That word was going to haunt him.
“You okay?” she asked. Her voice was careful. Neutral. Like she was testing the air between them.
Jack let out a breath through his nose. “Define ‘okay.’”
A pause.
“That bad, huh?”
He turned his head then, looking at her.
She kept her eyes on the road.
Of course she did.
“That didn’t feel like nothing,” he said.
“No,” she admitted. “It didn’t.”
“Then why are we acting like it was?”
Her hands tightened on the wheel.
“Because that’s just the way it has to be.” Her tone suggested that she didn’t like it but she didn’t plan to do anything to change it.
Jack let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “That’s not how that works.”
“It is for me.”
“Why?” he pressed. “Because of this job? This…thing that started out as a two-year opportunity that sounds more like a lifetime obligation?”
She flinched. So he’d hit something.
“Jack—”
“No,” he said, sitting up, turning toward her fully. “You don’t get to almost kiss me and then shut it down like it meant nothing.”
“I didn’t say it meant nothing.”
“Then what did it mean?”
She didn’t answer.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. “You know what? Forget it.”
“I can’t,” she said, then pressed her lips together as if to keep from saying anything more.
That caught him.
“What?”
“I can’t forget it,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
Jack stared at her, something shifting in his chest.
“Then stop pretending you can.”
