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Truthfully, I felt like I’d had my breath knocked out of me. Like I was young and dumb again, reckless and completely unapologetic. Jax was stirring things up inside me that I hadn’t even realized I’d forgotten about, as I’d grown up and slowly started seeing life as one endless to-do list: get a good job, find The One, someday get married.
Tonight didn’t feel like anything close to a to-do list. I was just being me.
Being rebellious. Breaking all of the rules at the end of summer vacation, right before reality would set back in.
And Jax was confusing the everloving fuck out of my dick, being way too good at pretending to date me.
“We’re fucked,” I said breathlessly as I shut the door to my truck and turned the key in the ignition. I looked over at Jax in the passenger seat. “You realize that the internet is going to blow up with that footage tomorrow, right?”
“Don’t care,” Jax said, looking at me with half-lidded eyes. He was so, so damn tired, and I thought there was a very real chance that he might regret all of this when he woke up tomorrow. But he’d also said he’d been thinking about it for days. Hearing him practically beg to kiss me wasn’t something I was strong enough to refuse.
“I just hope you’re ready for all that attention,” I said, looking over at him. He was slumped on the seat, too tired to fix his posture.
He licked his lips, reaching out an arm. I looked down at his outstretched hand and lifted an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Come here,” he said with the slightest hint of a smile on his lips. Something stirred in my chest, and I tried to beat it down. Those green eyes were too powerful, and I felt like I was under some sort of spell.
I swallowed hard. “I… think maybe I should drive you back down the mountain to campus so you can get some sleep.”
He just shook his head slowly. “No. I don’t want to go back there tonight.”
I took his hand. Immediately, he tried to pull me over toward him on the long bench seat, and I resisted.
“Fine,” I said. “Then I’m going to take you back to my place and you can crash on my bed, and I’ll take the couch. But you need sleep.”
“I need you,” he murmured.
I felt a wall come up inside me.
How many times had I been told things like that, only to have it all crumble in front of my face soon after? Even from guys who were gay, who were actually dating me, I’d come to distrust being told anything like that.
So when it came from the lips of a sweet, very sleepy guy who very well might have just been having a moment of bi-curiousness, I felt like I couldn’t let my guard down even for a moment.
I pulled in a slow breath before finally sliding over on the bench seat toward him, hesitant, still firmly placed behind my own invisible wall.
“You’re a really good person,” I told him, reaching out to push back a tuft of his hair that had gotten fluffed up. “And I’m not going to stop nagging you about taking some damn care of yourself, not just others. Right now that means sleep.”
A small smile made its way to his ruddy lips again, and his gaze danced across my face.
“You’re being a lot nicer than you usually are.”
“What?” I protested. “Am I usually mean?”
He nodded. “Totally.”
I dropped my jaw. “I am not mean.”
He laughed. “But you’re also not usually… like this.”
I pushed a hand through my hair. “How so?”
He shifted on his seat. “Calling me a good person,” he said. “And telling me I need sleep. Usually, you’d be like, you need sleep, you motherfucker. You know?”
A smile tugged at my mouth. “Fair point.”
“So why are you being so nice to me now, huh?” Jax teased, a playful lilt to his voice. Almost like he was flirting with me.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I teased him right back.
“There we go. That’s the Charlie I know.”
“Fuck off,” I said. “You’re impossible when you’re delirious. Very cute, too, but impossible.”
He hummed, clearly enjoying that I’d called him cute. He put his hand on my waist again, in the spot he seemed to like touching me.
“Thought that was just for the cameras,” I said, surprised that my voice came out in a cracked whisper.
His hand squeezed my hip. He was looking at me with those bedroom eyes, like he knew could get me to do whatever he wanted. Right now, that was pretty close to the truth.
I was fucked. So, so fucked.
“Kiss me,” he murmured.
My cock twitched. “I’ll kiss you once you’re in bed.”
“Bribing me? Really?”
“Absolutely.”
He moved his hand up, grabbing one of the strings on my hoodie and fiddling with it, wrapping it around his finger. “So, once I’m in your bed, you’ll kiss me?”
