out of cruelty. Just pure, helpless shock at the ridiculousness of him down there looking outraged and handsome and very much alive.
“Oh my God,” she says, already folding in half with laughter. “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”
He points at her from the floor. “Hey! You can’t laugh at me.”
That only makes it worse.
“I’m not laughing at you,” she manages, crouching immediately, hand pressed to her chest.
It’s like her body chose laughter as a relief valve and she can’t stop.
He’s trying not to smile now, failing miserably.
“I cannot believe you’re laughing at me right now.”
But he’s losing it too now, which really weakens his case.
His chair is tipped awkwardly, his legs caught in the aftermath of it—one still tangled near the footplate, the other twisted off to the side at an angle that is all wrong and somehow, offensively, does something hot and treacherous to the base of her spine.
He clocks the moment her face changes.
Of course he does.
But first: practical.
She sobers enough to lean in, one hand hovering uselessly. “Okay. Okay. What do you need?”
That gets rid of the last of his laughter.
Not because he’s hurt. Because she means it.
He looks at her for one quiet second from the floor, hair mussed, mouth still crooked, breath a little short from laughing.
“Come here.”
Before she can ask what that means, he catches the front of her shirt and pulls her down.
She lands half over him with a startled sound, one knee on the rug, one hand braced on the floor, and then his mouth is on hers.
It is not a gentle, corrective kiss.
It is warm and laughing and a little mean about the edges, like he’s kissing the stupid spiral right out of her on principle.
Penelope kisses him back instantly, because of course she does. Because she has been a disaster for the last twenty minutes and this feels like being let back into her own body.
His hand slides to the back of her neck. Her palm skids over the rug, the solid line of his forearms, then his shoulders. He makes a low sound into her mouth that goes straight through her.
She shifts closer.
That’s when she sees it properly.
His chair is still tipped. His legs are still caught up in it, loose and wrong and helplessly arranged by gravity, one twisted against the frame, the other fallen open in a way he did not choose and cannot correct. The whole image is a mess. Awkward. Intimate. Barely contained.
It hits her so hard she breaks the kiss just to breathe.
Jack’s eyes open.
He follows her line of sight downward.
Then back up to her face.
His mouth curves.
“No,” she says automatically, because she knows that look.
He laughs, breathless now for a completely different reason. “Penelope.”
“Don’t.”
“This is doing something to you.”
She tries for offended. What comes out is not that. “Shut up.”
“It is.” His voice drops, warm with delighted recognition. “Jesus Christ.”
She looks away, which is apparently confirmation.
“Oh my God,” he says softly, sounding ruined by it. “It is.”
She presses her lips together, furious at her own face for existing. “This is a very vulnerable moment for you and I’m trying to be a good person.”
“You’re trying to be a good person while staring at my legs like that?”
She drags her eyes back to his face. “I am doing my best.”
He laughs so hard his head drops back to the floor.
For a second it’s still funny—the chair still half under him, his legs pretzeled where they landed, Penelope half-crouched over him, both of them breathing hard from the near-disaster—and then something changes.
He looks at her.
Not amused now. Not exactly.
Something darker. Sharper. That look he gets when he’s clocked her all the way through and decided not to let her wriggle out of it.
Her stomach drops.
“Come here,” he says.
She is already there, really, but he says it like a command, low and rough enough that it lands somewhere deep and immediate. Then he catches her by the hips and drags her over him, deliberate, no room left for pretending this is still just damage control.
“Jack—”
“Come here.”
He gets her over him properly this time, one of her knees sliding over the rug, the other braced near his side, and then she’s straddling him on the floor with his chair still tipped under them and his body still caught in the aftermath of it. His hands are in her hair almost immediately, one at the nape of her neck, one fisted lightly at the roots, pulling her down into a kiss that is all heat and intent.
It undoes her.
Not just because he’s kissing her hard enough to make her head swim. Not just because of his mouth or his hands or the way he’s clearly enjoying the fact that she is already half gone for him.
It’s him like this.
On the floor. A little breathless. A little wrecked. Looking up at her like he knows exactly what this is doing and fully intends to use it.
She makes a sound into his mouth she absolutely did not mean to make.
His hand slides from her hair to her waist, then lower, then back again, not frantic—precise. Feeling for the places that make her breath hitch, the shifts in her body, the way she can’t stop pressing into him like she’s trying to answer a question she doesn’t yet know how to say out loud.
He breaks the kiss just enough to speak.
“Tell me the thing that’s doing it for you.”
Her whole face heats.
“Jack.”
“Penelope.”
He says her name like a hand at the back of her neck. Not mean. Just impossible to dodge.
She tries anyway.
“It’s just—”
“It’s not just.”
She hates that he’s right. She hates more that some part of her is thrilled he’s making her stay in it.
