Page 69 of Never Pucking Ending

I finish rolling the wrap and push the plate toward him, grabbing a napkin from the cupboard and giving him that too.

“Thanks, Bells,” he says easily, taking no time at all to devour the food. I can tell he’s tired. He had to get up early this morning. I vaguely remember him unwinding his arm from me, pressing a kiss against my cheek, and sliding out of bed telling me he had to go.

I’d been so exhausted from…well, everything that I barely remember giving him a coherent response. It wasn’t until at least two hours later I peeled myself out of his bed and reaching out to touch his cold sheets, remembering where I’d been.

We could talk about the asshole who punched him or about how his day went. We could discuss the weather or how he likes his wrap. I could ask him about the advertisement and Isaac, which I definitely need to bring up at some point but decide now is not that time.

“Are we going to talk about it?” I blurt, sudden anxiousness filling my chest.

He’s wiping his mouth with the napkin, but I can see the edge of a faint smile hiding behind it. And then this smug asshat plays dumb.

“Talk about what?”

I gape at him. He’s going to make me say it, isn’t he? Heat crawls up the back of my neck and prickles the skin of my cheeks. “About…” I wave my hand in the air as if that’s supposed to signify everything he needs to know.

“About…?” he presses, leaning his elbows on the counter and watching me.

Oh my God. He is. He is going to make me say it. But I’m a big girl and I’m wearing big girl panties. Well, that’s a lie. I’m wearing leggings, and I never wear underwear with leggings.

“Are we going to talk about what happened yesterday?” I finally ask, meeting his eyes and making sure I don’t look away.

He runs his hand over his clean-shaven jaw that he must have shaved this morning because he had stubble that left scratch marks on my inner thighs last night. And I didn’t hate it.

“Which part?” he counters casually, his elbow now propping his leaned body up on the counter. He props his chin in the palm of his hand as those eyes dance with mischief. “The part where I ate you out on the counter or came inside of you repeatedly in my bed?”

My jaw drops at his unforgiving honesty. Seriously, I think my brain is fried. Because…yes. Yes, to both. “A-All of it,” I confirm, swallowing down the lust rising from my belly.

How can he look so nonchalant about the whole thing? He just admitted he came inside of me multiple times. Me. Belle. The girl who’s harbored a crush on him for twenty years. The one who thanked him an unknown number of times for everything he’s ever done for me. From the day he bought me blackout curtains, I’d held him close to my heart. Not even my mother, who I love dearly, had done that. She never thought to.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks in a voice that doesn’t sound any different than normal. I’m in awe at how he’s acting right now.

Before I can think, I blurt out, “You bought me blackout curtains.”

He stares at me, parting his lips to say something before closing them in surprise. Which is a fair reaction, considering he’d bought me blackout curtains over fifteen years ago. Technically, he’s made sure the curtains in my rooms since are also blackout. But he knows I’m referring to the original ones.

I wet my lips and release a breath hoping to come out rational rather than flustered. “You have always done such nice things for me, but that was the first time that I felt seen by you. I knew who you were before our parents started dating.” I blush despite myself, and I’m sure he can tell the sudden awkwardness in the way I move from one foot to another. “Everybody knew who you were in school. You were popular. And I was…not. Which isn’t exactly a secret.”

I’m not sure I was ever labeled a loser, but maybe a nerd. And nerds are cool as far as I’m concerned. Just not in high school. I was chubby for a while before I hit a growth spurt, my boobs were always a little too big for my body, and I was quiet. Shy. When I got to know people was when they couldn’t shut me up, but that took effort. Not many people made that back then.

Jesse did.

He went from small smiles across the cafeteria to sitting with me and eating lunch. He’d ask me what book I was reading. Ask about homework and classes and tests. If I got headaches, he’d try making sure they didn’t turn into more. Our friendship has been one of my favorite things on this planet. It’s been pure and simple and beautiful. Because he’s those things.

Jesse watches me as I collect my scrambled thoughts of the past and gather them up to explain where my head is at. “I think I had a crush on the idea of you long before I ever got to know you, and I figured it would go away. But then our parents fell in love, and we moved in, and I got to know you in ways nobody else did. It felt like…”

What was the best way to describe that feeling to him without sounding out of my mind? I’m not sure there was a good way.

“I felt special for having something that nobody else did,” I admit carefully, fighting the heat spreading over my face. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, but my body doesn’t feel the same way. “All those girls who flirted with you or got some small piece of you knew the hockey player who got into a division one school and was probably going pro one day. They saw what they wanted to and took what they wanted from that persona. I got everything. I saw everything. The good. The bad. The in between. I saw you without your guard up at home, and I felt special because of it.”

Nibbling on my bottom lip as Jesse’s face softens, I tell him the rest of the truth that I’ve never willingly admitted to him. He knows bits and pieces, and could probably assume the rest, but I’ve never put my feelings to words. Never allowed myself to.

“You’ve always gone out of your way to make sure I’m okay. To take care of me when I’m sick. To stand up for me when I need defending. To make sure that my dreams become a reality even when I’m on the verge of giving them up. You were nice to everybody because that’s who you were as a person. But you have been there for me through it all, no matter what you had going on in your life. It made it easy to see you as…more. To think that, in the back of my mind, I was yours.”

There. I said it. I can’t take it back now, not that I want to. It’s long overdue, anyway. Those damn blackout curtains were the start of an amazing friendship that blossomed into something so much bigger over the last decade and a half. And the crush I’d had on him for longer than that was cemented. It always would be because Jesse has been a pivotal part of my life for longer than he hasn’t been in it.

He felt like mine. Whenever he’d come home from school to vent to me about his friends or teammates, I knew he wasn’t telling anybody else. When he checked on me if I was in my room for too long and he worried I’d had a migraine, I felt so cared about. He was always nice to people in high school. He never bullied anybody or judged them for not being in the popular group. I’m not sure he even saw himself as a popular kid. But the kindness he offered me was different than what gave everybody else. It was personal. Genuine.

Jesse’s smile is warm and his eyes warmer as they scope out my hesitant expression. “You’re right,” he agrees lightly, his voice smooth as butter and featherlight. “I was nice to everybody. But I didn’t care about them. Not really. It isn’t just you, Bells. I considered you mine too, and I knew I didn’t have a right to.”