Page 33 of Blueline Baby

17

JACK

YOU WANT IT LOUDER BABY?

I wake up in Chloe’s bed with her back tucked against my chest and my arm gone completely numb underneath her.

For a while, I don’t move. Because I came so close to never getting this again.

That’s what’s sitting heavy on me this morning. Four days on the road, absolutely sure I’d wrecked the best thing I’ve ever had, and I hadn’t wrecked anything at all. Smitty told Britt my phone was dead. He told her to pass the message to Chloe. And Britt looked at her worried roommate and said absolutely nothing for days. Because she’d rather see me lose Chloe than watch me choose her.

I don’t hold grudges. I’ve shaken hands in the post-game line with guys who literally tried to end my career two shifts earlier. But Britt is asleep on the other side of that wall right now acting like she didn't just try to ruin my actual life. I can’t get my temper to cool off.

Chloe stirs and pushes back into me, still half asleep, and that helps slightly. I kiss the back of her shoulder, then her neck. She comes awake slowly and rolls into me, warm and smiling before her eyes are even fully open.

“Morning,” she says, and for a second it’s going somewhere really good. Her hand slides up my bare chest. I get a hand on her hip.

Then she stiffens. She pulls back an inch, her eyes open now, and drops her voice to almost nothing.

“Britt’s right there,” she whispers, and cuts her eyes to the wall. “Like, right there.”

“So?” I don’t bother lowering mine. “Let her hear. You’re mine.”

“Jack.” She’s already turning pink, half laughing, completely mortified. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t, not with her one room away.”

“Fine,” I say.

And then I reach up, grab the wooden headboard, and start rocking the bed.

Chloe’s eyes open wide as the headboard keeps banging rhythmically against the wall. Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Jack,” she hisses, “what are you doing!”

I raise my free hand and bring it down hard against my own bare thigh. The slap cracks loud through the room.

“Oh, Chloe,” I announce, loudly, to the ceiling. “Yeah, baby. Just like that.”

She claps both hands over her mouth. Her face is bright red to the tips of her ears. I keep the bed going, steady, thumping the wall, and I let my head fall back like this is the finest morning of my entire life.

“God, you feel so good. Mm. Don’t stop.”

Another loud slap on my thigh.

“That’s my girl.”

Chloe makes a high-pitched wheeze trying to hold in a laugh and slams her pillow down over her own face. Her whole body is shaking. I can’t tell if she’s laughing or suffocating and I’ve honestly stopped caring, because I’m committed now.

“Louder? You want it louder, baby? Okay⁠—”

There’s absolute silence, then a door bangs open and I hear footsteps, fast and furious down the hall. The front door slams hard enough to rattle the hinges on Chloe’s bedroom door.

I stop bouncing the bed.

Chloe comes up out of the pillow gasping, doing the kind of laughing where nothing comes out for the first few seconds, just a wheeze. Her hand is flat on my chest as she bends nearly in half.

“Oh my God,” she finally manages. “Oh my God, Jack.”

“Told you she’d hear.”