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I turn to him, incredulous, heat climbing up my neck. “You serious right now? You won’t tell me after I jumped in to save your ass?”
“It’s a damn fine ass,” he says, one side of his mouth tipping up in a half smirk.
“Jase.”
“Jason.” His smirk slips. “Nobody asked you to save my fine ass, okay? I didn’t need your fucking help.”
“You didn’t, huh?” I try to control my temper, but I slam my foot into the gas anyway, and we jerk forward. “Didn’t look like it.”
He grips the door handle, his face going white, and says nothing. In fact, he says nothing more until we’re parked outside my building, and I throw the pick-up into park, killing the engine.
I jump out, but he takes his sweet time climbing out, every movement slow and measured. I’ve no idea what he’s playing at, so I wait him out, lock the truck, and then lead the way up to my apartment.
Way too aware of him following. His steps. His presence. His subtle scent that I haven’t yet been able to place, but which hits me under the belt and gets me all sorts of hard.
Damn… This is gonna be a long evening.
The light switch is by the door, but I ignore it. Instead, I step inside to turn on a standing lamp I bought at a street market when I first moved in. Somehow bright light would be too harsh after what happened, and I can’t even explain why.
So I stop trying, and just go with my gut feeling.
Jason walks over to the sofa and props his hip against the back, looking at me through hooded eyes. Strange that he doesn’t glance around, isn’t curious enough to explore my small living room.
Then I remember he’s been here before—back when this was my brother’s apartment. He’d been sick, and Ocean let him crash for
a few days.
That was right before I turned eighteen, left our aunt and came here to be with my brother. When I met Jason for the first time.
And was a total jackass to him.
Even then, from the first look, he got under my skin. Seems to be a talent of his, among others—and no dammit, I won’t think of Jason’s other talents. His talented mouth. His talented hands. His talented—
“You changed a few things,” he says coolly, and that bored air is still there.
The tension too. I see it in the trembling of his hands when he runs his fingers through his hair, making it stand up in spikes, in the rigid line of his back.
“I sure did,” I mutter. I actually kept most of the furniture, but put up movie posters on the walls, and I bought a deep blue rug that makes me think I’m floating on the deep sea. It has been my apartment for two years now, and it’s so damn weird to have Jason here.
In context, and yet out of context. Like stepping into the past, only it’s the present and everything’s changed. I’m not an angry eighteen-year-old with issues anymore.
Well, I’m not eighteen anymore. As for the issues…and as for Jason…
I don’t really know him. That hasn’t changed over the years. But my awareness of him has. It’s sharper. Stronger.
Deeper.
And it pisses me off.
Most things do these days.
“Sit.” I gesture at the sofa and try not to stare at his chest where the jacket is gaping open, the way his tank top is riding high, revealing a taut stomach with threads of tattoos and a dark happy trail that disappears into his pants. “Drink?”
He shrugs, a fluid, powerful movement. “Tequila, if you’ve got any.”
For some reason, I’d been thinking of hot coffee, but I guess this will work, too. “No tequila. Jack?”
“Sure.”
