Page 55 of Slick Trip

“That was my first time.”

Jon stilled, his hand pausing on my hip. “First time what?”

“Anything,” I whispered. “Well, the first time after the . . . upstairs.”

“Coop.”

I lifted my chin. “No reason to sound like that. I’ve had opportunities.”

He let out a low growl. “Oh, I know. I’ve had the urge to punch every one of your opportunities.”

A delicious shiver ran down my spine. “I knew you were jealous.”

“It’s not so dark that I can’t see your triumphant smile, brat. Of course I was jealous. I was so fucking jealous that if I’d seen you kiss someone, I would’ve—fuck. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

I pressed a kiss on his shoulder, practically purring.

“What stopped you?” he asked. He saw the confusion on my face and clarified. “From taking those opportunities.”

“Guess I wasn’t that interested.”

“The truth, Coop,” he said, his tone so firm I couldn’t ignore it.

“Fine.” I took a breath. “I was waiting for you.”

There it was, out in the open. My embarrassing truth. How I had waited, like a hopeful puppy, for Jon to find his way to me. And how I would still wait, until the end of this year and the next, until the end of all my years, for him. But I didn’t elaborate. It would go to his head.

“It’s not that big a deal,” I added. “It can’t come as a surprise.”

“Cooper.”

“Don’t Cooper me. You’re the one who was always glaring at people if they so much as breathed in my direction.”

Jon went completely rigid beneath me. “I did more than glare,” he muttered in a low growl.

My heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“That guy from the coffee shop near where you live—the one who kept writing his number on your cups,” Jon started. The primal edge in his voice made me shiver. “You ever wonder why he stopped?”

My mouth went dry. Yeah. I had wondered. I’d enjoyed flirting with him until suddenly he started treating me so neutrally that it was like he’d had a personality transplant.

“What did you do?” I whispered.

“Caught him out by the dumpsters after his shift. I told him if he didn’t stop looking at what was mine, I’d break his fucking jaw.”

Holy shit. His confession made my slick pulse. “You threatened to break his jaw,” I repeated.

“I was losing my mind,” Jon rasped, his chest heaving against my shoulder as he tucked me even tighter against him, like he was trying to fuse us together. “You weren’t speaking to me. You’d made it clear you hated me, and there I was, tracking every single person who tried to get within an inch of you. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was the one who’d hurt you in the first place, but I couldn’t stop it.”

He ran a hand through his hair.

“You could never hurt me,” I whispered.

“You stopped speaking to me.” He sounded so sad. “I lost you for a whole year, Coop. I thought I’d lost you for good. Don’t say I could never hurt you.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” I bit my lip and gave his rib a good poke because I didn’t know what else to do with the intensity of my feelings. “And I lost you too.”

“You didn’t. Not for a second.”