Love and Relativity by Rachael Wade Page A

bringing my cheek to his lips. “How’s your eye feeling?” I reached out and touched it. He winced. “I’m sorry for the things he said to you. I know you were just watching out for me. He had no right to be here.”
    “Did he leave after I left?”
    “Of course. I wouldn’t let him stay, Jackson.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    We locked eyes.
    “Okay, well, not entirely what I meant,” he clarified.
    “Chris and I are done. There’s nothing going on there. I thought the way I spoke to him that night made that clear.”
    “Look, it’s your business. I just know how those things go, that’s all. When you have that much history with someone and he shows up wanting to talk, it’s usually because he’s looking to repair something.”
    I turned fully around to face him, my hands on his chest. There was an unsettling look in his eyes, anxiety mixed with anger mixed with...vulnerability. Seeing the combination made me even more unsure of what to say about our relationship. Were we still just friends, or had I decided at some point over the weekend that I was okay with just being another one of his hook-ups? I didn’t think he’d ever use me like that, given what we had gone through together. But the feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that the different girl every weekend was just Jackson’s way, and he wasn’t going to change.
    The flipside to that thought was considering what he’d be to me . I didn’t want to be the one to hurt him, and most of all, I just wanted our relationship—whatever it was—to remain intact. I let out a soft laugh. No matter how many times I wanted to strangle the man or how many times we’d quarreled at Pete’s, there was no denying it.
    We were friends.
    “After the cruel things he said to you, I can barely look at him,” I said. “He’s nothing to me, Jack.”
    Shifting his hands from my waist to the counter behind me, he slid them past my hips and leaned in. “So what am I to you, Emma? What are we doing?”
    That distracting pull, that spark that I so often denied existed between us surfaced, and all I could think was, I need more time .
    I slid to the right and gently nudged his arm aside to step away, moving to the other side of the kitchen counter. He turned around to face me, the small kitchen space bridging an awkward gap between us. “I don’t know, Jackson. I meant what I said Saturday night. I care about you.”
    “You care about me.”
    “Yes.”
    “That doesn’t help me understand this,” he waved between the two of us, “or where we go from here.”
    “All I’m saying is that I don’t know if we go anywhere from here. I’m not sure a kiss means anything changes between us.”
    “It changes everything between us. Did the first time, whether you’ll admit it or not.”
    “No, it didn’t. And it doesn’t have to.” I shrugged. “I mean, I still feel the same about us as I did before.”
    He widened his stance and crossed his arms. “Which is how, exactly? You’re telling me you’re still not interested in me.”
    I pressed my lips tight and dropped my gaze to my shoes. If I told him the truth, even though he already knew it, voicing it would launch us into uncharted, scary territory—something I wasn’t sure I wanted to face just yet. If I lied or skimped on details for the sake of avoiding my conflicted feelings, I’d only add to his confusion and my list of reasons to evade him—other things I wasn’t sure I wanted to do.
    “We’re...friends,” I said, my voice cautious. “I never thought of it quite that way until this weekend. I’m not sure I want to risk losing something I just figured out I have.”
    “Friends who are obviously attracted to one another.” He released his arms to his sides and took a careful step forward. “I know I didn’t imagine the way you kissed me in my truck. I might have initiated it, but you wanted it just as bad as I did. Just as bad as you wanted it the first time. You know I’m