Page 69 of How To Tackle A Crush
Alfie turns slowly to look at Jack.
“They had feathers?”
Jack lifts his hands. “I did not know that.”
Alfie turns back to me with new respect.
“I think I like velociraptors now,” he decides.
“Excellent choice,” I say.
I stand again and my eyes land on Jack. He isn’t standing like the man I saw at the training ground. He isn’t the composed football manager. He isn’t the man everyone watches when he speaks.
He’s just… a dad.
Barefoot. Sleeves pushed up. A faint crease on his T-shirt where Alfie had been clinging to him. Completely at ease in a way that feels far more intimate than anything I saw on the pitch.
And something about seeing him like this does something to me I am absolutely not prepared for.
This is the version of him that makes something warm and slightly terrifying settle in my chest.
Jack looks up and catches me watching him.
Just for a second.
And whatever he sees on my face makes his expression soften.
I have the sudden, deeply inconvenient thought that seeing him like this might be more dangerous than any flirting.
A little while later we are sitting around the dining table, room service spread out in that slightly over-ambitious way hotel food always is. Too many plates. Too many little metal lids. Miriam has already rearranged everything into something that looks far more like a proper meal.
Alfie is sitting next to me, staring at a piece of broccoli like it has personally offended him.
“You do realise,” Miriam says calmly, “that vegetable needs to be eaten?”
“I am thinking about it,” Alfie says.
“You’ve been thinking about it for five minutes.”
“It is a big decision.”
Jack presses his lips together, very obviously trying not to laugh.
Alfie turns back to me, completely serious again. “On Sunday we are going to see real dinosaur bones.”
“That sounds like an excellent plan,” I say.
“The Natural History Museum,” he explains. “Dad says they have a T-Rex.”
“They do,” I say. “And a blue whale skeleton. And lots of fossils.”
His eyes widen. “You’ve been?”
“A long time ago,” I admit. “But I remember the dinosaurs being the best part.”
“I am getting a book,” he tells me. “About all of them.”
“That sounds like a very good investment.”
