"I have two things to say." His gravelly voice unsettled her, scraping over exposed nerves. "Let me say them, and then you can leave if you want." He didn't wait for her acquiescence, just started talking, both of them standing under the strange little black dome. "One. I read your text messages to Danny about Brian Wexler. I thought they were about me."
Her hand flew to her mouth as she struggled to remember what exactly she'd said about Brian. He made her feel like a whore; she couldn't wait to stop pretending. Oh, my God, she'd referenced him making her say his name. The enormity of the misunderstanding hit her, a knockout punch of regret. And something else-hope. She bit the insides of her cheeks and looked up at the stars, which had grown fuzzy. "And the second thing?" she whispered.
He didn't hesitate. "The second thing is, I love you. I don't know how to be without you."
She wailed then, and she could only hope he recognized it as a wail of joy. She started to crumple, but he caught her and hugged her so tight she thought her ribs might snap.
"I love you, too," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry," he said, pulling back enough to frame her face with his hands.
They were close enough that she could see he hadn't shaved in days. His eyes were filmed with liquid, but he was smiling a small, lopsided smile.
"I didn't think Toronto had a planetarium," she croaked, which was a ridiculous thing to say, but there it was. She remembered the big McLaughlin Planetarium from her childhood. It had closed to make way for condos, and even as a girl, she had lamented its loss.
"Just this little one, right here under your nose all this time." He tapped her nose, as if to illustrate his point. "They use this for educational purposes, which is why it's a weird inflatable thing inside a classroom-it's portable. They only do public shows once a month."
She cleared her throat, trying for levity. "And why do I suspect tonight is not one of the public shows?"
He answered with a question of his own. "Do you have Christmas Eve plans?"
"No. Do you?"
He grinned. "I do now."
She looked up at the projected sky, the impossibly gorgeous sky she always knew was just above the clouds and the city lights. The sky she had not seen like this until she'd visited the island with him. "What about the rules?" she asked.
Nothing about his stance changed. He kept standing there a foot away from her in the dark. She felt his face change more than she saw it, felt his eyes slide down her body, just like they had that first night at the bar. "Fuck the rules."
All right then. She closed her eyes. It was almost too much. To go from dejection and heartbreak to wild, almost-painful joy in the space of a few minutes … well, she needed a moment.
He didn't give her one. "This is the night sky as it would be tonight. After this, there's a show we can play. It's about the formation of stars."
She tried to talk, to express incredulity, but he kept talking over her.
"I want to kiss you. Hell, I want to … do things to you. But there's some stuff I have to tell you first." He gestured to the other side of a small projector set up in the center of the space, which was the source of the stars on the ceiling. She followed him around to a blanket that was set up on the floor. A picnic basket sat next to a bottle of scotch.
"Oh my God," she said.
Tugging her to the floor to sit beside him, he opened the basket and handed her a Chinese takeout container. "First, about the Wexler deal."
Yes! Even amidst her grief this past week, she'd been dying to know for sure that Wexler had sold. Jack handed her a fork. She stabbed a bit of the food-he seemed to want her to eat, though dinner was the last thing on her mind. She brought the fork to her mouth. It looked like shredded chicken breast in some kind of sauce. She ventured a taste. "Oh! This is … awful!" He handed her a thick napkin, almost as if he knew her reflex would be to spit out the food, which she did not waste any time doing. "What is that?"
"Pork with preserved lemons."
She laughed then. A real, unbridled, full belly laugh. It felt so good after her week of tears. Strange, but good. "So?" she asked when she'd composed herself. "Did he sell?"
Jack lay on his back, hands clasped at the back of his head as if he were reclined in a meadow somewhere in the country, taking in the night sky. "He did, but had one condition. Insisted it be written into the documentation."
"What was it?"
"I get Wexler Construction and the island, but two weeks a year the resort is reserved for math camp."
"What?" she shrieked, throwing herself down next to him and swatting his shoulder. "Shut up!"
"I told him fine, but I had no idea who was going to run the thing." He shot her a wry smile. "It sure as hell isn't going to be me."
"Shut up!" She didn't seem to be capable of saying anything else.
"I did promise you a bonus if the deal went through. What do you say? Camp Cassie? It has a certain ring to it, no?"
Her throat felt like it was closing, so she took a moment to arrange herself next to him, lying on her back the same way he was. Looking up, she could easily spot the Big and Little Dipper, Orion, Draco-all the constellations she knew from books. When she'd gotten control of her voice, she said, "What happened with Carl?"
Jack turned over so he was lying on his side. "I showed him the email-the email I suspect you sent-and he admitted everything. I'm not going to press charges in exchange for him going into treatment."
"Did you fire him?"
"Yeah. I might hire him back, though. We'll see."
"So Carl and my mother are both in rehab for Christmas," Cassie said. "Kind of ironic, huh?"
He reared back a little, almost involuntarily, it seemed. "Your mom showed up again?" His tone had turned cold.
"Don't worry, I'm not paying for it this time. I finally see that there's no point in continuing to pay for these gold-plated programs if she's going to keep skipping out." She shrugged. "Who knows, maybe the seventh time's the charm."
"For her sake, I hope so."
God. How did he do that? All he'd done was touch her arm and breathe near her ear, and everything inside her came alive. The urge to burrow into his arms was almost overwhelming. But how often did a girl get a private planetarium show? She snuggled into the crook of his arm and whispered, "So let's see this show of yours."
"Oh," Jack mock-groaned. "I knew it. You're going to want to pay attention, aren't you?"
"I'm not even going to ask how you did this."
He grinned as he got up and went to the projector. "I know people."
"Of course you do." She smiled as he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and surreptitiously studied it as if he were cheating on an exam.
Once the show got going, he moved back to stretch out next to her. After a minute or so, he began inching closer.
"No way!" said Cassie, scooting away from him. "I want to see the show."
Jack made a strangled, vaguely frustrated noise, but planted a quick kiss on her neck and rolled over onto his back so that he wasn't touching her at all.
They spent the next twenty minutes marveling over the universe as it unfolded before them. Well, Cassie did. Jack watched her more than he watched the show. She could feel his attention as surely as if he'd been shining a spotlight on her, but she kept her eyes trained upward, watching gasses condense and explode, throwing out new elements into the heavens, the elements that would, over billions of years, go on to make everything in the universe.
Cassie felt a little like she had a universe inside her heart, like big glowing suns were coming to life in gorgeous violent explosions as everything expanded outward, creating space where there had been none before.
She hadn't realized she'd been crying until the narrator finished. "And so," boomed the disembodied voice, "when people say we are made of stardust, it is literally true."
It was dark then. Just dark. She swiped at her eyes but didn't have a moment to regain her equilibrium before Jack took her in his arms, his mouth crashing down on hers. It was so familiar. It was so new. It was everything at the same time. But what hadn't changed was the undercurrent of heat that was always there between them. Snaking her arms around him, she kissed him in the secret planetarium, where, in contradiction to the laws of the possible, the stars shone just for them.