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“I thought I was the only one up,” Chase said. “What brings you downstairs this late?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know.”
I could tell he was staring at me even though I was looking at the low orange flames of the fire.
“You don’t know? Did you have a nightmare or anything?”
“No. Haven’t fallen asleep yet.”
“Oh, wow,” Chase said. “Damn, you and Sawyer went up together and you still haven’t gotten any sleep—”
“Chase,” I said in a warning tone.
He held up his hands in a signal of retreat. “Right, right. I forgot I can’t say that magic word.”
“What word?”
“Sawyer,” he said, dropping his tone to a low, breathy whisper.
I shifted on the couch. “Say that name all you want,” I said.
Chase nodded slowly. “So you’re down here at God knows what hour of the night, for no reason, and it has nothing to do with Sawyer. Got it.”
“Do you want to get punched?” I asked him.
“Punched? No,” he considered. “But sometimes I don’t mind a nice little slap in bed, on some places of my body.”
I snorted a laugh, despite myself. “You’re a piece of work.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I know I am.”
Chase settled back onto the opposite corner of the couch for a few minutes, finally leaving me alone to my thoughts. I was still in a frazzle internally, and I knew I was kind of being a dick to him.
That’s who I’d always been, on the outside. Gruff, grumpy lumberjack Harlan. Arms crossed, guard up.
When inside, I’d always just felt like a marshmallow.
He got up and threw away the stick from his lollipop, then came back over to sit on the couch.
“I just needed to clear my head for a bit,” I offered to Chase. “Sorry for being… hard to talk to. It’s just hard for me to talk about my thoughts sometimes, okay?”
“That’s completely okay,” he said. “I think I owe you an apology. I’m the king of TMI, the king of oversharing, and I have no filter. But I know everyone else isn’t like that. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“All good, Chase.”
“I won’t tease you about Sawyer again.”
There was a beat of silence. Even though Chase had just apologized to me and been very nice, I felt a tension blooming inside me that was threatening to pop like a balloon.
Now that he’d finally backed off, every last feeling inside me was bubbling up, and I couldn’t control it.
Fuck.
Fuck. I was going to say something, and I knew it, and I couldn’t stop myself.
“I hooked up with Sawyer,” I blurted out as I looked at Chase.
My heart was pounding again. I felt like every cell in my body had just turned around and looked up at me, shocked that I’d said it even though I was the one who’d blurted it out.
But Chase didn’t even seem to bat an eyelash. He looked over at me plainly.
“Right,” he said with a calm nod. “And?”
I blinked at him. “We hooked up. I hooked up with my best friend tonight.”
“Yes,” Chase continued, confusion still on his face. “Weren’t you guys already hooking up?”
I scrubbed my palms over my face. “Holy shit, Chase.”
“What?”
“How many times have I told you that Sawyer and I weren’t together? That we weren’t hooking up?”
“I mean, you said it a lot, but I still figured you two were fucking.”
“What?” I exclaimed, my eyes going wide.
“The way you two look at each other?” Chase said. “The way you act around each other, the way you touch each other… I was certain that there was something going on there.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, leaning back on the couch again.
Chase laughed softly. “So you hooked up with him tonight. That’s awesome.”
“Apparently I’ve been hooking up with him for a long time, according to you.”
He smiled sympathetically. “Sorry. That was just my dumb ass assuming again. I was probably projecting, because if I were you two, I would have been hooking up since about day one of whenever you guys met.”
I pulled in a long breath of air and let it out. “Well, tonight was the first time we’d ever done anything. Anything other than kiss, I guess.”
“How’d it go?”
“I fucked it up. Royally.”
“Oh no,” Chase said, his brow furrowing. “Did it turn out Sawyer isn’t into dick after all?”
“What? No. He was into the dick part of it all. Really into it, actually. I can’t believe he’s never sucked anyone off before, because he was pretty goddamn eager.”
“Hot,” Chase said.
I could feel myself starting to blush again. I was tired of blushing at this point, but the fact of the matter was that Chase was right. It was really, really fucking hot. Everything I’d done with Sawyer was such a turn-on that when I finally let myself remember it without any shame, I knew it was one of the hottest nights I’d ever experienced in my life.
