Page 58 of Crowe
“Jackson.”
“It fits right. It looks right. You look like someone who belongs in the room, which is what you said you wanted.” I leaned back on the bench. “But try the others if you want.”
He turned back to the mirror and looked at himself for another moment. I watched him do it—watched him see himself in it, the careful way he assessed things. Then something settled in his expression.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. This is it.” He looked at me in the mirror. “You’re surprisingly good at this.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
He laughed, quiet and genuine, and turned back toward the fitting room. Then he stopped with his hand on the curtain and glanced back at me over his shoulder with an expression that was doing something deliberate.
“You could come in,” he said. “Help me with the buttons.”
I looked at him.
He looked back. Entirely composed. Waiting.
I got up off the bench.
The fitting room wasn’t large. It was a proper fitting room—good light, a full mirror on one wall, a hook for discarded clothes, but it was designed for one person and there were two of us, which meant when I stepped inside and pulled the curtain closed behind me, we were close enough that I could see the slight uptick of his pulse at his throat and the careful effort he was making to look as though he hadn’t completely intended this.
He had completely intended this.
I reached for the buttons at his collar and worked them slowly, my fingers brushing his throat. He was very still in the way he held himself when he was paying close attention to something.
“Diane could come back,” I said quietly.
“She’s very professional,” he said. “She’ll knock.”
“Noah.”
“Jackson.”
I got the last button, smoothed the lapel flat with both hands, and looked at him in the mirror over his shoulder. He looked back at me in it. The suit, the light, the two of us in a space built for one.
He turned around.
We were close enough that it wasn’t a question of leaning in so much as simply being where we already were, and when I kissed him, it was slow and deliberate. I brought my hand up to his jaw with a careful grip that said I was holding something worth being careful with.
I wished we could just stay here in our own world, but we couldn’t because the reality was we were less than a week out from a gala where the man who’d tried to buy him would have the first opportunity to make a move since we’d left Houston.
I pulled back just enough.
He looked at me. His composure was slightly less immaculate than it had been thirty seconds ago, which I considered a reasonable outcome.
“We should probably—” he started.
“Yeah,” I said.
He exhaled a small laugh, dropped his hands, and stepped back, straightening the jacket with the focused attention of a man reassembling his dignity. I smoothed my own expression and turned back toward the curtain.
“Jackson,” he said.
I looked back.
“Thank you.”
“You needed something to wear,” I said.
