Hugh: HA, they aren’t seeing each other. Danny is basically obsessed with Jacob. That’s nothing new.
Hugh: I’m pretty sure they are just friends.
White hot jealousy floods through me. I can totally understand Danny (what a fucking douchebag name) being obsessed with Jacob. But I don’t fucking like it. I don’t like that he touched him or danced with him. I don’t like that he had his fucking lips on Jacob’s neck.
I have to choke back pure anger like I’m swallowing boiling coffee.
Get a fucking grip on yourself, Griffin.
Griffin: Ah, okay cool.
It’s the lamest response ever.
And then silence from Hughie.
It makes sense because what the hell is he supposed to say? I was ambling through awkward, creepy territory, prying into someone else’s business because my brain is still trying to process that last fucking kiss and what the hell it meant to me.
I have no right to know shit about Jacob. And that, right there, realizing I have no fucking right to be this involved, hits me harder than any slap I could’ve given myself.
Because I was being a fucking creep.
I was prying.
I was insecure.
I was jealous.
I had no say in what Jacob does with his life.
I need to stop this absolute nonsense before things get worse. I need to stop asking about him or talking about him. I need to stop everything that has to do with Jacob because I need to focus on myself. Hockey, school, and then the draft.
It’s everything that matters.
17
Jacob
It’s beena week sincethatnight.
The night everything went sideways in the most ridiculously awkward way possible, the night Griffin made eye contact with me while I was dancing with Danny.
A week since I felt that stupid, embarrassing heat rush up my neck and across my cheeks.
A week since his sudden exit from a party he didn’t even want to be at.
A week since I very obviously, awkwardly, and with approximately zero dignity followed him outside like some kind of deranged emotional satellite.
A week since his lips crashed onto mine in a way that was so fucking hot and perfectly timed it shouldn’t have been legal in any universe, and yes, I ground against him like a sad, horny puppy who had been improperly socialized.
And then there was nothing.
Just silence.
He came to the training center like normal people do, except not normal at all, and instead of looking at me, or facing me, oreven acknowledging the geographic space that I occupy within the same room, he hadLaurenwork on his shoulder.
He grabbed his own ice, like a stubborn idiot who also happens to be emotionally unavailable.
He emailed his half of the assignment without even speaking a word to me, not a hint of engagement, not a trace of embarrassment or confusion or anything.
