I look at him. “No, I’m not!”
“It’s okay. You know how long I’ve been pissed at my mom? Probably since I was two years old when she stashed me with my grandmother for eight months so she could chase a new boyfriend.”
I sit back, considering. “Maybe I’m mad. I don’t know. She’s a good mom, but it’s hard to be happy around her. I just try to be grateful that she taught me what not to do.”
“And I don’t get to meet her tomorrow during the visit?”
“Hell no.” Tomorrow I’m scheduled for lunch with my parents while they’re passing through town, a fate I refuse to condemn poor Reeve to. “You’re welcome.” I drape my hand over his where it rests on the gearshift.
The whole drive home, I’m sneaking looks at him. I love when he’s focused on the road and I can stare at his perfect profile. I love that he has no idea that when I glance over at his hands on the wheel, I’m imagining how they feel wrapped around my thighs.
My apartment is empty when we get back, and I jump onhim immediately, kissing his lips and his neck. He laughs when I take off his shirt and throw it on the living room floor.
“What’s this? Seeing how the other half lives makes you horny?”
“No, it’s you,” I tell him, my lips brushing the sharp curve of his jawline. “The things you do for me.” I kiss my way down his neck. “What you did today.”
“Hold on, Jade.” He exhales a breath through his teeth as my hands graze the front of his jeans. “Before you take off your clothes and I forget my own name, there’s one more thing I want to tell you. It wasn’t just the Spanish I brought you to my neighborhood for. I wanted you to see what I came from. That house and those memories ... I thought seeing that might help you understand why I take football so seriously, why sometimes I let it get so deep in my head that I’m not an easy guy to be around.” He looks abashed.
“Does this mean every time I’m a bitch I have to take you to my parents’ house? Because my dad’s going to demand rent if we’re there on the daily.”
Reeve gives a halfhearted smile at my bad joke. “I just wanted you to understand.”
“I’m glad you showed me where you came from, but you didn’t have to put yourself through those bad memories for me.”
“No, don’t get me wrong. I love that neighborhood. The people you met today are the reason I survived that time in my life. But I don’t ever want to feel the way I did back then.” He stares past me, a hard look in his eyes.
“Feel what way?”
“Alone. Like a loser. Like I had no control over my life and no shot at being anything other than the type of man my mom’s boyfriends were.”
My heart aches imagining Reeve feeling lonely and powerlesslike that. It’s such a striking contrast to the person I’ve always known him to be. I run my fingers down the curve of his shoulder. “You’ve come a long way. You have it all, Reeve.”
He looks at me. “I do now.” His hand curls around the back of my neck and pulls me closer. “The best thing I ever did was kiss you that first night.”
My heart beats so fast I feel ill. This is the moment I should tell him what’s been in my head, to spill my heart for him just like he’s done for me. “I swore I wasn’t going near a man senior year,” I say. “That kiss changed it all for me.” But then he kisses me, and words seem useless.
This kiss is nothing like our first. That was a question, and this is an answer:yes. He picks me up, carries me to the bed, and lays me down gently. My chest rises and falls, deepening as he slowly undresses me and the warm knot of anticipation inside me tightens, but there’s no hurrying. There’s a newfound calm between us, one that makes the hours ahead of us feel like days. Just me and him.
Shafts of buttery sunlight spill across my naked skin. Reeve lays a soft kiss on my stomach, and a sigh eases out of me. He traces a line along my forearm, then sucks the delicate skin of my wrist into his mouth, leaving teeth marks that fade too quickly. While his fingers and lips explore the parts of me that usually go ignored, I run my hands through his silky hair. I watch the flicker of the fine muscles in his neck and shoulders, marveling at their tiny movements. He’s so beautiful in everything he does. When he rolls on a condom and covers my body with his, I close my eyes and let him lead me where I want to go.
We wake up sometime later, the room glowing with the sharp, golden light of late afternoon. I reach for him and breathe in the scent of sleep.
“You sure know how to do Sunday Funday right,” I tell him.
“Stick with me, kid, and every day will be Sunday.” He rollsover to look at me. “So, quiz time: Tell me what Spanish you learned today.”
“Hmm. It was an educational day, but Spanish? The only word I remember isnovia, and I already knew that one.”
“Come on. All that conversation and you didn’t learn anything?”
“I learned nothing. But who needs Spain when I’ve got you?” Nothing matters except this moment with him. He watches me, his handsome smile locked in place, and I wish we could stay this way forever. I slide my hand under the sheets and find his cock. Clearly he’s ready for round two. “But if you want to get another lesson in, how about this time you talk dirty to me in Spanish?”
THIRTY-FIVE
jade
“Areyou sure you don’t want me to come to lunch?” Reeve asks Monday morning as we take our steaming cups from a campus coffee truck—black coffee for him, hot chocolate for me—and stroll past the quad. “Parents love me.”
