“But what if I never learn who I am?” I bring my eyes up to his, my voice trembling. “And I come out of this the same, still quitting everything because it’s easier to give up before I fail?”
“You know who you are, and when you make it out of here, then you’ve already won. You’re stronger than you think.”
“You read that in a fortune cookie, didn’t you?” I sniffle loudly, and he gifts me one of his rare full smiles, the one that makes the gray in his eyes shine. Even in my current state, I can’t help but find him earth-shatteringly and heartachingly handsome.
“You’ve got this,” he reassures me.
I give him a watery smile. “I’m not known for my perseverance.”
“Perserverence isn’t about being good at something—it’s about refusing to walk away from what matters. It’s not your fault that your family has always failed to see what matters to you.”
My eyes fall to my feet. “I just want them to be proud of me.”
“That’s not something you can control, Lo. What youcancontrol is making powerful decisions for your future, without fear of what anyone else will think. You have what it takes topush through when it’s hard. That’s all I’ve seen you do the past three days.”
Tears roll down my cheeks at the feeling of being understood and seen. Jack’s hands slide up my sides, curling around my back. He brings my head to his shoulder in a warm, comforting embrace. But I must be dreaming, must be imagining this almost too-good-to-be-true man, like some spiritual guide who’ll disappear in a cloud of dust as soon as I complete my mission.
“That’s very good advice,” I croak, nuzzling against his chest as my eyes fall closed. “And this feels very nice.”
“Yeah,” he says as his chest rises with a long, slow inhale. “It does.”
This man.
I want to pry and beg for him to open up to me, but I can sense he’s still skittish. He’s quick to put up those walls, and if I push, they’ll be reinforced before I know it.
“Ready to ration the scraps you left yourself with?”
I gasp, stepping back to poke him in the ribs. “Too soon!”
He shocks me again by laughing, and then he takes a quick step forward, lifting me off my feet in another tight hug. I’m in a state of mental paralysis.
The laugh. The hug. The smiles.
So much touching.
Each time he makes physical contact, the significance of it snags me like a hook in the chest, embroidering letters of his name on my heart each time. He lowers me back to the ground, that beautiful, dizzying smile still in place as he kneels and gets back to combining our food supplies. “You can handle more than you think, Willow Sinclair,” he adds over his shoulder.
It’s him I can’t handle right now, especially not if he keeps smiling like that. Good luck to him if he thought there’d be anyspace between our sleeping bags tonight, because he just activated otter mode.
“This feels unfair now. I think it’s time you give me your last name.” I say, wiping my tears and snot on my bandana before shoving it into Marigold. He straightens, his dark hair catching the sun with threads of violet as he prowls closer.
“You tryna finagle a proposal out of me, Princess?”
“Wh—no!” I splutter. “You know what I mean.Tellme your last name. Obviously.”
“I think I like keeping you guessing.”
I bite my lip at his flirty tone. Now, this, I can work with.
“It’s something weird, isn’t it?” I say, faking a regretful smile. “You know you can change it. It’s only a few hundred dollars.”
Jack snorts. “Nice try,” he muses before walking back to our food stash.
After that, we plan out what we’ll eat for the next forty-eight hours, just in case things go awry again. Jack pulls out a small gas stove and puts water to boil. By the time he’s heated two meals of lasagna, the sun is dipping below the horizon in another boastful display of colors.
We eat in silence as all of the encouraging things he said earlier linger in my mind. Do I dare let his words hang around long enough to overgrow the weeds I’ve heard too many times from my family:You always bail when it gets hard.
Well, I’m not quitting this time.
