“I’m yours, Jack,” I cried out.
His hand wrapped around my waist, his fingers working my clit while he kept pounding into me, tenacious and perfect in the way only Jack ever was. Every thrust brought me closer to the edge. And when I finally came, screaming into the room, he followed right behind me, groaning my name.
* * *
We lay in bed for a while, his breath hot against the back of my neck, his arms tight around me as he spooned me.
He turned me over, and his eyes searched mine. “You love me, right? Even after all this—after him—after them?”
“God, Jack,” I murmured, sliding my hand to cup his cheek. “Always. Forever. We’ve been through worse.”
His throat bobbed, and for once, he didn’t have a smartass comeback. He was just that wounded, boyish Jack, the way he was when the weight of the world got too heavy.
“But,” I added gently, “We owe them a conversation. They didn’t hurt us, Jack. They did nothing wrong.”
He looked off in the distance. He knew I was right, but he didn’t always admit it.
“Okay,” he said with a sigh.
I smiled. “Let’s go fix it.”
We got dressed and slowly walked down the hall, knocking gently at their door.
Jack stood beside me, his arms crossed but his expression soft. Jackie opened the door after a moment. Her eyes were wary but she gave us a smile. Elliott was behind her, packing a duffel bag that was on the bed.
“We’re not here to rehash,” I said quickly. “Just…we wanna talk before we all go.”
She looked back at Elliott, and they exchanged a silent conversation. She turned back to me and nodded. “Okay.”
We all walked into the living room, sitting down on the couches where we all fucked for days in a row.
I folded my hands in my lap. “I just wanted to say…we don’t regret anything. At least, I don’t.”
Jack nodded beside me. “Neither do I,” he said softly, eyeing Jackie.
“But I think we pushed something that maybe wasn’t built to last,” I said gently. “Not like that. Not all of it.”
Jackie’s gaze flicked to Elliott. He looked tired, and somehow sad.
“I agree,” she said after a moment. “It got messy. There were too many feelings underneath. Too many cracks we didn’t see coming.”
“We let things escalate too fast,” Elliott said. “And maybe we weren’t honest with ourselves—or each other—about how we’d feel once they did.”
There was a long silence as we each looked down at the floor, contemplating our words.
Jack sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I care about you both. I don’t want to lose that friendship because we couldn’t read our own limits.”
“We won’t,” Jackie said firmly. “We’re still friends. That doesn’t have to change.”
I looked at her and nodded. “No more blurred lines. No more pushing ourselves into things just to prove we’re okay. Let’s just…be okay.”
She gave me her perfect, beautiful smile, and this time, it was real.
“We’re okay,” she said.
Elliott gave a nod. “We are.”
It wasn’t some dramatic end. We had all gone through too much together for us to not get through this.
