“They aren’t ever what they seem. I sent Tanner up here without knowing he was already too close to the edge, and I’ll regret that forever.”
“What happened?”
“Up here?” Jerry casts his own glance at the Vermont wilderness. “Tanner took a group booking on an overnight last year. It was summertime, the weather was great. None of us had anything to worry about. So we didn’t worry, and a man died in his sleep from a diabetic crisis.”
The puzzle piece has jagged edges. I process what Jerry is saying and match it with the Tanner I’m getting to know. “That doesn’t sound like it was anyone’s fault.”
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault, least of all Tanner’s. But he wasn’t doing so well already, and waking up to a dead body pushed him over. He hasn’t worked for me since.”
Jerry doesn’t look at me again. Like, at all. We descend the light trail in silence and I don’t say anything to him when I get out of his truck in Burlington. I have no idea why he’s told me those stories, and it feels like he’s broken an omertà, but I’m glad he did. Tanner is beautiful and complex and so fucking human. I’m not anywhere close to understanding him, but I’m closer than I was this morning.
I slip inside the wine bar, searching for him before the door closes behind me.
The bartender—Rainn—tips his head to the stairs. I wonder when I became so transparent to dudes I’ve never spoken to, but if it gets me to Tanner quicker, I don’t actually care.
I jog up to the second floor where Tanner keeps his office. I’ve never been in there, and the door is closed, but I open it right up and barge inside.
Tanner is at the computer, frowning at the screen. He turns as I come up on him and I kiss him in such a perfect reenactment of this morning that I almost laugh.
But there’s nothing funny about his lips pressed to mine. It’s hot and brutal, and a shining example of why I can’t do what we both want me to do.
I kiss him until my lips hurt. Then I pull back and press my forehead to his. “I can’t stay here.”
Chapter Nine
Tanner
I can’t stay here.
His words don’t surprise me. They make sense. Why the hell would he want to live on my couch when he could have an entire apartment to himself? And a bed where he can sleep undisturbed by my bullshit?
But as reasons he wouldn’t want to fill my mind, Jax holds my face tight and forces me to look at him. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Be thinking I’m doing this because I don’t want you, or that what happened last night made me stop wanting you. It’s not about that—it’s not about you.”
…made me stop wanting you.My brain chooses to fixate on those words and not on the fear that he wants to have an actual conversation about me waking him up and sleepwalking him to my bed.He wants me. Present tense. It doesn’t fix the noise in my head, but I can’t help the thrill in my gut, becausefuckI want him too.
It would be so easy to kiss him right now. But I don’t do it. I grasp his wrists and take his hands from my face. I study his earnest gaze, then my own falls on a fresh bruise forming on his cheekbone and my anxiety ramps up a notch. “What happened to your face?”
Jax rolls his eyes. “Walked into a tree. Swear down, I was a fucking liability up there today.”
“Why?”
“Tired, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck for?”
“For waking you up? For being a—”
Jax cuts me off with another kiss. It’s softer than the ones he arrived with, but takes my breath away all the same. “I need to take this apartment and learn to live with myself. I can’t need anyone else, or depend on them; it fucks me up too much right now. But don’t ever be thinking I don’t want to spend every night with you wrapped around me like you were last night. It scares me, but it’s everything, you know?”
I don’t know anything. But I’m listening, and I don’t want him to be scared of anything, least of all how he feels about sharing a bed with me. I’m having a hard time dealing with the bruise on his face too. With the scruff on his jaw and his wild hair, it’s kinda hot, but the idea of him being hurt makes me nauseous.
We’re still holding onto each other. I let my thumb graze over the mark on his cheek, then I let him go and put some distance between us. “This has gotten intense real fast, huh?”
