Page 36 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

“So we’re both fucking dumb about this. Just perfect. Fine, let’s make this shit simple. I fucking like you, okay? Fuck, no, that makes me sound like I’m in eighth grade.” I rubbed my hands over my face, frustration bleeding into me. This was supposed to be easy, especially with someone I knew as well as I knew Shear. Maybe that was what made it hard, though, the fact that we were close enough to make this matter. “I know that the way I feel about Yun isn’t the same way I feel about the rest of my squad. I don’t fucking see Carter and want to touch him.”

“Thank god,” came a muttered response through the wall, telling me we likely had a pretty big audience. Yun probably couldn’t hear, given she was a guide, and Kenyon either, but Carter would catch every last word.

Fuck it. I didn’t care. It wasn’t like the others didn’t already know. In fact, I had a feeling they might have had a better handle on it than we did, the assholes.

“Point being,” I said to shut Carter up and stay on track before I freaked myself out enough that I didn’t finish, “you’re different. It took realizing it with Yun to put a name to it, to figure it out. I’m not that good with this shit—you know that better than most.”

“Your head is a mess,” Shear said with a nod.

“Thanks, asshole. So now I’ve done this whole bullshit talk and you’re just going to insult me? Not a fucking thing to say back to me?”

He sighed, suddenly appearing far more fragile than he had before. It was sometimes hard to remember he was an actual person, that he had worries, too. “What do you expect me to say? It’s been years, and you never came to this understanding in that time. You’re not a stranger to sex, and I’m quite certain that you know better than most what an orgasm can to do confuse the brain. I’m not delicate—you don’t have to act as though there is anything other than basic stress relief between us.” He spoke with slow words, though they picked up speed as he went.

And I suddenly got it. I didn’t need to be inside his head to see exactly what he was going through, what he was thinking about. He thought I was trying to spare his feelings, to make this into something it wasn’t. He figured that because Yun was here, I thought he needed some sort of grand declaration to make him feel better about it all.

It went to prove his point about not understanding shit when it came to the reason behind other’s actions or feelings.

“You really think we’ve got nothing between us but some orgasms?”

“Don’t we?” He tossed the response back like a dare.

And fuck him, because I never took a dare lightly. I crossed the room in a few quick steps, ignoring the way his eyes went wide, the way his muscles tensed. He wouldn’t react by fighting—we all trusted each other way too much for that.

Or maybe he would have if he knew what I was about to do? There was no reason to make guesses like that, especially because no matter how well I knew Shear, I didn’t have a fucking clue what he’d do after this.

He might give in, might shove me, might just scramble my brain for the effort. Whatever it was, I’d leave it up to him.

I wrapped my fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him in, pressing my lips to his.

We’d done a few things with our mouths when it came to one another, but never this, never a kiss. That had been too personal, too intimate for a relationship we’d never defined before.

And when I slid my tongue past his stunned lips, into the heat of his mouth, I had to think that was a hell of a way to define it.

Shear froze at first, body stiff in all the worst ways. I even had a moment to regret this whole fucking idea.

Just because I realized I cared about him didn’t mean he felt the same. What if I’d fucked it all up? What if we could never go back to what we were before, either, and I’d just crossed a line that ruined—

He moved. It wasn’t much, just a little, but his tongue slid against mine like instinct, like a taste he couldn’t not take. It removed all those doubts, stopped my spiral before it got out of hand, brought me back to the moment.

I broke the kiss, then stared at him, realizing that he was nearly as tall as I was. I was used to staring down at my partners, but Shear was almost nose to nose with me. It created a different dynamic, and still I searched his expression for some understanding of if he understood my point, of if he agreed, if he felt the same.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so unsettled waiting on another person before.

He snorted, the sound amused and surprisingly relaxed. “I get it,” he said softly, then moved away and toward the door.

“You get it? Wait, what does that mean?” I asked him, feeling like that wasn’t nearly enough considering how I’d poured out my fucking heart.

He didn’t respond, walking out of the room, leaving me there, confused but oddly…happy? It felt like I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t lost, at least.

“You should have fucked,” Carter called from the other side of the wall. “Would have been a nice way to pass the time.”

“Fuck you,” I muttered in response, though I felt so light that I couldn’t put any real anger into the words.

“No, thanks, you’re not my type.”

I flipped him off, then sat down, unsure I’d ever done something quite that scary before. But, fuck, I didn’t regret it a bit.

Chapter Twenty-One