Chapter 12
Jesse
Sure enough, it’s him. Black hair swooping low over his forehead, all sexiness and dark, enormous eyes staring up at me as he throws me a half smile, touched with what almost looks like chagrin.
“Hey, sunshine.”
He has his arms pulled tightly and protectively around his body, just like he did tonight before I wrapped him in my coat.
Once again, he’s wearing just that too-thin jacket over that same lightweight sweatshirt.
He’s swapped his black jeans for a pair of grey sweatpants though.
Thin, soft looking sweatpants that hug his thighs and cling to—
Jesus Christ, stop staring at his pants and say something!
“Uh—” The non-word slips out with a raspy, breathless sound as I rip my eyes away from those damn pants and back up to Tristan’s face.
All I can do is try to breathe through the confusing mixture of discomfort at coming face to face with him again, so soon after how our evening ended tonight, and the almost irresistible desire to take just the quickest glance back down at those tempting sweats…
“Fuck, I did wake you up.” His smile wobbles slightly, looking suddenly forced. “Why I thought you might be awake—”
He shakes his head, unclasping one arm from around himself to reach up and run a hand through his hair in an unsure gesture I’ve never seen from him before. Suddenly I’m hyper-focused on just one thought. Something’s happened—
“Are you okay?” I’d like to pretend that the catch in my voice is from the fact that, yes, he did indeed wake me up. Unfortunately, I’m not as great at willful denial as I’d like to be at the moment. “What’s wrong?”
I only just stop myself halfway through a step forward toward him, my hand outstretched like I’d been about to reach out and grab his shoulder to pull him closer as that same urge from earlier tonight, when I’d had to see him warm and wrapped up in my coat, threatens to take over once more.
His nervous fingers slip through the purply black strands of his hair again as he hikes his smile back up.
“Other than the fact that the heater in my apartment picked tonight of all nights to die,” he huffs out an uncomfortable laugh as he ticks off his list on the fingers of his right hand, “and it’s pretty much the same temperature inside there as outside here,” another finger ticked off, “and I don’t know anyone to call for a place to go crash for the night—”
He lifts a shoulder in a flippant shrug, broadening his manufactured smile into a grin as he tosses his head to flip his hair out of his eyes.
“—nothing much.”
For one second, he shoots me a wide grin, and then the attempt at lighthearted ease falls away from his voice and face as he drops his eyes down to his Converse-clad feet shuffling slightly in the frosty sparkle of my icy doorstep.
“I know it’s shitty of me to come bother you like this,” he almost whispers, “but it’s so fucking cold, and I didn’t know where else to go—”
There’s a slight tremble to his lips as he breaks off, not like he’s about to cry, but like he’s only barely holding back from shivering.
It’s the sight of that that snaps my brain back online and out of the useless spin it had gotten itself caught in as I’d tried to process this unexpectedly hesitant side of the bold, flirtatious man I’d let myself assume existed all the way down to Tristan’s core.
“Jesus, get inside and warm up—” I’m in the process of blurting, pushing my door wide for him to step in at the same moment he turns his eyes up to me again, wide and hopeful, as he asks, “Would it be alright if I crash on your cou—”
And then those eyes drift to the now open doorway, scanning the sparse interior of my apartment, taking in the dated kitchen in the back corner, the small round table, leaves dropped so it can fit up against the wall, my battered old chair beside my bookshelf opposite the upright piano I’ve come to think of as mine as well, before circling around to land on my rumpled, slept in bed.
I can see the moment he realizes what isn’t there.
“Your floor,” he recovers almost instantly, eyes snapping back to mine with another fragile looking grin. “Just for tonight, so I don’t freeze to death in my sleep?”
His eyebrow with the piercing lifts, and he actually bats his ridiculously long, dark eyelashes.
Despite the forced feeling of the gesture and the way he’s still only just barely keeping his smile up, I can’t help the laugh he pulls from me, along with the answer that had already been on my lips from the moment I’d realized why he’d knocked. “Of course you can sleep here.”
Before I can consider whether it should or not, my hand finds the small of his back, and I’m guiding him through the door, practically pushing him into my apartment. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t resist, moving with what feels like willing relief under the pressure of my hand.
Maybe it’s this strange, unexpected glimpse of his vulnerability, or maybe it’s because our date was apparently such a complete failure that there’s no point in hoping or trying any more.
For whatever reason, all the awkwardness that’s plagued me every time I’ve attempted to talk to Tristan before, including on our date tonight, seems to have evaporated.
“Why didn’t you come over as soon as you realized the heater was out?” I demand the moment I’ve closed the door behind us.
The confused expression on his face is almost comical; the way his head tilts to the side, the furrow between his brows, the slight scrunch to his nose.
It’s all so endearing that it almost makes me forget my realization of a moment before that I need to try my best to make this as not awkward as possible for him.
“I heard you trying to fix it, or whatever you were doing,” I grin at him, side stepping to make room for him to slip out of his shoes. “That was what all that banging was a few hours ago, right?”