She looks down once, disastrously, and there it is again—the tipped chair, the tangle of him against it, his legs still where gravity left them, one caught wrong against the frame, the other open and slack and all of it so uncomposed, so visible, so completely not arranged for anyone’s comfort.
His eyes flick down too.
Then back to her.
“Is it that I’m on the floor?” he asks quietly.
Her mouth opens. Closes.
He sees enough in her face to smile, just slightly.
“Is it my legs?”
She exhales hard through her nose.
“Jack, stop.”
“That they’re twisted?”
Her reaction betrays her before she can fix it. He feels it immediately—the stutter in her breath, the way her weight shifts, the little involuntary press of her body closer to his.
His expression changes again. Not mocking. Not even surprised.
Interested.
“Oh,” he says softly.
Which, humiliatingly, makes it worse.
She drops her forehead briefly to his shoulder like that might save her. It does not. His hand slides back into her hair, fingers spreading, holding her there for a second before guiding her up again so she has to look at him.
“That I can’t fix them?” he asks.
That one lands so squarely she almost flinches.
He notices.
Of course he does.
His mouth brushes hers once, not quite a kiss.
“Penelope.”
She hates how wrecked her own voice sounds. “Please don’t be nice about this.”
A beat.
Then his eyes sharpen with something that is very much not nice.
“Do they look wrong?” he asks.
The sound she makes is tiny and useless.
He goes on, because now he knows he’s right and because apparently that has made something in him snap tight and bright.
“Do you want to fix it?”
She shakes her head immediately, too fast.
That gets him.
His grip on her hip tightens. His other hand leaves her hair long enough to trace down the line of her back, slow and deliberate, like he’s mapping exactly how far gone she is.
“No?” he says, voice roughening. “You sure?”
She is breathing too hard to answer properly.
He watches her for one second, then another, and when he speaks again the humor has gone strange at the edges—quieter, but somehow hotter for it.
“I used to hate this, you know.”
That stops her.
Not because it cools anything down. Because it doesn’t. Because he says it while looking right at her, with his hand still firm on her waist and his body still pinned under her and the whole room feeling narrowed to the space of his mouth.
“Being seen like this,” he says. “Caught out. On the floor. Legs wherever they land. Chair half on top of me. No control over the angle, no time to make it look normal.”
Penelope’s throat works.
He sees that too.
“But you,” he says, and there’s a wrecked kind of wonder in it now, threaded clean through the heat, “you look at me like that and it drives you out of your mind.”
She closes her eyes.
“No,” he says softly. “Don’t do that. Look at me.”
She does.
His expression when she opens her eyes is almost enough to finish her by itself—all that fondness burnt down into something rawer, his mouth parted, his breathing uneven now for reasons that have nothing to do with the fall.
“This,” he says, quieter now, like he’s saying it mostly to himself and yet every word lands in her anyway. “This is what does it for you.”
She swallows hard.
“Jack—”
“This,” he repeats, shifting just enough beneath her that the reality of his position, of hers, of the whole wrong charged arrangement of them becomes impossible to ignore. “Not cleaned up. Not fixed first.”
She lets out a broken little laugh that is not a laugh at all.
His thumb presses hard into her hip, grounding and undoing all at the same time.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he says.
She can’t.
That, somehow, affects him almost as much as the answer would have.
His head tips back against the rug for a second, eyes on her, and the control in his face slips just enough for her to see what this is doing to him too—the way the knowledge of it is getting under his skin, the way he’s holding himself together by hand.
Something shifts, just a flicker, but she sees it. He’s all focus.
“Is it that they look wrong?” he asks again, slower this time, using her reaction like a pulse under his fingertips. “That they’re not where they’re supposed to be?”
She can only whimper.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s it.”
It is not a question.
She presses her lips together.
He kisses her once, hard.
Then again, slower.
Then once more with his mouth curved at the corner, because he can feel her coming apart under the weight of being known this precisely and it is clearly doing unspeakably good things to his ego.
When he speaks again, his voice is gone rough enough to scrape.
A slow devilish grin spreads across his face. “You are unwell.”
“That feels rich coming from your current position,” she mutters.
That gets an actual grin out of him.
“Fair.”
Then he shifts again, tiny and instinctive, some effort running through his stomach and chest even though everything below stays where it is, and his face tightens. The reaction flashes through him fast and clean.
Penelope feels it.
His eyes half-close. “See?”
Her breath catches.
“My body still tries,” he says, barely above a murmur. “Even like this.”
That nearly does her in.
He must see it, because his hand slides back to the nape of her neck and he pulls her down into another kiss—longer this time, deeper, less teasing. When he breaks it, his forehead stays pressed to hers.
“Pen,” he says.
She is in no state to deal with that tone.
“What.”
“I need you to say one true thing.”
She laughs once, unsteady. “That feels like a trap.”
“It is.”
She closes her eyes, then opens them again.
