“Of course you would,” I grumble. “I forgot about your ongoing need for revenge.”
“Hey.” His expression sobers. “It’s a lot more than that. I love spending time with you. I love everything we do together. I love seeing you in the mornings and before bed. I love hearing about your day. I love going on weird hiking sex dates with you. I want to do more of all of those things. So, yeah. I’m perfectly happy telling everyone exactly that.”
I feel floored by his confession, having no idea that he felt that way, and despite the pounding of my own heart, I feel a smirk painting my lips. “Maybe not the hiking sex date part.”
“Says you,” he scoffs.
I twist my fingers in my lap, feeling a fluttering sensation spreading up through my belly and spilling into my chest. “You…you really want all that?”
“I wantyou, Abby,” he says seriously. “I have since the first time you kissed me. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”
“But I can’t just…I can’t justmoveinwith you,” I argue.
“I mean, you’re already there,” he says. “Can we even call it moving in with me if you’re already living with me?”
“It’s a big difference, and you know it.”
“So we don’t call it that,” he says with a shrug. “We just say that you’re welcome to stay with me as long as you need to, and that as long as you’re there, we continue to have hiking sex dates and BFF nachos and all the other things we’ve been doing.”
“And you would really want to…tell people about it?”
“You’re asking me if I would want to make it official?”
I nod, my mouth feeling dry.
Jack takes my hand across the table, his thumb rubbing over the back of my knuckles as his lips curl in a soft smile. “I told you, Abby. I like you. I don’t give a flying fuck who knows it.”
I like you.
It’s almost too ludicrous to consider—the fact that I’m sitting in the same place I was over a month ago, feeling so differently about the man sitting across from me now than I did then that it might as well be night and day. Then, I could barely stand to be in the same room with him. Now…now I look for him whenever I enter one.
“I don’t know if I’m quite ready to tell Ian,” I admit. “Not just yet.”
“As long as I get to be the one who eventually does,” he says with a wicked smile.
I roll my eyes again. “You’re kind of a shit.”
“This is not news, I’m afraid.”
“And you really want me to come to dinner at your aunt’s?”
“I’d rather you came as my girlfriend,” he tells me, “but secret lover roommate works too.”
I feel a swelling sensation in my chest at the word.Girlfriend.I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever been that to anyone. Have I ever, really? Am I really in this twisted version of reality where the first time someone called me that, it would beJack fucking Baker?
“Secret lover roommate works,” I say quietly, adding even more softly, “for now.”
Jack beams at me. “I can work with that.”
My hand feels positively hot from where he’s still holding it, and I clear my throat as I check the clock on the wall opposite us, noticing that my break is almost up.
“I have to get back to work,” I tell him.
Jack pulls his hand away from mine, and I notice how immediately I miss the warmth of it.
“I’m supposed to meet Ian for lunch, anyway,” he says. “Bit of a bummer I won’t have good news for him.”
“You know there’s a good chance he’s going to yell at you when you do eventually tell him, right?”
