This evening, I set up shop on the couch, lying back with Jason’s laptop on my legs. The curtains are closed, the lamp’s glow is warm, and I’m comfortable in a way that suggests I’m going to drift off midway through my review of medication side effects.
I don't remember falling asleep.
I do become aware of surfacing slowly, the way I always do, through layers, heavy and warm. There's a hand on my shoulder. Gentle. A voice, low, close.
"Ella. Hey. We're home."
I open my eyes, and Bernard's face is right there. Close. Soft expression, tired eyes, still in his travel suit with the tie loosened. He crouches beside the couch, one hand on my shoulder, and he smells like airplane and coffee, and underneath it, that body wash.
"Bernard," I murmur, and my hand comes up before my brain engages. I touch his jaw. My thumb traces the stubble, the curve of his chin. "You're back."
He goes perfectly still. His eyes search my face, and something passes through them — something warm and unguarded and raw — and for a moment we are just this: his face in my hand, his hand on my shoulder, the lamp casting us in gold.
"I missed you," I say, still half-asleep, still floating in the space where honesty lives because my defenses haven't booted up yet.
Bernard's breath catches.
Then a voice behind him: "She awake?"
Jason. Standing by the front door with his road bag over his shoulder, watching us.
I snap fully conscious. My hand drops from Bernard's face like I've touched a hot stove. I sit upright, clutching the laptop, blinking in the light.
"I'm up. Sorry. I fell asleep studying." I'm already gathering things: laptop, textbook, blanket. "How was the trip?"
"Two and one," Jason says. He's looking at me, then at Bernard, who has straightened up and taken a measured step back from the couch. "You good?"
"Fine. Just tired." I hug the laptop to my chest like a shield. "Thanks for this, by the way. It really helped."
Jason nods. Something flickers across his face, not suspicion exactly, but awareness. Like he's looking at a play he can't quite read yet. "Yeah. No problem."
"Goodnight," I say to both of them, to neither of them, and walk down the hall to Bernard's bedroom and close the door.
I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark.
I press my palms against my eyes and breathe. I crossed a line big time with the guy who is trying to help me out. I remind myself that the physical stuff with Bernard is a favor, lessons, to prepare me for an actual man I have the option of dating.
I touched his face like he was mine. I said I missed him like it was the truest thing I knew. The guy who is best friends with my brother, who lives with him, and plays on a team that’s had enough interpersonal conflict. Would the Fury tolerate an explosion between Jason and Bernard?
I am playing with trouble.
But I’m not sure I want to stop.
Chapter 10
Howie
I crack one eye open and see Ella perched on a stool at the kitchen counter, headphones half-on, Jason's laptop open in front of her. She's in pajama shorts and an oversized T-shirt, bare legs crossed at the ankle, hair piled in a messy knot on top of her head. She's mouthing along with whatever she’s hearing in the headphones, occasionally tapping an answer on the screen.
She’s fucking gorgeous.
But I can’t be having those thoughts. I stretch on the couch, needing to pull all my performance training to the surface so I can focus on what I said I’d do for her. Sex tutoring is basically like a backhand clinic. We’re just working on skills.
The road trip nearly killed me. Not the games — we went two and one, which is fine. Not the travel, not the hotels, not Spinner's snoring through the wall. It was the texting with Ella. Every night in my hotel bed, phone in hand, her name on my screen, my brain supplying images I had no business entertaining.
I had to take care of myself in the shower after the "I want" text. Braced against the tile with the water running too hot, thinking about the taste of her mouth, the feel of her collarbone under my fingers, the sounds she made on this couch. I came so hard I saw spots and then stood there with my forehead against the wall, water drumming my back, knowing I was absolutely fucked.
And then I got home, and she touched my face in her sleep and said, "I missed you," and I nearly detonated in front of her brother.
