We quickly made it to my room without further incident. Jack stalked into the apartment as if she owned the place. Her presence took up the entire living area.
Jack didn’t wait for me to invite her to sit down or ask me to get her a drink. She strode right up to my fridge like she owned the place and pulled out the bottle of wine as if she knew it would be there and helped herself to a large glass, leaning against my kitchen island.
“You wanted to talk,” she snipped, sipping from her glass. “So talk.”
I grabbed a coaster and set it beside her elbow. Which, of course like a brat, she blatantly ignored, sitting the glass directly on the island.
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Are you being difficult by design or just to annoy me?”
“A bit of both.” She smirked, licking a drop of wine from her lips. Lips that I had a few weeks ago been allowed to kiss, to taste. Up until she almost ripped my heart from my chest in her unyielding need to do everything on her own.
Trying my best to ignore the way she was purposely egging me on, I sat on the back of my sofa opposite of where she stood in the kitchen. I let my hands drop to the sofa’s back, forcing myself to breathe and not snip at her the way I would as her commanding officer.
“Jack…” I began, unsure how to put my feelings to words. I spent the last few weeks rehearsing what I’d say to her over and over again. Replaying what happened and wishing for a different outcome. And yet now, faced with the chance, my mind went blank. “I want you to understand—”
“That doesn’t sound like the start of an apology,” she quipped, cutting me off. “If you are just going to talk at me, thinking I’mgoing to agree with you and beg your forgiveness, then you can just save it. We’ll go back to the way we were before. Well,” she snorted, “sans me being an actual hunter anymore.”
“Jack,” I pushed off the couch unable to handle the space that was growing between us, “I didn’t mean for you to get suspended.”
“And yet… you did.”
I stopped next to her by the island. “Yes, I am aware. However, I did it from a place of lo— I mean…” I cleared my throat, trying not to squirm under her unwavering gaze. “We both know how you can be. You went in half-cocked without telling anyone where you were going or who you were meeting. Any hunter with half a brain would have seen that it was a trap, and yet —”
“Are you saying I’m stupid?” Jack straightened her eyes hard.
“No, I’m not saying that,” I quickly added, frustration leaking into my voice. “I’m saying that you have a tendency to make split-second decisions on your own, and we are supposed to be a team.”
“You’re right,” Jack said calmly, too calm for the daggers she was shooting my way. “Wearesupposed to be a team. And yet, ever since we started this assignment, you’ve treated me like some child who needs babysitting rather than a grown ass woman who can make her own decisions.”
“I wouldn’t have to treat you like a child if you didn’t act like one,” I shot back, my patience wearing thin as I loomed over her.
Jack released her glass and came toe to toe with me. “And I wouldn’t have to go off on my own if everyone would stop treating me like I’m breakable.” She bared her teeth at me. “I’m not some little girl that needs protecting.”
“Yes, you are!” I shouted and then instantly regretted it as I watched her expression shutter.
“Well,” she stepped back from me, “I’m glad I know where I stand now.” Without another word, she stalked toward the door.
I couldn’t let it end like this. I wouldn’t. I spent too long pushing down my feelings for her. Now that I finally got my foot back in the door, I wasn’t about to lose her again. Not because of some misunderstood words.
“Jack!” I chased after her, my longer legs eating up the space between us. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, I got what you meant,” she shot over her shoulder, opening the apartment door.
My hand slammed on the surface of it over her head, shutting it before she could run away. My breath heaved as if I’d run a mile, my heart racing in my chest.
“Let me out,” Jack demanded, not turning to face me.
A part of me expected her new powers to force me to do her bidding and yet, surprisingly, they stayed dormant.
I kept a line of air between us even though every inch of me ached to hold her. “Please, Jack. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“It’s fine,” she said stiffly, her hand tightening around the door handle. “Do you think you’re the only one who thinks I’m just a little girl who needs protecting? Do you?”
Her shoulders bunched, and I wanted to comfort her, to wrap her in my arms and tell her she was the strongest person I knew and yet… I didn’t know with a hundred percent certainty that I’d be accepted.
“I’m faster and stronger than the other hunters,” she reminded me as if I could forget. “My senses are ten times that of a regular human servant. Now I’ve got these powers that put me on an even higher level, and…” She huffed a laugh, before her voice went soft, “…and yet everyone still thinks I’m the weak link.”
“You’re not,” I breathed against her ear, daring to close the distance just a tiny bit more. “You’re the strongest person I know, and I don’t just mean physically. But even the strongest person in the world still needs help sometimes.”
