Page 93 of Shards Of Hope

When King finally gets tired and starts threatening to go nap in the grass, I corral him and Jack to go back home.

Jack frees King from his lead again when we get inside the house and puts away the lead in the cupboard.

I go into the kitchen and prepare King’s food, filling his bowl and putting it down in its usual spot. Afterwards, I wash my hands and deal with the salad bowl I forgot earlier, swilling it out and throwing it in the dishwasher.

Jack doesn’t come into the kitchen, and I go to investigate where he’s disappeared off too. When I don’t find him in the living room, I figure he must have gone upstairs.

I find Jack in my room, lying down on top of my bed, above the covers. He’s fully dressed except for his boots, which he took off and dropped at the side of the bed. I’m not sure if he looked in the other rooms, or if he made a lucky guess about this one being mine.

Without waiting for an invitation since it’s my fucking room, I wander over to the bed and dump myself down next to him, toeing off my own boots.

My bed is big, but Jack is a sizable man, and I’m not exactly a China doll, so there’s isn’t much space between us.

I should probably ask him what he’s doing, or more accurately, what are we doing, but I don’t. I stare up at the ceiling for a while, willing to let this play out.

When Jack turns his head to look at me, I can feel the scorch of his gaze like flames from a campfire, rising to meet my hand and possibly burn right through it.

“So, just to be clear,” Jack says, voice droll and slightly mocking, a familiar tone for him to take. “You do want us to fuck, right?” The question goes up at the end, as if he’s really unsure about the answer.

I feel my eyes widen at the bluntness of his question although I’m not sure why I’d expect anything less from him.

“What the hell, Jack? I mean, yeah. But you gotta ask like that?”

Jack doesn’t look in the least bit repentant for his stunning lack of subtlety.

“Did you not want me to ask? ’Cause I was kind of worried you weren’t gonna bring it up again if I didn’t.”

“Don’t remember bringing it up at all,” I mutter indignantly.

“Alright, not with words. But you were gonna kiss me in the kitchen before your mum came downstairs, right?" Jack sounds, of all things,impatient. Like he thinks I’m being difficult on purpose. Seriously. The injustice of that. Thegall.

"Probably,” I admit because there doesn’t seem any point in lying. “Yeah. I was going to kiss you, which would have been a mistake.”

Welcome aboard, Captain Fucking Obvious.

Jack peers at me more closely, like he’s trying to read between the lines to see some hidden message.

“You think?”

I feel my eyebrows go up dramatically.

“Youdon’tthink?”

“Oh, I do,” Jack affirms, tone heavily implying that any suggestion otherwise would be beyond ludicrous. “Us kissing. Fucking. Would be a really shitty idea.”

I’m no longer sure of where this is going. If I ever knew.

“Okay, then. So. We agree?”

Jack scowls at me.

“On what?”

I resist the potent urge to shove him out of bed hard enough he’d hit the floor and bloody bounce.

“Not to fuck,” I say, mildly exasperated this batshit conversation is still going on.

“Like hell,” Jack protests, throwing me for a loop for the third time. “I agree weshouldn’tfuck. That’s not the same.”