Maybe if I act like nothing happened and there’s nothing potentially weird about this situation we’ve found ourselves in…
Instantly, he freezes, his shoulders tensing up again.
Or maybe not…
“Shit. That was loud, wasn’t it? I’m really sorry—” He reaches up to muss his hair yet again as he stares down at his sock-clad feet where he’s standing, still crowded over by the doorway in the small entry nook, as if he’s not sure he should really come in more than that.
“I was up anyway,” I shrug, hoping I look nonchalant and that the statement doesn’t make him circle back to feeling guilty for having woken me up just now.
The thick fall of his bangs over his forehead as they slip free of his fingers isn’t enough to mask the anxious tension in his expression as he hesitantly nods in uncertain acknowledgment of my words.
And then his eyes darken and his brows pull together as he worries the side of his lip, so lightly I’m not sure he’s even aware he’s doing it.
“You weren’t just now though.” It’s a statement, but his eyes are questioning when they flick up to mine and then away as he wraps his arms tightly around his middle again, tucking his hands under his elbows.
“You’re not pissed about me bothering you?”
“God no,” I shake my head for emphasis. “And you’re not bothering me.”
The stirrings of that impulse to pull him close and hold him and protect him rise in me again as a growing suspicion starts to make a few pieces of this strange interaction and the new side of Tristan it’s showing me fall into place.
Someone in his past would have been pissed.
Hoping to be unmistakably plain so he can at least stop worrying about this, I move to the side, catching his gaze in mine as I say, firmly, clearly, “I’m glad you’re here and not back over there freezing your ass off. That’s more than worth being woken up for.”
A bit of the tension seems to melt away from him at my words as his grip across his chest loosens and his face softens slightly.
“I’m not going to be an asshole and make you sleep on the floor, though,” I go on, hurrying to add the important explanation I should have led with— “I’ll sleep in my chair, and you can have my bed.”
He nods once, but there’s a distracted, distant look on his face, and I’m not completely sure if he’s even heard me. “I’m sorry.”
A stupid joke about him needing to apologize for apologizing so much is on the tip of my tongue when his next words cut me off.
“About how I blew you off before. You probably think I’m a total dick for being like that,” he barrels on, pausing only to tug at his lip with his teeth again. “It wasn’t you—” he breathes out a shaky breath, taking a cautious step toward me as he uncrosses his arms.
My stomach does this weird, half-sinking, half-swooping thing, and suddenly all that confidence and cool I’d mysteriously found evaporates in an instant.
The rigid set to his face and the way he won’t meet my eyes, like he’d rather be anywhere other than here right now, if he had anywhere else to go, are unmistakable.
“Look, I get it that you’re not into me, and it’s okay,” I raise a hand to silence him when his head shoots up, the horrified, almost panicked expression in his eyes making it clear that he’s about to interrupt.
I’ve committed to this though, and dammit, I’m going to see it through now that I’ve started.
“As far as I’m concerned right now, you’re just a neighbor who needs a hand and I’m here for you. ”
He takes another step forward, cocking his head slightly as he flashes me a smile that doesn’t touch his still wary eyes. “Is that all you want me to be? Just a neighbor?”
He shakes his head, like he’s answering his own question, and suddenly I’m squirming with the exposed, mortifying awareness of my sudden certainty that he can see right through me to the bald truth of how desperately I want so much more than that.
“How about you let me show you how very good of a neighbor I can be, hmm, sunshine?”
Jesus— All I can do is stare as my mouth goes dry, my mind racing to try to process what is even happening.
And then, before I can so much as begin to try to work out whether he’s serious or joking or maybe even mocking me, he takes one final step that brings him so close that I’d barely have to move my hands to settle them on his hips.
Instead, my mind snaps back into focus, and I take a quick step back, forcing myself to put a little distance between us.
It’s as much to try to clear my own head as to put a pause on whatever he’s doing, because the combination of his tension and nervousness and this sudden advance are setting off alarm bells in my head right and left, and suddenly I realize that, in this moment, it’s me—and maybe even more Tristan himself—that I need to protect him from.
“Tristan, stop,” I shake my head, hoping my voice is coming out gently and not at all like I’m angry.
“You have to know you don’t owe me anything.
Not after our date, and not for being here tonight.
And I certainly don’t want you to think for a second that I’m going to try to take advantage of the situation.
You sleeping here isn’t part of some sort of transaction—”
It’s too late by the time I realize that was the wrong thing to say. All I can do is break off in silence at the sight of Tristan’s face, obvious hurt dulling the light in his eyes and tightening his lips as he takes what looks like an involuntary step back from me.
Hurt—
Because I can see so clearly in this instant how terribly I’ve misunderstood everything. That that wasn’t at all what he’d meant.
Fucking Christ, he actually wanted me. Me.
And because I had to pick now, now of all moments to be not only awkward and clueless but apparently also a total jackass, I’ve completely blown that miraculous chance I hadn’t even realized I’d had.
There’s something even worse than that though. So much worse, because that look of miserable, embarrassed pain in Tristan’s eyes is my fault. I put it there, and I don’t have a single idea how to take back what I’ve just done.