“I know. It’s a character flaw.”
“It really is.”
When they joined the line, Hallie felt Jack’s fingers slide in between hers. She looked up at his face, but he was looking straight ahead, as if holding her hand was something he was used to doing.
Ohhh. He’s in character.
Hallie knew she should be good, but something inside her wanted to mess with him. Or play with this situation. Whatever the reason, she started moving her thumb, letting it stroke over the heat of his big hand.
“Hal,” he murmured, still not looking at her.
“Hmmm?” she replied.
“I’m great with you doing that,” he said, squeezing her hand a little tighter. “But just know that if you’re still doing it when we get past the guy scanning boarding passes, I’m kissing you.”
“What?” she squealed, a little too loudly.
He looked at her then, his lips sliding into a dangerous smile. “I like this game. I’m a big fan. What could make this day more fun than a one-up challenge?”
She grinned. “What’s a one-up challenge?”
“A truth-or-dare of sorts. One-upping each other. I hold your hand, so you stroke that thumb of yours in a way that makes me fucking crazy. I kiss you, and you . . . one-up me, somehow.”
“Somehow.” Hallie couldn’t look at him, turning her warm face so she was looking at the line in front of her. “Interesting.”
“Isn’t it, though.”
They both stood in silence, her thumb still moving over his skin, as they got closer to the front of the line. She kept telling herself to stop, that it wasn’t a good idea, but she was giddy with an electric anticipation as they stood in line to embark upon their vacation.
She swirled her thumb across his skin, making a figure eight, just as the man in front of them got his boarding pass scanned. Her heart was pounding as Jack let go of her hand so they could each hold out their passes to be scanned, and she realized he’d been kidding, because they’d reached the front and he hadn’t kissed her yet.
“Thank you,” she said to the TSA official, shoving her phone into her coat pocket.
“Thanks,” Jack muttered.
Hallie had taken one step toward the area where they’d be removing their shoes when Jack grabbed her hand and turned her around. She looked up at his face, at those intense blue eyes, and before she could formulate a thought, his hands were on her face, his lips on hers.
She thought she heard him growl as he angled his head just a little and bit down on her bottom lip, and then she might’ve made a sound as he opened her mouth with his own and did something wicked with his tongue. Her hands came up to squeeze his upper arms—or grasp for leverage, she wasn’t sure—as his tongue dipped into her mouth and he kissed her like he was sampling dessert, dessert he’d been denied his entire life and now he couldn’t get enough of it.
Was starved for it.
He pulled back, looked down at her in a way that made her knees weak, and said, “We better move before we clog up the line.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Um, yes.”
Once they passed security, Jack grabbed her hand and pulled her off to the side of the foot traffic. He looked down at her with an unreadable expression, his eyes serious, and he said, “Are we okay?”
She nodded and said, “We’re amazing.”
His eyes softened then. “It was a fucking great kiss, wasn’t it?”
“Holy shit, Jack,” she said, shaking her head with a grin. “I almost passed out.”
He threw his head back and laughed, a sound that made her want to curl up and take a nap in it, and he said, “I think I’m going to like being your fake boyfriend.”
Chapter
SEVENTEEN
Jack
“So last I heard, you were messing with him on the app. Now you’re actually dating?” Chuck, Hallie’s best friend and also maybe her relative(?), whisper-shouted to her across the aisle.
As soon as Hallie and Jack got upgraded to first class, Chuck and his girlfriend, Jamie, had done the same. Which was good, because he wanted to get to know her friends, even if sitting with them made him a tiny bit nervous.
Feeling unsettled was quickly becoming his default state.
Because he had a lot—huge fucking heaps—of guilt about how things went down with Alex. He’d fully intended to mess with the guy, but he hadn’t meant to get Hallie dumped, and he’d never imagined it would make her cry like that.
God, he hated himself for making her cry like that.
Every hour or so, he considered confessing, but selfishly, he didn’t want to risk her rage when he was dying to tell her how he really felt about her.
“Yep.” Jack listened as Hal told Chuck all about their bet and Taco Hut meetups, and he found himself riveted when she finished it with, “Then I realized that I was having a better time at our Taco Hut dates than I was having with any of the people I was seeing.”
That was exactly how Jack felt.
“Wow,” Chuck said. “And this is drunken hotel sex guy, right?”
“Oh, my God,” Hallie whisper-shrieked. “Yes, but don’t say it like I have more than one occasion of drunken hotel sex to my name.”
Jack couldn’t stop himself from laughing and adding, “Someday I’ll tell you about her desperate search for her missing bra.”
“Jack.” Hallie rolled her eyes at him, and then shrugged. “Okay. Now I have to hear it. Tell me how ridiculous I looked from your point of view, because all I know is that I was trying to get the hell out of your room without waking you up.”
“Holy shit, yes,” Jamie said, tiny-clapping. “I need to hear this.”
“You sure?” he asked Hallie.
“Go ahead,” she said, laughing. “They already know my worst.”
“Okay. Well.” Jack looked at the freckles on the tip of Hallie’s nose and wondered how he’d ever thought of her as just cute. “I don’t know if she knew it or not, but our friend Hal here had, at some time during the night, fallen asleep on my feet. Like, my huge feet were her fucking pillow.”
“No shit?” Chuck said.
“Oh, my God,” Hallie groaned, already regretting that she’d asked to hear this.
“So I felt it the second she woke up, because blood flow returned to my extremities.”
Jamie started cackling.
“I was about to lift my head and say something charming when she literally—literally—rolled off the end of the bed.”
Hallie started laughing. “Oh, my God, you watched me roll?”
“I watched you roll.”
“Was it hot or horrifying?” Chuck asked.
“Hilarious,” Jack said, and Hallie gave him a look. Her eyes stayed on his face as she smiled, and he added, “In a hot way.”
“Oh, bullshit,” she said.
“So then . . . ?” Chuck prompted.
Jack was having a hard time not laughing. “So then she crawled over to her clothes and—”
“Wait.” Hallie was grinning when she said, “I looked at you when I was putting on my pants, and you were sound asleep.”
That made him laugh. “I closed my eyes pretty fast when your head swiveled in my direction.”