“Wait!” Hallie started running as she yelled, “Jack!”
He stopped and turned, his hair already soaked.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she yelled, finally stopping when she was a foot away from him. “You’re just bailing?”
His eyebrows went down as the heavy rain drenched the two of them. “You didn’t look like you needed my help.”
“You were the one who said you wanted to do this—you called me—yet you’re ditching me. Again. What is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” He squinted at her like she was out of her mind and said, “You failed to mention that your date tonight was with Alex. Why would you let me meet you at the bar just to watch you have a fucking love connection?”
“Are you mad?” He was the one who was out of his mind, she thought. “At me?”
“Yes, I’m mad!” he yelled. “I thought we were going to talk about us, but instead you’re canoodling with that guy right in front of me!”
“What ‘us’？” She poked a finger into his chest and said, “What us is there? I haven’t heard from you in weeks, and now you think you have a right to say the word ‘us’？”
“Hallie—”
“Why didn’t you at least text me?” She hated the tears in her eyes. “After that night, why wouldn’t you at least send me a text to say ‘Hey’ or ‘I hate you’ or ‘Ramen is on sale at the fucking supermarket’？ Anything would’ve felt at least like something between us. How could you just leave me all alone?”
“I was trying to figure out my feelings, Hal.” He pushed back his wet hair before adding, “I wanted to be sure of what I felt before talking to you about how you felt.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Do you want Alex?” he yelled down at her through the rain.
“Jack—”
“Do you?”
“No.” She shook her head, her soaked hair slapping more water in her face. “I never did.”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her closer to the building they’d stopped in front of, so they were under an awning. He looked down at her and said, “Christ, Hal, this isn’t how I wanted to tell you. But the thing is—I think I’m in love with you.”
Jack
He watched as her mouth dropped open in shock, and then it snapped shut. She looked up at him with those big green eyes, but no words came out.
She just stared at him.
“Maybe say something, Hal,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll say something.” She was shivering a little, but her face was full of hot anger. “That is a terrible thing to say, you dick.”
Her words hit him like a punch in the stomach, and he tried reading her expression as he said, “I tell you I love you and you call me a dick?”
“You didn’t tell me you love me, you said you ‘think’ you’re in love with me.” She was gritting her teeth, looking mad as hell as she shivered in the damp night air. “Who do you think you are—Darcy in the rain, telling Elizabeth that he loves her in spite of her inferior birth?”
He had no clue what to say to that.
“It took you two weeks of radio silence to come up with the genius epiphany that you may possibly be in love with me but you really aren’t a hundred percent sure?”
Fuck. Wrong word choice.
She said, “I knew I was in love with you the minute you fell out of the stupid closet at the rehearsal dinner. It didn’t take me a fucking fortnight to get to ‘possibly.’？”
Hope shot through him, even as he opened his mouth to defend himself. If she’d been in love with him at the rehearsal dinner, she had to still have feelings for him, right? And why the hell hadn’t she said anything that night? He said, “If I’m Darcy in the rain, then you’re Mr. Smith, too stubborn to hear what I’m trying to tell you as you ramble on about the way I worded my feelings.”
She squinted at him. “Who in the hell is Mr. Smith?”
“Boiled fucking potatoes are an exemplary vegetable—that is Mr. Smith!”
“Wait.” Her mouth formed a big, gaping O. “Are you calling me Mr. Collins?”
He nodded and said, “I’m trying to tell you something, but you’re too caught up in your own thoughts and opinions about everything to hear my words, Mr. Collins.”
Jack couldn’t believe he was communicating in Hallie’s bizarro language, but they were talking, and she was finally listening, so he was going to roll with it.