One true thing.
Fine.
Her voice comes out smaller than she wants. “I don’t want to fix it.”
His whole face changes.
Not because he’s shocked. Because hearing it out loud does something to him he was only barely containing before.
He looks at her like she’s just handed him a live wire.
“Okay,” he says.
Just that. But his hand on her waist tightens and his breath goes jagged and there is absolutely nothing mild in him now.
“Okay,” he says again, more to himself.
Then he kisses her like he’s learned something dangerous.
When she finally breaks away enough to breathe, she’s half laughing again from the sheer intensity of it, wrecked and embarrassed and still not even slightly sorry.
He’s looking up at her from the floor, chair tipped, legs still caught how they landed, mouth kissed-swollen, eyes bright and filthy with understanding.
And God help her, that look nearly sends her straight over the edge.
He sees it too.
Of course he does.
His smile this time is tiny and absolutely devastating.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “That’s what I thought.”
And then, because apparently he has decided he is going to ruin her thoroughly and methodically, he shifts his grip on her waist and changes the angle of her over him by barely an inch.
That’s all.
Just enough to make her whole body jolt.
Penelope sucks in a breath.
Jack’s eyes stay on her face.
There’s nothing lazy in him now. No laughter left, not really. It’s all focus. Curiosity sharpened into intent.
“That did it,” he says quietly.
She shakes her head on reflex, which is idiotic because the reaction has already happened and they both know it.
His thumb presses once into her hip. Not moving her much. Just enough to remind her he could.
“Jack,” she says, warning and plea both.
“What?”
She glares at him through a face that is absolutely betraying her. “You know what.”
“I do,” he says. “I just like hearing you try to get out of it.”
He does it again—that tiny, deliberate adjustment. The barest change in pressure, in angle, in the impossible wrongness of him under her and the way he’s using it now on purpose.
It hits her so hard she folds forward, catching herself on his shoulder.
He goes still beneath her.
Then, very, very gently: “There it is.”
“Shut up,” she breathes, with absolutely no conviction.
His hand slides into her hair again, not yanking, just holding. Anchoring. Keeping her right there where he can feel every little reaction run through her.
“Look at me.”
She does. Big mistake.
He watches her for one second too long, reads something in her face, and then his expression goes dark with understanding.
“You like me like this,” he says.
Not a question.
Penelope swallows.
He gives her one more of those minute shifts, enough to send another visible tremor through her, and then he stops.
Completely.
The absence of it is so abrupt she nearly makes a noise.
Jack’s eyebrows lift.
She stares at him.
He stares back.
No rescue.
No mercy.
“Jack.”
He says nothing.
Just looks at her from the floor with that impossible, intent calm, one hand still warm at her waist, the other tangled in her hair, his whole face saying go on, then.
Her pride tries one last heroic stand.
It dies quickly.
“Don’t stop,” she says.
The words come out raw, dragged out of her.
Something in his face flickers.
Then she adds, softer this time, because she cannot seem to help telling the truth tonight even when it humiliates her, “Please.”
That one lands differently.
He stills.
Not in the teasing way. In the real way.
Something flashes across his face—quick, sharp, stripped clean of amusement. The smug edge disappears. What’s left is darker. Hotter. More focused.
Because he hears what’s under it.
That tiny thread of uncertainty under the please. Like she still thinks there’s a version of this where he’d flinch.
His hand leaves her hair just long enough to catch her jaw, not gentle, not rough enough to hurt. Just enough that she has to stay with him.
“Hey,” he says, voice lower now. Steadier. “No. Don’t do that.”
Her throat works. “Do what.”
“Ask like you’re in trouble.”
That nearly takes her out on its own.
His thumb drags once over her lower lip, eyes fixed on hers.
“You are so allowed,” he says. “Do you understand me?”
Penelope lets out a shaky breath.
“Jack—”
“No.” His hand slides back to her hip, firm now. Certain. “You don’t get to sit here on top of me, half out of your mind because of me, and still sound like you think I’m about to take it away.”
Her entire face is hot. She can barely breathe.
He looks at her for another beat, then nods once, like he’s made up his mind.
“Okay,” he murmurs. “Then I’m going to tell you.”
Her pulse jumps.
And he does.
Fully.
Not half-teasing. Not softening it for her. Not pretending not to know.
He looks up at her from the floor, chair tipped beside him, legs still caught where they landed, and starts saying everything she’s been trying not to say out loud.
“You like that I’m down here,” he says, voice rough and even and devastatingly sure. “You like that I can’t fix any of it before you see it.”
She makes a small sound and he keeps going, relentless now, using every reaction like a map.
“You like that the chair’s still half on me.”
Her breath stutters.
“You like that my legs are where they landed.”
Another tiny shift of her body. He feels it.
