He looked so uneasy. “Where do you want to go?”
I smiled, hoping to bring a little reassurance to his mind. “I don’t have a preference-just anywhere but here.”
He slowly pulled away from Dane’s house and said, “I think I know just the place, but you might think it’s a little weird.”
He had my curiosity peaked. “I can handle weird.”
“I don’t know that weird is the right word. Maybe unexpected describes it a little better.”
He turned on the radio to drown out the silence between us as he drove me to the unexpected destination. We pulled up at a car garage and I was momentarily confused until I remembered that Jessie worked at his dad’s garage.
“Do you mind pulling in for me?” he asked.
It was an automatic so surely I could do it. “Okay.”
He got out of the truck to lift the garage door and I slid into the driving seat. I put his truck in drive and pulled into the shop. He lowered the door behind us and it felt like the world outside these four walls disappeared. I slid back to the passenger side and he got back in his truck. “Not what you expected, huh?”
I laughed and said, “Nope. Not what I expected, but after the playground and the football field I’ve come to expect anything out of you.”
“When I wasn’t on the football field, I was here with Earl. He was always teaching me something about engines.”
I was suddenly all nerves as I began to fidget my feet. I looked around like I was taking in the inside of his dad’s garage, but I really was avoiding looking at him and approaching the subject he brought me here to discuss.
He rolled the ignition key back, then turned the radio on like he did the night we danced on the old football field. “Is this station alright with you?”
It was a soft love song and I thought it was the ideal mood setter for the things I wanted to say to him. “Yeah, it’s perfect.”
“You’re fidgeting. Why are you so nervous?”
I stopped twitching my feet and shrugged my shoulders casually. “I’m not nervous,” I lied.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
I felt like I was standing half past the point of no return, but the unknown of being with him no longer frightened me. I had fallen in love with him and the time had come for there to be no more camouflage. I was ready to be exposed.
“I want to thank you for giving me the time I asked for because you didn’t have to. You have been such so incredibly understanding this week and although unintentional, I’m sorry for any pain I caused you.”
I watched him squeeze his eyes tightly, bracing to hear what he had mistaken as the beginning of a goodbye. I slid closer to him, across the bench seat in his truck. I took his hand and brought it to my lips. I placed a feather light kiss upon it and said, “You are so much more than I expected, even more than I dared to hope for.”
I leaned closer and pressed a light kiss on his lips and whispered, “I feel myself…going under. I’m drowning in you because I am so hopelessly in love with you. You’re the only one I want.”
A smile replaced the worried look on his face as his fear vanished. “I was terrified that you wouldn’t want to take a chance on someone like me.”
“It doesn’t feel like taking a chance. It feels right, like it’s what I’m supposed to do, but I still have to break up with Forbes.”
He put his arm around me and I laid my head on his shoulder as he began to stroke my arm. “I want you to as soon as possible because I can’t stand the thoughts of you being his for another minute.”
“You can take me back to Dane’s so I can do it tonight, but that means giving up this time together.” I lifted my face and kissed his stubbled chin. “Do you really want to do that?” I raised up and moved my lips along his jawline until I reached that sensitive place on his neck below his ear, the same spot he kissed me when he drove me into a stupor. I heard a moan escape his lips, telling me we would be staying right where we were so my attempt to persuade to stay with me was successful.
Sitting side by side in Jessie’s truck was cumbersome and prevented me from feeling him the way I wanted to, so I told him to scoot to the middle of the seat away from the driver’s side of the truck. I climbed on top of him with my knees on each side of his hips because I was desperate to feel his body pressed against mine. He put his hands on my hips under my dress and pulled me hard against him while I reached behind his neck and tightened our embrace. His mouth abandoned my lips and trailed kisses down my neck, onto my chest and I felt him trembling beneath me.
I never allowed Forbes freedom with my body, but I felt different with Jessie. Although being with him this way felt right, I wasn’t ready to be physically intimate with him and decided it was a good idea to get on the same page. I pulled back and cupped his face with my hands, putting my thumbs on his lips. “I know I just crawled up on top of you like I was going to devour you, but I can’t sleep with you. I’m sorry. I want to, but I’m a virgin and I’m not ready to change that.”
He nodded with my hands still holding his face and whispered, “I know.”
Everyone assumed I was sleeping with Forbes because we had been together so long and I wondered why he would think differently. “How could you possibly know?”
“Forbes was bragging about how he was going to screw you the night of the bonfire. I knew the only reason he would be bragging about it was if he had never been with you, but sex isn’t why I want to be with you. I’d be with Gretchen if that’s what I wanted.”
I didn’t want to jump from one guy trying to get in my pants to another one, so I felt like he needed fair warning. “I don’t know when or if I’ll ever be ready and you should know that up front.”
He rubbed his hands up and down my back. “This is enough. Just being with you is all I need.”
His reassuring promise confirmed how right this was between us. “I want to touch you and kiss you and feel you against me, but I don’t want to be a tease.”
“You’re not a tease because you’ve told me that you won’t sleep with me. I won’t lie and say I don’t want you because I do, but your boundaries are clear and I’m okay with them. I know what to expect from you, but if things get too heated and I tell you to give me a minute, I need you back down.”
Knowing he wanted to be with me without the expectation of sex was a relief and I felt my love for him grow because of it. “I don’t deserve you.”