Page 173 of Double or Nothing

Jack pulls out a fresh bottle of De Chante.

“No?”

“Jack!”

“Relax, BT. I’m agreeing with you. No reason to complicate things.”

The coldness of the atmosphere is inside me now. It feels like ice in my veins.

Jack doesn’t look at either of us as he pulls off the champagne foil.

“Let’s get real. We knew this wasn’t for ever,” he says with another laugh.

The words slice through me.

Did we?

Perhaps we did.

Perhaps that was the agreement, even though none of us ever spoke it. Fun. Games. No promises. No difficult questions about what happens when the outside world forces its way through Jack’s door along with us.

Only now it’s going to be back to normal once Christopher Otley’s plane arrives. That’s what it feels like is happening here. Both Jack and Bryce closing down like clam shells.

Except I don’t know what normal is anymore. I don’t want to.

Not without them.

Jack pops the De Chante cork.

He refills our glasses on the kitchen island beside the Toastique Pro.

Toasties and champagne.

Domesticity and escape.

The whole impossible shape of us sitting side by side.

“Better make the most of our time, then,” he says and raises his glass.

I wince. It stings worse than my battered pussy ever could.

Jack’s smile is effortless again, but his eyes aren’t. Not quite. They’re too bright. Too jovial… too forced to be carefree.

There’s hurt there. Beneath the joker. Beneath the playboy. And I get it. For once, I get a read on him.

Jack Reid is an expert reader of everyone else, but a complete bloody amateur when it comes to his own feelings.

I want to reach for him.

For one second, my hand almost moves.

It doesn’t.

I’m such a fucking coward.

Jack raises his glass.

“To a lot of good things in nine days. Let’s make the most of them.”