“Did you hear anything from your cousins?”
When I gave him a confused look, he continued.
“About your surgery. Did they call you to check on you?”
“No. I’m not even sure if I want to hear from them. I’m surprised that Bryan never showed up again though. Did he call you? I feel like he gave up too easily.”
“No.”
Because I wanted tonight to be just about us, I changed the subject and didn’t think too much about his angry expression.
Pointing with my finger at the booth in the back, I waited for him to follow my direction.
“Yes…that’s a table, I believe.”
“Ha ha.” Giving him a pointedly blank look, I ignored his dry comment. “Can we sit there?”
“You don’t like it here?”
“No. No, I do, but a booth…I don’t know, it feels more intimate.”
Jack caught the attention of the girl as she was bringing a soda to the cute little kid next to us and then helped me out of my seat and carried my coat. The touch of his hand on the small of my back practically seared me through my dress. I got in first and scooted.
Instead of sitting next to me as I had assumed he would and wanted him to do, he went to sit across from me again.
“What are you doing?” I asked, perplexed.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Jack, you’re gonna sit here.” I patted the seat next to me. “That’s why I wanted a booth.”
“To sit next to me,” he echoed.
I nodded slowly.
“We could’ve moved our chairs closer to each other.”
“It’s not the same thing. Come on. Move.”
“No touching, Rose. I’m serious. Do not drive me crazy in public.”
Hearing that I had any kind of power over him was exhilarating. Happy and excited, I laughed and raised my hands. “No touching—got it. Come on, I won’t bite. I promise.”
And what do you know…as soon as he settled next to me, he reached for my hand and tightly clasped it in his, playing with my ring the entire time. He was the one who couldn’t stop touching me, and I loved every second of it. We talked for hours in that little Italian restaurant, accompanied by some romantic Italian tunes. If Jack wasn’t touching my face, he was holding my hand. If he wasn’t holding my hand, he was offering me bites of pizza as I chattered away at him. When he wasn’t making me laugh with his dry comments, he was resting our linked hands on his leg. When I wasn’t smiling or laughing, I was melting.
He also kissed me. I didn’t know why I was surprised, but he kissed me so many times. Every time he leaned forward and I felt his lips moving against mine, asking for entrance, my heart lost its steady rhythm and I felt excitement bubbling up inside me, the kind of excitement you don’t know how to hold in, an excess of happiness. I loved it. I completely fell for him on our first date.
It was the most perfect first date I’d ever had in my life.
My husband was perfect. With all his arrogance and prickliness, Jack Hawthorne was perfect for me.
He wasn’t what I’d had in mind or even what I’d wanted for myself, but he was perfect and already mine, truly mine. There was no doubt of that in my mind.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rose
It was after the official first date, not days after, only hours when I woke up with a weird feeling.
It was so hard to sleep in the same bed with Jack after I’d started feeling better from the surgery. As much as I talked about wanting to get him into bed naked, I never actually did anything about it, at least not when we were in bed like this.
That being said, I wasn’t actually surprised to find Jack spooning me—that happened a lot. I woke up in a lot of different positions in the morning, usually with my face tucked under his chin, my hand across his chest. Sometimes my face was on his chest with his arms wrapped around me, and there had been a few instances where we had woken up fused to each other just like we were right then.
Little spoon, meet big spoon.
In the hospital, that had been the only position we had slept in, but that was only because the bed wasn’t big enough for any other positioning. At the hospital, sex had been the last thing on my mind, but out of it…the last two months, things had been different. In those instances where we had woken up with his front pressed to my back, he usually got out of bed as quickly as possible and I said a silent goodbye to his lovely erection that had been pressing into me from behind.
Those mornings were my favorite, because it was something else to wake up wrapped in his arms. I felt protected, cared for, and maybe for the first time in a very long time, like I belonged somewhere: in his arms. Those times, I wasn’t brave enough to tease him, and I just closed my eyes and took my fill instead.
When we were both vertical and wearing actual clothes, that was when I flourished in making him squirm. So much for my bravery.
“Jack?” I mumbled, peering over my shoulder. His lips were right there, only inches away, and I shivered when those same full lips pressed a kiss on my bare shoulder. He was already awake, apparently. I tried to turn onto my back so I could look at him, but with his body covering mine, it wasn’t possible. I only managed to turn halfway, craning my neck back the rest of the way. “Is everything okay?” I croaked out, my voice heavy with sleep. Apart from the city lights casting a shadow on his face, there were no lights on, just us.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispered.
Jack’s hand found mine and I held it up, palm against palm, his skin warm against my fingertips.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Watching our hands dance as he gently tapped his fingers against mine in the low light, I linked my fingers with his, tightly, and listened to him release a long breath.
“You want me to believe you just woke up to hold hands with me?”
“I talked to your doctor today.”
I turned my body a little more toward him and cautiously watched his face.
“When?”
“After dinner. I called his private phone.”
“And?” I prompted anxiously when he didn’t go on. I was starting to hate the word doctor.
“He sent the email today with the results, and I thought it was a bill so I opened it. The MRI was clean. The surgery worked. There is no tear in your membrane anymore.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head back onto the pillow, releasing the biggest sigh in the world. I was feeling a little dizzy with relief. A weight had been lifted off my chest with his words, the equivalent of a baby elephant. I felt worlds lighter.
“But you still need to be careful—you know that, right?” Jack reminded me.
That I did. The doctor had warned me that usually when a CSF leak happens out of nowhere, there is a high chance that the same issue can pop up in a different part of the membrane. If the pressure is constantly high, it really is inevitable.
I opened my eyes and looked at Jack with a big smile. “I know, I know, but I’m still happy to have good news.” However, Jack didn’t look all that happy. My brows lowered. “Is everything else okay? You don’t look very excited.” I touched the space between his brows with my fingertip after I pulled my hand out of his grip. “Why this frown?”