The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

Alvarez’s mouth hung open. Then he shook his head. “That’s what drinking is for.” He flexed his freed hands. “Or sex. You just need to get laid more.”

Jack laughed, then closed the eye under his torn brow, prodding at it carefully. Now it hurt. “Tried that.” That was his go-to before he found Barney and the Church of the Cocked Fist. It’d only made life more complicated. “This is easier.”

Alvarez laughed. “You’re doin’ it wrong.”

He was sorry Alvarez wouldn’t be back, hoped he had the courage to fix things with his woman or move on if that’s what was best for them both.

He borrowed some of that courage for himself, showered, patched himself up, taped his brow, it would heal, and went home to fix things with Derelie.

Chapter Thirteen

Derelie breathed into her rib balloons and stretched her earlobes to her shoulders. She massaged her wrist creases and balanced—in a wobbling way—in the place between neutral and enlivened. She flowed as if swimming with no effort in water. She’d made the late yoga class, and she didn’t do anything dumb like spending her not-going-to-happen bonus on clothing and shoes she didn’t need.

She pulled herself together to try harder, sweat more, stretch farther, hold her poses steadier despite trembling limbs. It was a distraction from feeling so incredibly redneck for not understanding which way was up with Jackson Haley.

She should’ve seen the politics for what they were. Phil getting back at Jack, Jack doing his best to derail that, Shona using it as an excuse to side with Phil then try to make Phil jealous. Derelie had been the pig-in-the-middle of a game she didn’t have the city slick to understand. But she understood it now. And she’d manage it. Artie Chan was due back in a few days. She’d re-pitch the story to Shona and do the love experiment with Artie. Jack could walk free, Phil would get his story and Shona could say she’d delivered. Derelie would have to make it the best human interest story possible to make up for the star attraction going missing.

And she never needed to cross paths with Jack again. Her first impression of him had been on the button all along. Not the gay part—he hadn’t kissed like he wasn’t into women—the intimidating part. Beneath Jack’s contempt was the ideal place to shelter.

She almost called home for the third time this week, just to hear Mom’s voice, catch up on the gossip, ask about Dad and Ernest, and receive all the news of his porch-sitting, back-of-the-truck-riding, varmint-chasing days, as if he was a person and not a tan and white hound. But Mom would hear it in her voice, her moment of crushing homesickness, and she didn’t have the stones left to act the part of “I heart Chicago,” and that felt like a kind of failure in itself.

She slept badly, woke with sore muscles and made it to the office early and then resisted using that first quiet hour before the newsroom filled up to cruise shopping sites for ego-boosting purchases. It was almost research. She’d heard the other girls talking about CC creams and she didn’t know what they were and whether she was supposed to be using one. Would a CC cream have helped her understand how to deal with Jack? She got as far as learning that CC stood for color correction, discounted its effect on office politics and switched to email.

And her morning imploded.

Jack had written her an email. Not one of his terse instructions. It filled a whole screen and she’d have to scroll. He’d sent it at three in the morning. It had the subject heading An Experiment in Generosity. She took an ocean breath and read on.

My name is Jackson Haley and I’m a professional question asker. It’s the way I understand the world, earn my living and define my life.

I was recently volunteered to take part in a love experiment, a questionnaire proven to promote intimacy between strangers. My partner in questionnaire hell is a colleague who works for a different part of the paper. Her name is Derelie, it rhymes with merrily. We’d never met before we were press-ganged into the experiment.

We’ve agreed to meet and answer thirty-six questions about our families, our hopes, fears, aspirations and thoughts on a range of topics from most desired dinner guest to last earworm, and to record our feelings and impressions about each other. The idea is we’ll go from strangers to, well, not strangers.

My name is Jackson Haley, I’m a professional question asker, and I’ve discovered I hate being asked questions.

Derelie rocked back in her chair. How the irony burned.

Partly it’s the personal nature of the questions themselves, but mostly it’s having to open myself up to the scrutiny of a person I’ve only just met. I would rather repeatedly smack my head against a wall until I passed out.

Unfortunately, I’ve made Derelie wish that’s what I’d done.

She made a choking sound. That was funny.

I was awful. A-triple-plus obnoxious. I dodged, ducked, weaved, disputed, belittled, distracted and minimized, just like a CEO caught with his hand in the till, and all in the face of Derelie’s consistent generosity, her unfailing good humor.

This was Jackson Haley not only writing up the first part of the experiment, he was admitting he was a bastard and apologizing—again, but this time in writing, and it was nothing like the apology he’d made last night, the one that made her want to run and hide.

A person with my advantages, privilege and position should be generous. I told Derelie the qualities I needed more of were patience and kindness, now I’m adding generosity to that. I’d be a better person if I was generous like Derelie. She’s also brave and intrepid and I was slow to recognize those qualities in her because I couldn’t see past my own walled-off reticence.

This was Jackson Haley telling her she was brave. Wow. That he admired her. His words did odd things to the back of her throat, made it tight, made her eyes scratchy.

Derelie and I are both reporters, so that should’ve been a good start to getting to know each other, but ungenerous person that I am, I was more focused on what made us different than what we might share.

I write hard news about the business community and the power brokers who run our city. She writes the kind of stories that everyone would rather read, softer news, stories that entertain and lift people’s moods. She’s a new recruit to the city and I was born here, have its hustle and grit in my veins. It was arrogant of me to think who I am and what I do is more important than who she is and what she does, and worse, to make her think I judged her inadequate.

I’m writing while the city sleeps and I’m slightly drunk on exhaustion, tired enough to see my own behavior as regrettable and make regret seem foolish. I’m sending Derelie these thoughts before I sober up on daylight. There isn’t any reason for her to give me another chance on the remainder of the questions. She owes me nothing.

I owe her my honesty.