“You’re awfully quiet, Rafael.” He patted the mattress beside him and gave me a playful grin. “And awfully far away.”
I loved playful Jay. It was easily one of my top five favorite Jays, along with melty-hearted Jay, and intense-sex-face Jay, emoting-with-his-eyes-closed Jay, and the lemon-sucking Jay who appeared when I mentioned Ari Friedrich.
I took off my own boots and moved toward him, bracing myself above him with a hand on either side of his face. “This better?”
“Mmm. Somewhat.”
I leaned down further to kiss him.
“Uh-huh. That’s the stuff.” He sighed exultantly and laced his hands behind my neck. “I feel high on honesty right now. It’s even better than tequila. Go ahead, ask me anything.”
“Anything?” I lifted one eyebrow and crawled onto the bed to straddle him, the temptation too strong to resist. “Okay, then. What does us being boyfriends look like to you, ideally?”
Jay’s expression sobered. “Wow. Buzzkill.” But he didn’t let go of me. And, in fact, his thumbs tapped out a rhythm on my shoulders as he thought, the way he sometimes tapped the steering wheel while driving. “Well. I want to be with you as much as possible. I mean, I think that’s first and foremost.”
I nodded.
“I want to keep you in my life, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
“Same.” I smiled down at him. It had taken us years to overcomplicate shit, and only… what? Three days to get us on the right course again?
“Okay, so in your mind, what happens next for us?”
“Now… we kiss?” Jay asked hopefully.
I flopped down on the bed next to him and pushed his long hair off his gorgeous face. “Imeant, what happens after we leave Wyoming? Or do you think we should just stay in this hotel room forever and ever?”
“Tempting. You and me, creating our own pleasure emporium.” He sighed. “But that’s not very responsible.”
I shook my head regretfully.
“So we’re going to Florida.Duh. I have a concert to play.”
“And when we get there, are we gonna tell my family about us?”
“I mean.” Jay hesitated, then nodded nervously. “I’d like to, I think. Your dad knew there was something there, even when we didn’t. But…”
“Look, I’m not trying to push you for answers, I swear.” I brushed my thumb over his cheekbone, grounding myself by touching him. “I just want to be clear about how things are now, what we each want, because we haven’t been clear in the past, and it fucked us up. Total honesty, right? Isn’t that what we said? It’s okay if the answer is ‘I don’t know.’”
“But I do know. About this, anyway.” Jay licked his lips and swallowed hard, maybe more nervous than I’d ever seen him. “I want to tell your family. I want your dad and your brothers to know. And ideally, I want us to… to have something real. Anus. Like we used to be, but better. A gritty, not-fairy-tale thing where we share bank accounts and a house, and I force you to confine your Ari Friedrich shrine to the garage, and you get annoyed because you want to plan every part of our vacations and I refuse. I want a relationship where, even when we fight, we know it’ll never break us up because we’re it for each other, like your dad said.”
I couldn’t hold back my grin, even though I was confident I looked like a total sap. “I want that also. But Jesus, you just had to throw my dad in there, huh?” I fake-grumbled. “I still can’t believe the man knew all along and never said.”
I wanted to be mad about that fact, but I was too happy to be.
Yes,me, Rafe Goodman, the onetime angriest man on Whispering Key, too happy to work up a grudge. I was shocked, too.
But I knew as surely as day follows night that if my dad had told me where Aimee was a year ago, my know-it-all self would have ignored everything Aimee had said in her letter and gone to her, just to make sure she was okay. White-knight modeactivated. And I probably would have fucked things up even more royally for everyone involved.
“The only problem with that picture,” Jay whispered, taking my mind off my dad and returning it to the way more pleasant man on the bed with me, “is I have no idea what that kind of relationship between us would look like, practically speaking, while I’m still a… a public figure.”
I felt my smile slip.
Jay’s phone rang from someplace on the floor where he must have knocked it with his earlier starfishing, but he ignored it, his attention focused on me.
“Alright,” I agreed. “That’s okay. We can figure out what it would look like.”
Jay heaved a sigh that ghosted over my skin.
