Just Once (Book 1 in the Just Once Series)

Chapter Six

Jack’s POV:

She was looking through a huge book. It must have had at least six hundred pages in it; it is something that would take me a year to read but what would take Brook a few days at most.

Her head was tilted to the side gently as she read through it, seeming to sink into the pages until they enthralled her in their depths. She smiled softly at something she read and I found myself leaning against the wall, smiling with her.

Her face was shining with a happiness that always seemed to radiate from deep with her, whenever she read a book she enjoyed. I made a vow to get her that book, even if she chose a different one.

We may have agreed to be ‘just friends’ but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still make her as happy as I possibly could. That didn’t mean I couldn’t secretly watch her as she smiled that bright, dazzling smile which seemed to light up her whole face and make her eyes shine.

I knew I was getting in too deep, she had a boyfriend, she seemed happy enough to agree to just being my friend this morning. We couldn’t be anything more... and yet, her eyes had filled with tears when Katie had touched me, when she had spoken to me.

Brook had hid the tears well, but I had known her most of her life, she couldn’t hide things like that from me.

It was so damn confusing. I wasn’t sure if she felt the same way about me that I felt for her or if she really did just want to be friends.

Did she kiss me back because she needed to, because she felt that pull inside of her that I did, or because of a different reason all together?

“She’s fucking gorgeous, isn’t she?” a guy muttered now, as he stopped next to me, his eyes travelling over Brook.

 He was obviously just passing through town, you could tell, not only because of the accent, but also because in a town this size, everyone knew everyone.

I stood up tall, jealousy rushing through me before I could stop it and I looked at the guy, who was around the same height as me, which was 5’9.

“Yeah, she is,” I all but snarled and before I could stop myself, I was standing behind Brook. She didn’t even notice, she was so deep into reading, I looked down at her, she was only 5’2.

“Sorry, man,” the guy muttered, obviously getting it through his thick fucking skull that Brook wasn’t his... she wasn’t mine either, damn it.

I couldn’t seem to stop myself though.

Now I stood this close to her, I wanted to get closer. I wanted to touch her, feel her body under my fingers, hear her breath change as she tried to control the desire I was almost certain she felt.

My fingers tingled with the urge to touch her and before I could comprehend what I was doing, my hands caged her waist and her breath sucked in sharply in a soft gasp.

She looks over her shoulder at me, her eyes shining with an innocence I had long ago forgotten. I wasn’t a virgin, and in some ways, I was ashamed to admit I hadn’t waited for the right person, but I knew Brooklyn was, she hadn’t been intimate with a man like that and in a secret, dark part of my heart, I hoped she never was, because there, in that hidden section of my being, she was mine and only mine.

 Her smile falters a little at first, as her eyes search mine and she swallows hard, as if she’s trying to silently understand why I’m touching her like this, why I’m standing so close behind her, my chest touching her back.

But then she smiles brightly at me, all her guards dropping and her eyes, those beautiful damn eyes, shining so lovingly, I want them to only shine at me like that.