Jesse coughed mid-bite, his eyes streaming as he reached for his water.
“You okay?” I asked, lowering my taco.
“Yes,” he said after he’d taken a drink. “Should I assume you’re going to want seconds?”
I winked at him and took another bite. “The child support is going to be astronomical,” I said around a mouthful of cheese and ground beef.
Smiling, he shook his head and turned back to his plate.
The afternoons belonged to the salon, where we played video games or watched movies. Jesse studied the screen with the dedication of a film student: brow furrowed, gaze attentive, every emotion displayed on his face. I watched him watch the TV, a big bowl of popcorn in my lap and butter coating my fingers. He caught me looking more than once.
“What?” he asked, curiosity and a hint of self-consciousness in his dark eyes.
I tossed a piece of popcorn into the air and caught it with my mouth. “Nothing.”
He stared for another moment, then turned back to the TV. When I set the bowl between us, I saw him smile out of the corner of my eye.
On other afternoons we played cards. Jesse was hard to read—until I noticed his breathing sped up slightly when he was bluffing, at which point I cleaned him out twice in a row.
“Impossible,” he said, staring at my cards fanned on the table. He looked at me. “You cheated.”
I leaned back in my chair. “I’m a football player. We study tells for a living.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What’s my tell?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” I grabbed my half-empty beer bottle and drained it. “But you won’t. Sorry.”
He muttered under his breath as he collected the cards. “Fine. Best out of five.”
The day after we talked about Philippe, he handed me the laptop across the kitchen counter. “I enabled the Wi-Fi,” he said. “The password is apple.”
He turned back to the stove before I could say anything.
I stood there holding the laptop, my heart doing something embarrassing in my chest.
When the sun went down, we shifted and ran on four feet, racing each other across the French countryside until our sides heaved and our tongues lolled out of our mouths.
According to Jesse, we didn’t have to worry about humans. The castle I’d spotted from my window was a ruin, and the nearest neighbor was twenty miles away.
“This area has poor drainage,” he’d explained after we’d shifted back and stood nude on the crest of a hill with the Big Dipper splashed across an inky sky. “It’s bad for growing grapes, which is the main industry in this region. No one else wanted theproperty, but it was perfect for me. I loved the house. The lack of people sealed the deal.”
I stared at the horizon, where the castle turret was a dark smudge against the night sky. “I guess I ruined that.”
He looked at me until I turned to him. “You’re the exception,” he said, dark eyes steady.
Our evening runs were the best part of every day. Sprinting at his side made the painful shifts worth it, which was information I kept strictly between me and the French countryside.
One week turned into two, then three. The ice around my ribs thawed in increments, every moment with Jesse pushing me toward something I didn’t want to acknowledge but couldn’t run from anymore.
I loved him. Maybe I could live without him, but I didn’t want to.
One night, I found him in the kitchen after our run, chopping vegetables while something simmered on the stove.
“That smells amazing,” I said, drifting toward the island that triggered all sorts of muscle memory in my dick.
He glanced up, pausing his knife mid-chop. “Hachee,” he said.
“Bless you,” I replied.
