Turn 8 of 15

You pull Jack aside to check if he’s okay after the confrontation. You have a new feeling, like you want Jack to be in love with you desperately and you secretly hate how he is not over Lauren.

You wait until Lauren turns back to her bridesmaids, until the champagne flute rises again and the guarded smile reassembles itself, and then you tug Jack's hand and pull him toward a quieter corner near the bar. The fairy lights cast soft patterns across his face as you lean against the rough barn wall, and you don't let go of his fingers. You tell yourself it's because he might need the anchor. That's not entirely why.

"Hey," you say, searching his face. "How are you doing? That was intense."

Jack blinks at you, and for a second the performance drops. His shoulders sag and he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, and he looks like the guy who used to eat cold pizza on your couch at two in the morning, the guy you understood, the guy who made sense.

"Honestly? That was weird. She was supposed to be—I thought she'd be colder. Or angry. Or something. She was almost... nice?"

His brow furrows, and you watch him process it, and something dark turns in your chest. He's thinking about her. Not about you, not about the fact that you're standing right here holding his hand in a dress he picked out for the body he wished into existence. He's thinking about Lauren, about the warmth in her voice, about what it meant that she said Chase had been hoping he'd come. You can see it happening behind his eyes, the old wound cracking open, and it makes you want to shake him.

The intensity of the feeling startles you. This isn't concern for a friend. This is something sharper, something territorial, something that wants to grab his face and make him look at you instead. You want him to be in love with you. Not Mika, not the performance, you—or whoever you are now, whoever the necklace is turning you into. You want him to look at you the way he used to look at her, and the fact that he doesn't, the fact that he's still carrying her around inside him like a splinter, makes your throat tight with a resentment you can barely recognize.

"She seemed genuinely surprised you're doing well," you say carefully, and your voice comes out steadier than you feel. "Like she expected you to still be broken."

"Maybe I am still broken," Jack says, and he laughs, but it's hollow. His eyes drift back toward the far wall where Lauren is laughing at something a bridesmaid said, and you follow his gaze and watch her toss her blonde hair back, and the jealousy in your gut is a living thing now, hot and coiled and irrational. You hate that she's still in his head. You hate that you're wearing a body he designed and it's still not enough to replace her.

You squeeze his hand harder than you mean to.

"You're not broken," you say, and your voice drops low, and there's something in it that surprises you both. "You're here. With me."

Jack looks at you, and for a moment you see it, a flicker of something that isn't about Lauren. His eyes move across your face, your lips, the line of your jaw, and his throat bobs. Then the moment passes, and he smiles, and it's grateful and warm but it's not what you want. It's not hunger. It's not need.

"Thanks," he says. "For doing this. I know it's insane."

A gong sounds from somewhere near the entrance, and a voice announces that guests should take their seats for the ceremony. The barn fills with the rustle of movement, chairs scraping, fabric whispering. Jack straightens up and offers you his arm, and you take it, and the jealousy sits in your chest like a stone you can't swallow.