Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
JESSE
Cheerful, pop music plays from my phone’s speakers while I put away my clothes in the closet. Of my old bedroom. In which I’m apparently staying for the foreseeable future.
With Roman.
I mean, not with Roman. Roman is not staying in the same room as me, for fuck’s sake. Of course not.
Just in the same damn house, where I’ll be seeing him constantly, and bumping into him whenever we’re both here.
Fantastic.
I swear under my breath and whip out a pair of jeans from a suitcase with such force, I almost send it flying across the room.
I set the jeans back down, taking a deep breath and exhaling loudly, because it’s not the jeans’ fault.
It’s mine.
My eyes slide shut as my hands rest on my waist and my head hangs between my shoulders.
It’s all my fault for being a big, pathetic idiot who can’t fucking think right when he’s touching me, or looking at me, or simply existing around me.
Who even after what he did to me, I still agreed to stay, just because he asked it of me.
Just because he almost demanded it from me, his hand whispering over my skin making me lose all train of thought.
The fucking nerve.
He knows what that does to me. He fucking knows it and he used it against me.
He baited me into staying, for crying out loud, and I let him.
The look he gave me earlier with that glint of challenge is burned into my memory, sending a thrill through my veins that I had no business feeling.
Using the same words I’d used to tease him back then, implying that I’m scared to be in such close proximity to him?
What an asshole.
God, I missed him so much.
I missed him like breathing, my whole body still shaking from being around him after so many years of distance. Like experiencing withdrawal, mind-numbing happiness, and excruciating pain all at once.
I stare blankly at the mess of stuff in front of me, my head reeling, my heart beating erratically, irregularly, its rhythm upset, out of my control.
Because I can’t make sense of anything anymore, no matter how many times I replay everything that’s happened since last night in my mind.
He pulled me into his arms the moment he saw me. He touched me, and held me, and looked at me like I’m still the most precious thing he’s ever looked at. He carried me upstairs to sleep.
He asked me to stay.
Why does he want me here when he’s the one who pushed me away?
Why does he think he can have me here when he’s not even sorry for leaving? When he still thinks he did the right thing?
I glance towards the open bedroom door, hesitating for a moment before stepping out into the hallway. The pop music grows fainter with each step I take and it’s a damn relief since I only put it on to fill the silence.
It’s not even the music I listen to, but I can’t risk Roman hearing what I actually like.
My steps halt in front of a closed door I know far too well, and my heart beats so loudly in my chest I wonder how it doesn’t echo off the walls.
My fingers wrap around the handle, and even though Roman has been gone for the last hour on errands, I still look over my shoulder, towards the stairs for any sign of him.
The door cracks open and I regret it immediately. I regret it almost as much as my soul soars being here.
Because everything is the same.
I walk into Roman’s old bedroom and I feel eighteen again, coming in here to hang out with him, to study my homework on his bed, to watch him draw.
To sit on his lap while he plays with my hair.
To kiss him under the covers until our lips are raw and bruised, before we fall asleep. It all happened in here.
We happened in here. Beginning to end.
It hurts. It hurts so bad because the room hasn’t changed one bit. It’s still perfectly intact—with the band posters still on the wall, the desk by the window, bed made and undisturbed. Empty. Like no one’s been here or slept in here in a long time.
My gaze falls on the gauzy, yellowish little curtain that lies still by the closed window, no breeze to make it flap around, and for some reason, it’s that damn, small thing that makes my ears ring, that makes me so mad I see red.
Because it feels wrong to see it like that, because that little curtain should always be fucking flapping around.
I’m so busy staring a hole into that motionless curtain that I don’t realize the front door opens and closes. Or that there’s movement downstairs. Or that Roman’s home.
Nope. I pay zero attention to anything else because all that matters to me in this moment is stomping over to that stupid little window and cracking it open, letting the June, late morning breeze come in and making that curtain swish happily in the summer air.
So I do it. And it does. Like it should be.
The sounds from downstairs get too loud for me to ignore. Too loud for me to ignore the fact that Roman is home.
My head clears enough for my fingers to twitch, almost reaching for the window again to seal it shut. To turn on my heel and close this door for good, pretend I was never in here, because he’ll know.
At some point, he’ll come upstairs, he’ll see the door open, the window open, the curtain dancing in the breeze, and he’ll know I was in here. He’ll know I was in his room again.
I leave it exactly like that and head downstairs.
And come face to face with what looks like half a grocery store.
Which you’d think would be the first thing I noticed if I wasn’t too busy swallowing my damn tongue the moment I zero in on Roman.
In gray, basketball shorts that mold on his ass as he puts away things in the cupboards, and a loose, black, sleeveless shirt that leaves his thick, tattooed arms exposed, flexing and—wait a second, just how far do his tattoos go?
