Eventually, Jamie emerges. He's not carrying his bag—just himself, arms crossed, jaw set.
"It's dark," he says. "I'll leave in the morning."
"Fine."
"Fine."
He goes back to the bedroom. I sleep on the couch.
We have sex again in the night. I was right, the heat isn't completely done, and neither of our bodies seem to care about the argument.
I'm lying on the couch when I hear the bedroom door open and see Jamie's silhouette in the doorway. Neither of us speaks. He crosses the room in the dark, climbs onto me, and takes what he needs. His nails rake down my chest hard enough to sting. I grip his hips hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises. He doesn't look at me when he comes.
After, he gets up and goes back to the bedroom without a word. The door clicks shut.
In the morning, I come up behind him as he is making coffee for his travel mug, and the way he tenses, triggers the heat response in both of us. I bend him over the counter and fuck him while the coffee maker gurgles through its cycle. He braces his hands on the granite and takes it in silence—no moans, no whimpers, none of the sounds he made before. Just breathing.
I bite his shoulder when I come. He shoves back against me, grinding, until he finishes too. Then he straightens, pours his coffee without acknowledging what just happened.
"The roads should be clear," I say.
"I know."
He picks up his travel mug and walks to the door. I follow, because I can't let this end with nothing said at all.
"Jamie—"
He stops, hand on the door handle. Doesn't turn around.
"Jamie."
He turns. His expression is blank.
"What?"
I have no idea what to say so I screw it up completely. “You’re wrong, Jamie.”
He rolls his eyes. "Fuck off, Carter."
He opens the door and steps through it. I don’t follow him.
13. Jamie
Carter Crane is the world’s biggest asshole. I mean I already knew that, but I had no idea of the extent of it until I spent a week with him.
He’s an arrogant, privilegeddickheadof an asshole and I have three hours to stew on it during the drive back to the city.
I mean, he’s aprettyasshole, sure, but an asshole nonetheless. If this week has taught me anything, it’s that the Carter affair needs to stop. I don’t know how you break a prime match, but I’m going to need to work it out. I can’t keep doing this.
Yes, he’s gorgeous and yes, the sex is out of this world mind blowing, but that’s not enough to ruin my life for.
The anger carries me through the first hour. I replay the argument in my head, refining my responses, thinking of all the things I should have said.You want to play with the big boys. Who the fuck says that? Who stands there defending a smear campaign while the person they've been screwing is telling them about dead rats in their mailbox?
Carter Crane III, apparently.Asshole.
By the second hour, I'm still running on caffeine and spite, but by the third hour, the anger has gone flat and I just feel a heaviness that feels like it has settled into my bones.
The adrenaline starts to fade, and exhaustion seeps in to replace it. My body aches in ways I'm trying not to catalogue.My thighs are sore. My hips are sore. There's a bite mark on my shoulder that throbs every time I shift in the driver's seat, and I can still feel the ghost of his hands on my skin, no matter how hard I try to think about something else.
