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“It’s complicated,” I whispered.
“I don’t think it is.”
I bit my lip, shaking my head. “Fuck.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Jax’s expression changed, slowly, and he seemed to relax, centering himself and becoming grounded. Becoming more himself. And like a magic trick, a minute later I felt like something had shifted in the air.
“I’m going to be right here,” he finally said, still as an ocean.
“What?”
“Whatever we are,” he said. “Friends. Fake boyfriends. Boyfriends. Fucking husbands, twenty years from now. I’m going to be right here with you.”
Something happened in my chest. Something I didn’t want to look too closely at, yet.
“That’s very nice of you.”
“Fuck you,” he said, and I couldn’t help but let out a small gasp of surprise.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Fuck you. And I said what I said. I’m going to be right here, no matter how much you wish I wasn’t.”
I moved in my seat, suddenly uncomfortable, like I was naked under some kind of spotlight that only Jax had access to.
“What are you talking about? I’m happy you’re here.”
“Then let me be here, with you,” he said. “I’m going to let you go inside, and be alone, and get some sleep. But even if I go home alone tonight, I’m not going anywhere in your life. I want you. In whatever form that ends up taking.”
My heart slammed in my chest again.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Dont—
“Then come inside with me,” I said, the words slipping out of my mouth seemingly without my permission.
The fear was still there, stronger than ever.
But something about Jax was pushing right past it. Breaking a wall. Annihilating it.
Jax didn’t wait for a moment. He got out and looped around to my side of the car, opening the door for me. I stood up and he closed it behind me, and in that moment in the fresh blanket of snow, I knew that this was different.
Somehow, without even knowing it, I’d gotten on a different path. Terrifying, unknown, and absolutely fucking worth it, because I was going to let myself try.
“Jax, I—”
“I hate you, too,” he interjected, a playful smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“Not what I was going to say. Not even close.”
“I know,” he told me. “But when I told you I was falling for you, you freaked out on me. So if you need me to keep saying it the other way, I’ve got you.”
I wanted to cry.
Maybe I’d always known that there was something else behind it when he joked about hating me. I knew it was something so tender it might scare me. Something that could, one day, be something more like love.
And I knew if I let myself love again, every careful wall I’d put up would evaporate in an instant.
“Now get inside before I push you down into the snow,” Jax said. “I can make a mean snowball. Might take me a while with only this much snow to work with, but I’d do it.”
Freedom felt wild. But maybe, after all of this time worried about what I should do, wild was exactly what I needed.
“I don’t usually give it up to guys on the first date, you know,” I told him. Letting myself joke around with him again felt like my way back to freedom. Exactly what the foundation of our friendship had been built on.
He gave me a mock look of shock. “Charles, my intentions are only pure, you should know.”
“Holy fuck, don’t call me Charles,” I protested. He wrapped his arms around my waist, both of us swaying in place on the driveway. I hummed softly, feeling like I was sinking back into something that felt right. “Okay. If you touch me like that, you can call me anything you want.”
“Then I’ll call you adorable, hilarious, and smart. And hotter than hell. And the most fucking fun I’ve ever had with another person. How’s that?”
My stomach felt upside down again, but this time, in a good way. More like a roller coaster than a freefall drop.
“Making me blush.”
He just shrugged. “I could go on.”
He leaned in and his lips were on mine a moment later. As we kissed, he took a step backward, keeping me tightly locked in his arms so that I had to move with him.
I laughed against his lips as he awkwardly walked with me like this, step by step, backing me up toward the front door of my house.
“This is very unsafe with snow on the ground, I hope you know that,” I told him.
“Let’s go in,” he murmured once we were at the door.
I bit my lower lip, knowing that I was about to swing for the fences. Fuck it.
“I want you inside me,” I told him.
His eyes flared wide, and for a split second I was hesitant again, wondering if I’d finally gone too far for him.
