“Yeah?”
“I h-hate t-trains.” Whoops. I was supposed to tell him something else. What was it?
His low laugh brushes against my forehead. “Duly noted.”
My eyes drift shut. Lulled into a trancelike state by the steady rise and fall of Jesse’s chest. Jesse keeps talking, and I do my best to focus, hoping it’ll distract me from the unpleasant tingle of blood returning to my toes.
“You also hate the color beige, greasy cheeseburgers, the spelling of any word with ‘gh’ in it, the smell of cigarettes, and the rain. You order takeout on Fridays and leave the delivery person thank-you cookies in disposable containers. I am regularly forced awake in the middle of thenight by you setting off the fire alarm—which I’m guessing is thanks to the warehouse of candles you’ve got squirreled away in your room—and the way you parallel park is bloodcurdling.”
I’m collecting the energy to argue about the poor ventilation in my room and the oversensitive fire alarm when everything he said registers. I wedge open one eye to squint at him. “You g-got all that from a w-week?”
Jesse sweeps his thumb over my brow, gazing down at me with an unfathomable expression. “I’ve been your neighbor for years, Sour Patch. I know you think I didn’t like you, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t notice you.”
Jesse is only saying this because my brain currently resides in a puddle of soup. Easy to bank on me not remembering. I tighten my fingers in the fabric around his waist, pressing myself like a brand against him. I want to get warmer, fast. Get my brain back in fighting form.
The closeness has the opposite effect. My muscles slacken, one by one. A primitive part of me registers the safety in Jesse’s arms and relaxes. Fully relaxes, in a way I haven’t in too long.
“I’m hard to ignore,” I joke, basically handfeeding Jesse the opportunity to break the tension. The elephants in my stomach have begun to perform a complicated dance worthy of a gold medal, and Jesse’s steady gaze isn’t helping.
But he doesn’t take the bait. If anything, the corners of his eyes tighten, and he sounds pained when he whispers, “You are.”
I study Jesse, startlingly clearheaded for a minute. “You’re being too nice.”
“Aren’t I always?”
“No,” I retort, but I sense the lie as soon as I say it. Jesse might be surly and occasionally rude, but he’s also been patient. He’s been thoughtful. He—
“You talked to people,” I say slowly. “You talked to people until you found me.”
He finally looks away, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t remind me. Worst experience of my life.”
My torso has thawed enough for a laugh to break free. An actual laugh, when moments ago I’d been prepared to tragically freeze against the window.
What good is a soul if someone like Jesse Talbot doesn’t have one?
He is angry—always, always angry—but it’s an anger he never directs toward anyone it might harm. An anger he seems to have forged, link by link, into chain metal standing between him and the rest of the world.
I wish I knew how to convince him that the world was worth it. That it was worth putting down his armor and standing in the sun.
“Mansour?” Jesse sweeps the hair from my forehead, his hand coming to curl around the side of my face. His other arm remains tight around my middle, preventing me from tumbling oft” his lap. “You’re spacing out again.”
My fingers tighten on the collar of Jesse’s jacket, and before I can think about it too long, I draw his head down toward mine.
Too fast, andwaytoo clumsy. He pulls back in time to avoid smacking into my nose, but my death grip on his collar keeps him from straying too far.
Any remaining lethargy evaporates like mist in a hundred-degree day, and I suddenly wish I’d been right about the train ghosts finishing me off.
What was I thinking? Jesse hadn’t so much asglancedat someone for longer than half a minute since he moved to Ward. The one time a girl had shored up her courage to ask him to Sadie Hawkins, he’d shut her down. Politely, I’d heard, but thoroughly. Afterward, the whispers had been vicious, and they hadn’t stopped until someone started one about Jesse preferring the romantic company of corpses to that of the living. Jesse had tracked down the guy who started the rumor, a mouthy athlete with a superiority complex, and allegedly filled his car with yellowjackets.
The students kept their speculations about Jesse’s love life to themselves after that.
And here I was, just grabbing the guy and going for it like a character in those ‘90s sitcoms Lucia loves.
Dark eyes swimming with amusement roam over my face and the blush scorching over it. “Were you trying to kiss me, Sour Patch?”
“Please don’t talk.” I pause. Squeeze my eyes shut. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
Laughter rumbles in the chest I’m currently plastered against. I try to wriggle out of his arms, but he only tightens his hold. “Wait, wait.I’msorry. I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but you were about to use my head to break your own nose.”