“That I’m not cleaned up.” His fingers tighten once on her waist. “Not arranged. Not making it easy for anybody.”
Penelope’s head drops. He catches her chin before she can hide.
“Look at me.”
She does.
His expression is wrecking. Heat and control and something almost ruthless right through the middle of it.
“You like seeing this—the part I usually hide,” he says. “You like it when I can’t smooth it out first. When it looks wrong. When it looks too real.”
Every word lands like a blow.
She’s shaking now and he knows it and he does not let up.
“When I’m stuck like this,” he says, quieter somehow, which only makes it hit harder, “and you can see all of it anyway?”
Her eyes close for one second.
“No,” he says. “Stay here.”
They open again.
“There you go.”
That praise. Casual and devastating.
His own breath is getting uneven now. She can hear it in the spaces between his words, can feel it in the tightening line of his body under her, the way his stomach draws hard even when the rest of him stays as it fell.
But he keeps talking.
For her? For him? She doesn’t even know anymore.
“You don’t want to fix it,” he says. “You want to look.”
Her mouth parts.
“You want to be allowed to look.”
That goes through her so hard she nearly folds.
He sees it happen.
His own face tightens with it, but instead of backing off, he doubles down, voice dropping to a rough near-murmur.
“Then look.”
Her whole body arches on a breath.
“Look at me,” he says, and now there’s strain in it, his control fraying in a way that only makes him hotter. “Look at what this does to you. Look at what it does to me.”
She is gone. Fully gone.
He knows. Of course he knows.
And now he gives it to her harder.
“You like that I can’t put myself back together before you see me.”
She lets out a broken sound.
“You like that gravity got to me first.”
Another one.
“You like that I’m still down here.”
“Jack—”
“You like that I know.”
It hits her like a train.
Not just the words. The fact that he’s saying them. The fact that he’s giving her nowhere to hide. The fact that he sounds so wrecked himself now, so deep in it, like knowing this about her is doing almost as much to him as being on the floor in the first place.
He shifts again beneath her, tiny and involuntary, and his face tightens hard enough that she feels it like an echo.
“Jesus,” he says under his breath, more wrecked than before. “Penelope.”
She can barely form a thought.
He sees that too and keeps going, voice frayed raw now.
“You looking at me like this—” He breaks off, breath catching, then forces himself back into the sentence. “You have any idea what this is doing to me?”
She shakes her head because she genuinely doesn’t.
He gives a laugh that sounds wrecked around the edges.
“Course you don’t.”
His hand slides up her back, spreads between her shoulder blades, holding her over him like he’s both steadying her and keeping her exactly where he wants her.
“It makes me want to keep talking until you completely lose it,” he says.
That one nearly does it by itself.
He sees it, swears under his breath, and goes harder.
“You like that I’m stuck like this and you still can’t get enough.”
Her breath catches.
“You like that I know exactly what you’re looking at.”
Another jolt.
“You like that I can’t fix it.”
Her whole body betrays her again.
“And you like that I’m not even trying.”
That’s the one.
It tears right through her.
His mouth hits hers again before she can get a grip on anything, and that’s what really does it—the talking still in her ears, his certainty, the rough low line of his voice saying every single thing she’d been trying not to name.
It all lands at once.
She breaks against him with his name in her mouth and his hand hard at her back and the tipped chair still beside them like evidence.
Jack follows half a heartbeat later, the force of it running through the parts of him that can answer and the parts that only remember, his breath wrecking apart against her throat, one hand clamping at her waist, the other tangling tighter in her hair.
For a second neither of them is anywhere civilized.
Then the room comes back in pieces.
The rug under her knees. His breathing under hers. The quiet tick of a clock somewhere.
Penelope stays folded over him, forehead pressed to the side of his neck, trying to remember how to be a person.
Jack’s hand moves once down her back. Then again.
When he speaks, his voice is shredded.
“Well,” he says.
That gets a laugh out of her. Thin, wrecked, hysterical around the edges.
“Well,” she echoes.
He tips his head back against the floor and lets out one more disbelieving breath.
“Just so we’re clear,” he says after a second, “I did not see tonight going this way.”
She lifts her head enough to look at him.
“You called me a lunatic.”
“And you knocked me over.”
“By accident.”
He gives her a look. “Debatable.”
She smiles despite herself.
He looks at her for a second longer, then says, voice still rough, “You never have to ask me like it’s bad. Not for that. Not with me.”
The laugh leaves her entirely.
“I know,” she says.
He studies her for a second, clearly deciding whether he believes that.
Then: “Okay.”
And because she is incapable of behaving normally for longer than fifteen consecutive seconds, she glances down once more at the wreckage of him and the chair and says, “This is still, unfortunately, doing a little bit for me.”
Jack stares at her.
Then he laughs so hard he has to close his eyes.
“There it is,” he says.
And God help her, that nearly starts the whole thing over again.
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