Аманда Хокинг - Flutter

“I’ve just been thinking about it over and over in my head.” He rubbed his temples and looked at the ground. His eyes were moist, but he wasn’t crying. “I kept thinking, if you kissed him, could I forgive you?

And if you slept with him, could I forgive you?”

“I never slept with him!” I insisted and sat up on my knees.

“No, I’m just telling you what I was thinking.” He shook his head. “And you know what I realized?

I’d forgive you of anything!” What he was saying sounded good, but he didn’t feel good. He was completely agonized, and I had done this to him. “I’m not giving you permission, but you could do anything, and I would just forgive you. I couldn’t not.” Jack stared off at nothing, thinking. “I don’t know if you know what that’s like. Even if what you do kills me, I would…” With bated breath, I watched him.

“You could kill me, Alice,” Jack looked at me seriously. “That’s how much you mean to me.

As foolish and masochistic as that makes me, you are so much to me that even if it destroys me to be with you, I’ll be with you! And I don’t care why you kissed him or what you did. I don’t even really wanna know. But I am begging you to please never do anything like this again. Because I love you so much, and I am trusting you with far too much, but I don’t know how to be any different! You just… you can’t do this to me anymore, okay? Please?”

“I promise! I’ll never do anything!” I got up off the bed and ran over to him, unable to contain myself anymore. Putting my hands on his cheeks, I looked into his wounded blue eyes. “I am so sorry. I can never tell you how much it hurts me to know that I did this to you. I never wanted this, and I’ll never, ever do it again. I promise you. I love so much, Jack.”

“You better,” he whispered.

Finally, after three long days, he kissed me. I had thought that I had truly lost him, and there was this panicked insistence to the kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him to me. His mouth was warm and wonderful, and I knew nothing in the world tasted better than he did. My thirst peaked at that, and my heart pounded hungrily in my chest, but I denied it. I just wanted to be with him, physical and present, in the moment. I kissed him so long, my lungs screamed for oxygen, but I ignored them and kissed him some more.

“Run away with me,” Jack murmured breathlessly. He rested his forehead against mine and knotted his fingers in the thickness of my hair.

“What?” I asked, thinking I’d misheard him.

“Run away with me,” he repeated and moved back a little so he could look me in the eyes. “I don’t wanna stay here anymore. Everyone lied to me. Peter is still going after you, and Mae tried to kill me. There’s no reason for me to stay anymore. Let’s run away together.”

“What about Milo?” My mind scrambled. There was something exciting about the idea of just running off with him, but I couldn’t just pick up and leave like that. Milo hadn’t done anything wrong, and he still needed me. Kind of. Maybe. Not really. But I wasn’t ready to leave him, and on top of that, Jane was here, and she definitely still needed help. “And Jane?”

“Jane?” His brow furrowed. “What about Jane?”

“She’s here, in Peter’s room.” I had forgotten that Jack hadn’t been around to find out what was going on. “Milo saw her on Halloween, and she was doing really terrible. So we’re helping her out, I guess.”

“Peter’s room?” Jack looked appalled.

“Yeah, he’s sleeping in the den. Everyone is playing musical beds,” I waved it away.

“This is house is too small for this many people,” Jack pointed out. “There are four bedrooms, and currently eight people. And that’s just another reason why we should move out.”

“Maybe…” I mulled the idea over.

Running away might be too extravagant for me. I didn’t have a job, and Jack worked with Ezra and

2Peter. I didn’t want to leave Milo, but I didn’t think that Jack couldn’t support the four of us, since I’d probably have to include Bobby in the equation. Maybe he could, but if we were running away from Peter and Ezra, I wasn’t sure if that meant he’d quit his job too. And since Mae and Ezra were probably about to get divorced, I didn’t feel right about leaving them either. Not mention I was still having issues with bloodlust, ones that could prove potentially fatal to everyone.

“What are you thinking?” Jack pushed a strand of hair off my forehead. He managed to keep the fear out of his voice, but he couldn’t hide it from me.

“I don’t care if we leave Peter, but I don’t think I’m ready to leave everyone else,” I admitted.

“I can’t live with Peter anymore, and I don’t think you should either,” Jack said honestly.

“And I don’t really want to be around Mae.” I chewed my lip and looked up at him. He’d just come back, and I really didn’t want to lose him again, but I wasn’t ready to sacrifice everything else just to be with him.

“Okay. How about this? I keep working with Ezra, and we start looking for a place of our own in the Twin Cities area, with room enough for Milo and Bobby to stay with us as often as they want. That way, we’ll still be close to everybody, and Milo can back and forth between the two houses if he wants, but me and you will finally have some privacy.”

“Okay,” I nodded, even though the idea of it made me nervous. After seeing what Milo did to Bobby and Jonathan did to Jane, I wasn’t so keen on the idea of privacy with Jack. Yes, I really, really, really wanted to do things with him, but I loved him too much to kill him.

“I have barely slept in three days,” Jack yawned. “And it’s not even noon yet. What do you say we get some sleep?”

“Sounds good,” I smiled and gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

He pulled off his tee shirt and shorts, opting to sleep in his boxers, which was fine by me.

Few people in the world looked as amazing in just their underwear as Jack did. I crawled into bed, and he climbed into after me. He lay on his back so I could curl up in his arms, resting my head on his chest, which was just the way I liked it.

“I missed you so much,” he said, running his fingers through my hair.

“Me too.” I squeezed him tightly, then thought of something. “Where did you sleep for the past three days?”

“Hotel,” Jack chuckled a little. “I just got a room at the Millennium Hotel downtown, and I didn’t leave until like an hour ago. I couldn’t take being away from you anymore, so I came home.”

“You should’ve came home the first day,” I snuggled up closer to him.

“I know, but I had some thinking to do,” Jack sighed. “And it worked out okay. I mean, I’m here with you now, aren’t I?”

“That you are.” I kissed his chest, then lay my head back down.

Jack must not have been kidding about not getting any sleep, because within seconds, he was sound asleep. I stayed awake longer than him, thinking about all the things he said, and trying to come up with a solution. I had just promised him that I would never hurt him again, but living with Peter might be too great a temptation for me. I couldn’t explain the temptation, but that made it all the more dangerous. If Jack thought it was best to leave, it might actually be. And even if it wasn’t, it was what he wanted, and after everything I’ve put him through, didn’t I owe him that much?

For some reason, when we got up, nobody seemed that surprised to see Jack. Unlike me, they had all known he was coming back. Jane greeted Jack with a surprising amount of indifference, but that was much the same way he talked to Mae. She tried to rush over to him to apologize, and he did all but push her back.