Because I swear, I catch a glimpse of ink through those armholes.
Motherfucker.
I’m so fucking fucked.
“Do you need something, Jesse?”
Busted.
My eyes snap up, my heart racing, but Roman is still turned away from me. At least, until he glances over his shoulder at me.
“How did you know I was here?” I blurt out.
His gaze is piercing like this, but it’s got nothing on the force of that look when he turns around and leans with his back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest, and pinning me to the spot.
“I always know when you’re there.”
The words are soft and quiet, floating towards me and burrowing under my skin, embedding themselves deep. So deep I don’t think I could rip them out.
I look away, choosing instead to focus on the things he still hasn’t put away.
“What is all this?” I ask in a much more normal voice than I thought was possible.
“It’s food. You know, that thing people eat in order to survive.”
I glance up and his eyes are twinkling. Just like they used to.
“And how many people exactly are you planning to feed?”
“Just two.”
I nod absentmindedly, and look away again when I realize I’m doing nothing but stare into that dark gaze that feels so fucking intimate it makes me ache.
Moving towards the other counter, I open the last grocery bag, fully intending to help him put the rest away, but I don’t.
What I do is blink owlishly at the contents of the bag—at the boxes of chocolate cereal, of all the sweet and salty snacks I love, their colorful packaging staring back at me.
I swallow past whatever is lodged in my throat, and when I look up at Roman who never looked away, I think I do an almost decent job at keeping the chaos raging inside me away from my face.
“You didn’t have to.”
Jesus, was that too breathless?
From the way Roman is watching me, I think it was.
“Who said they’re for you?”
My lips twitch, and it’s impossible to smother the chuckle that bubbles up.
“Are you saying you’re going to eat all these by yourself?” I ask him, arching an eyebrow.
“I might.” He shrugs, leaning with one hand on my side of the counter, my lungs filling with the scent of clean sheets and spicy smoke. Fuck, when did he get this close? “If someone doesn’t steal them from me first.”
I huff, tilting my head up to look at him.
“Now, who would do such a horrible thing?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see. I have someone in mind, though.”
I bite my lip to contain the smile that wants to come out, but I can do nothing about the way my cheeks warm, or the way my stomach is crumping with the need to lean in and bury my face in his throat.
It would be so easy to let myself give in to this need, as easy as breathing. Nothing has ever felt more unnatural than to be standing next to him and not touch him, not be in his arms, not feel his lips on my forehead or his hand in my hair.
He’s so close that I have to avert my eyes because every minute I look at him chips away at every defense I have.
But with him standing next to me, my gaze doesn’t stray too far, merely dropping on the arm he’s leaning on, the one that I can see now is covered in intricate vines, with sharp thorns and beautiful roses in bloom, the design so vivid it feels like it would all be real if I touched it.
“Do you like them?”
The soft question draws my eyes back to his, and the hint of nervousness I detect in them makes something squeeze inside my chest.
I nod sincerely and he visibly relaxes.
“They’re really pretty,” I say roughly because they’re more than pretty. They look fucking stunning on him. “Did you do them?”
Roman’s face is glowing when he answers.
“I drew the design, but had someone else put them on me. I didn’t want to mess them up.”
My heart skips a beat at the meaning behind those words.
“Someone you work with?” I mumble, and he nods.
He did it. He wanted to become a tattoo artist and he made it happen.
My eyes burn when I smile at him and I know he can see it because his own eyes are blazing.
“I’m happy for you, Roman,” I whisper. And I am. I don’t know why my voice fucking breaks, because I am. I just—
I just wish he’d have let me be there when he did all this.
His gaze bores into me so hard that the air between us feels like it’s vibrating, his hand on the counter just inches from where my hip is leaning.
And I have to get out of here.
“Anyway,” I say, straightening up and moving away from the counter, “I’ll go finish up with the rest of the stuff upstairs.”
A beat passes where he stays perfectly still, something thickening in the growing distance, but then he nods, sliding his hands in the pockets of his basketball shorts and resting his back once again against the edge of the counter.
“Of course.”
I nod back, turning towards the stairs, but pause right before I round the corner, glancing back at Roman, who hasn’t moved from his spot.
“See you later,” I mutter, and I hate how much it sounds like a question. How much the words expose all of my uncertainty and hope and expectation.
“See you later,” he says steadily, like there’s no doubt.
And for some reason, something eases inside me.
The same part that wants to scream and rage at him for ruining everything, for taking himself away from me.
That wants to comfort him for whatever led him to that decision and for everything he’s been through, and at the same time punish him until he hurts like I do, until not touching me, not having me drives him mad.
It all just goes quiet. Waiting.
Because I’ll see him later.
And it’s enough. For now.