“What were you going to say?” he murmured.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Bed sounds amazing.”
There was an expression on his face I couldn’t read, but it was gone before I could really try. He took my hand and tugged me down the hall, into the bedroom, where the lights were off.
I said nothing. I liked the dark. It was cool and comforting—even better when Jonah was in there with me.
We both stripped and climbed beneath the sheets, and after a short, tense moment, he curled against me. We obviouslyhadn’t done this before. Not without sex. But he wasn’t hard, and neither was I.
I was tired and frustrated.
“Did you want to fool around, or…”
I sighed. “No, but if you need me to help you relax, I can.”
He rested his cheek against my pec and breathed slow and deep and even. “No. Not tonight. I…I know this probably goes against the whole—whatever with benefits we are, but this is nice right now.”
I held him a bit closer. “It is. I think I needed this.”
“Me too.” For a while, I thought maybe he’d drifted, but then he turned his head, chin poking into my nipple. “When you get back from your roadie…”
“Mm?”
He swallowed heavily. “At the risk of sounding like some prepubescent teenager passing notes in school, uh, I think I like you. And I’d like to think about what we are. What this is.”
I bit my lip, then took a leap. The risk was terrifying, but it was worth it. “Yes. Maybe we can do something else besides hate-fucking or looking after other people.”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“Something that doesn’t involve crotchety old dads and needing to feed you and fuck you to sleep,” I suggested.
He groaned and rocked his hips. “Okay, but that last part was nice.”
I burst into laughter. “Fine. Then maybe we can have that after.”
“After…” He trailed off, then turned his head again. “Like a date?”
A date. Fuck, I hadn’t had one of those in so long. Dating was too complicated, too hard, too ugly. And they never stuck around. The moment it got hard, they were gone, and none of them had ever been worth the chase.
But Jonah…
“Like a date. Dinner, maybe? Drinks? I’ll find something fun for us.”
“Something private,” he said. “Glaciers’ fans are everywhere, and I really don’t want to be the trending topic on Instagram.”
I leaned forward and nosed along his hair. “Something private.”
He settled against me, and then his breathing really did even out, and somewhere between one slow blink and the next, I followed him to sleep.
