“Great. Just great.” Ha-ha. I smelled another lie.
“So what are we going to do? If we can’t be together, according to you, and you can’t be around me without getting a bad case of hard dick, what are we going to do?”
This was all him.
“I don’t know, Jos. I just...I can’t see a good way out.”
“You know you’re the only one standing in the way of this, right? Unless there’s something I don’t know about, which, if there is, I think you should f**king tell me because I’ve had it with people not telling me things like I’m a child and I can’t handle it.”
“I don’t think you’re a child.”
“Then why do you treat me like one?”
He exhaled one long breath.
“I knew about you. Before you came here. When Hunter and I became friends he invited me over a lot and I met Renee and she was always talking about you. She was pretty much at her wit’s end. Hunter offered to let you come here and she told your mom and you know that part of the story. You know, I don’t think I can do this over the phone. Can I...can I come over?”
“You sure you’re going to be able to control yourself?”
“Jos.”
I rolled my eyes, which he couldn’t see. “Okay, okay. Everyone’s sleeping, but I think I can get upstairs without waking everyone up. I’ll come out to your car, okay?”
“I’ll text you when I’m out front.”
We hung up and I turned my music off. I cracked my door open and looked at the couch. I knew it was going to be cold as hell outside, so I put some sweatpants on over my shorts and a sweatshirt on. Additionally, it would serve to cover my body to save him from temptation. You couldn’t get much unsexier than sweatpants and a baggy UNH sweatshirt.
Ten minutes later my phone buzzed and I crept out of my room and went up the stairs. Hannah made a humming noise in her sleep, so I figured I was good.
The house was dark and still. No sounds even from upstairs. Good.
I was glad that Mase and/or any of the other residents of the house weren’t watching me anymore.
Dusty pulled right outside the house, the headlights off. I crept down the porch and ran down the walkway.
“Anyone see you?” he said as I closed the door. He had the heat blasting, and I wrapped my arms around myself. Even after only seconds outside, I was cold.
“No, I think we’re good. It was quiet upstairs and Hannah was sleeping. So, continue.” I put my back against the door and turned toward him.
“Where was I?” Oh, it was not my imagination that he was still checking me out, even with the sweats. He must really have a thing for me. Or maybe he was trying to get out of telling the truth.
“My eyes are up here,” I said, using my fingers to point to my eyes. He cleared his throat and blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he was looking at my eyes and not my chest. Like he could even see it, all covered up as it was.
“You were right about when Hunter told Renee that I could stay with them.”
“Right. Well, I’d seen pictures of you. Of how you used to be. Of course I thought you were, well, you know you’re stunning, Red. Even with your hair all pulled back and in those straitlaced clothes. But I didn’t think...” He stopped and took a breath. He was usually so confident with words. They seemed to come easily to him, but he was having a tough time finding the right ones.
“They asked me—specifically Hunter asked me—to watch out for you. To make sure you didn’t get into any trouble. He knew that I had recently gotten myself out of a lot of it, and he trusted me.”
I wished he wouldn’t have found those words, because each one of them punched me in the stomach with their meaning.
It wasn’t real. None of it was real. He’d been forced to be friends with me because Hunter asked him to. It had all been an act. He had been playing a part. Saying his lines. Only I didn’t know we were in a play. Just a few minutes before he’d had me hotter than I’d been in my life and now I was ice-cold. Frozen.
“Fuck. You.” They were the only two words I could come up with, and I hurled them at him as hard as I could before I fumbled for the door.
“Jos, wait! There’s more.” Yeah, I didn’t want to hear it. I finally got the door open and started running back toward the house.
“Will you just listen, for f**k’s sake!” He caught up to me and I struggled. I wasn’t going to yell because then I’d wake up the entire street and I didn’t need Stephen King coming out of his house and seeing me and Dusty fighting. I would probably die of embarrassment.
“Will you just stop for a second?” He held my shoulders so I couldn’t go.
“Let go of me!” He let me go immediately, as if he was appalled that he’d grabbed me. I turned my back on him, expecting him to try to physically stop me again, but he didn’t.
“Joscelyn. Please. Just give me five minutes. Then you can hate me for the rest of your life. But just give me five minutes. And please, get in the car. It’s cold out here and you don’t have a proper coat on. Please.”
Oh, if he hadn’t said please. And if his voice hadn’t had that begging tone in it. When I spun back around I found that he was desperate. His stunning eyes begged me.
“Five. Minutes.”
We got back in his car, but I kept my hand on the door so I could make my escape if I had to.
“That’s what it was. At first. It was me looking after you because Hunter asked me to. He thought you could use a friend who had been where you’d been, and I kind of owed him. He helped me out a lot, and he was there for me when I needed someone. I saw it as a chance to pay it forward. That’s all it was at first.”
He took a deep breath, and I waited for him to say something that would make everything he’d said before okay. Because it definitely wasn’t, right now.
“And then I met you and from that first second I knew that it could never just be that. Some sort of charity mission. You were...you. So beautiful and funny and smart and I just wanted to be around you all the time. You’re...addicting, Jos. I can’t seem to get enough of you. You can see how this complicates things. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t in the plan when I told your sister I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. That ‘anything’ probably included kissing you and almost doing several other things that she would probably kill me for even thinking about.”