Chapter 16 Chicken
Chicken
Josha
“Hey.”
I peer up into the dark to find him standing over me, haloed in the light spilling out of the tent. The party is still going strong, even though Byrd and the birthday boy are long gone.
Gem and I have been skirting around each other all night, and I’m not sure why. Actually, that’s a lie. He’s been flirting with the hand balancer since he flew in yesterday, and I’ve been sulking.
What else is new?
Now that I’m drunk enough to let my guard down, I drink him in. His hair is longer, curling around his jaw, and the last adolescent softness has melted from his face. In his leather jacket and low-slung jeans, he’s more dangerously desirable than ever.
When he finally called me from Montreal after leaving me alone in the hotel room, he acted like nothing had happened.
I asked him why he didn’t wake me up to say goodbye, and he said: “You looked so pretty and peaceful. I didn’t want to mess that up.
” By the time I was done reeling from the word pretty, he was going on about his dorm room and his new roommate, so I buried my questions and let them lie.
Since then, we text all the time and FaceTime about once a month, but it’s not the same as having him here, in front of me.
Being around him again is like the moment before the storm breaks—heavy and electric on my skin, the air saturated with expectation against all rational experience, and I’m woefully out of practice at surviving his lure.
“What are you doing out here? You don’t smoke.” He plucks the half-smoked cigarette from my fingers and takes a drag. Since it’s making me nauseous anyway, I don’t resist.
“Neither do you.” At least, he wasn’t smoking last summer while he was home, but it’s been a year since I’ve seen him, so who the hell knows?
“Nope.” He drops the butt on the ground and stubs it out with his boot. “Jessie smoked like a fucking 1950s housewife, and it was gross as fuck.”
“Was?” I grasp at the past tense. “You broke up?” I guess Bea is kind of a clue, although monogamy has never really been Gem’s thing.
“We were never together. C’mon. Let’s get out of here.” It’s not a question, or even an invitation. It’s an assumption, and he’s already walking away, knowing I’ll chase him like I always do.
For a second, I balk, wanting to throw up some paltry resistance to prove I’m not still at his beck and call. But then he flashes a grin over his shoulder, and who am I kidding? Besides, wasn’t this the whole point of letting Echo kiss me in the tent?
“Where are we going?” I ask, like I don’t already know. I drag myself off the steps of the ticket booth and follow him toward the trees. Before we make it to the clearing with the hammock, however, he stops dead, tilting his head back and closing his eyes.
“Shit. This stuff is strong.”
“What did you take?”
“A little molly.” He sways and slumps against a convenient redwood trunk. His hand drifts toward the front pocket of his jeans. “You want some?”
For a moment, I’m tempted. I rarely do hard drugs, but the whiskey currently coursing through my bloodstream is doing its job of lowering my inhibitions, and I’ve never been good at resisting the chance to get closer to him, even when I’m sober.
It would be easy to say yes now—to let my guard down and gorge myself on a little sliver of his life.
“C’mere,” he says, before I can decide, and reaches out to snag my waistband.
His limbs are already going soft and clumsy as he tugs me toward him, and I beg the alcohol in my system to keep my cock in line as his knuckles brush the sensitive skin at my hip.
With monumental willpower, I stop myself from crashing against him, bracing an arm on the tree above his head.
“Why’d you let him kiss you?” he slurs, gaze drifting lazily over my features.
“Echo?” That was hours ago, and Gem had barely reacted at the time. Did it actually work?
“You should stop kissing unavailable guys.”
Blame it on the whiskey or the drugs. Blame it on the moonlight and the midnight hour. His mouth is right there. I dip my head a fraction, hovering over the chasm of possibility.
“Who should I be kissing, Quill?”
A shiver runs through his body, and his fingers twitch against my skin.
“Someone who deserves you.”
I’m going to do it. I’m going to kiss him. Maybe it’s a terrible idea, but the inevitability is a tidal pull, and I’m too far gone to resist.
“Remember when we sardine canned the box truck?”
What?
I jerk my head up as he giggles, the sound whickering through the dark.
Unspent adrenaline sloshes uneasily in my stomach as I struggle to adjust to the abrupt change in tone.
I remember your head against my shoulder and the way your hair tickled my cheek and the bare skin of your calves tangled with mine.
I remember your fingers pressed against the pulse in my throat.
“You sardine canned the box truck,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“And you told Shilo you could fix it.”
“I was dying to play with the welder.” I try to back away, but he has a death grip on my jeans. “I thought she was gonna kill us.”
“Me, maybe. You’ve always been her favorite son.” There’s no resentment in his drugged-out voice, only a wistfulness that makes my heart ache. I shake my head in denial and finally drag myself free of his grip. His hand hovers in the air between us for a moment before dropping to his side.
“We should play gay chicken.”
I stare at him. Trying to follow his train of thought is giving me whiplash.
“That’s for straight guys. You can’t play gay chicken with someone who’s already gay.”
“Why not?”
“Because…I’ll win?”
“All the more reason you should want to play. Don’t you want to know what the winner gets?”
“You just stopped me from—No.”
“I’m thinking it should be an orgasm. How is it so hot out here right now?” He shrugs out of his jacket and lets it drop to the ground.
“What?”
“I was selfish last time.” He tilts his head, eyes half lidded and hazy. “And you’re still a virgin.”
It’s been two years since that night in the airport hotel, but I haven’t forgotten a second of it. My dick hardens instantly at the memory.
“Why are you so obsessed with my sex life?”
“You don’t have a sex life, Rocket. I’m trying to help you change that.”
“By playing gay chicken?”
“And letting you win.”
“You’re high as fuck right now. That doesn’t even make sense.”
He lurches away from the tree, fisting his hands in my T-shirt and sliding his thigh between my legs. I grab his shoulders.
“Jesus. Quill…Gem. Stop.” Why is it always this razor’s edge with him? A tightrope strung taut between torment and rapture.
“I don’t want to stop,” he whispers into my chest. “I want to see if I can make you come in your pants.”
He’s about ten seconds away from getting his wish.
“Gem?” The beam of a headlamp sweeps over us. Cheyenne.
He staggers back, shoving at me hard enough to almost land his ass in the dirt.
Right. I rub uselessly at the sudden stab in my chest. Cheyenne stops about twenty feet away, politely angling the light at the ground.
“Bea is looking for you,” she says, soft and apologetic.
“Yeah,” Gem mumbles, scooping up his fallen jacket and heading back toward the tent without a backward glance. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
He slows as he passes her, lowering his voice, but I catch every word:
“Please don’t tell my mom.”