Chapter 11
The car is quiet on the drive back to campus.
It's just me and Jay, the heat on low and some indie playlist humming through the speakers. My stomach is full of fried chicken, my lips are still tingling from that kiss in the parking lot, and I can't stop stealing glances at the man beside me.
This is a side of Jay Cross I never expected to see. Not the cocky hockey captain. Not the guy with the terrible pickup lines. Just... a brother. A person who loves his family and shows up for the people who matter.
It's devastating.
“So,” Jay says, breaking the comfortable silence. “That was...”
“Perfect.” The word comes out before I can stop it. “That was perfect, Jay.”
His expression softens in the glow of the dashboard lights. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I reach over and take his hand where it rests on the center console, threading my fingers through his. “Thank you. For tonight. For introducing me to Owen. For letting me into this part of your life.”
“Thank you for not running away when he told you I was bad at talking to girls.”
“Please. That just made me like you more.”
We pull into the parking lot outside my dorm, and Jay kills the engine. Neither of us moves to get out. The night stretches around us, quiet and full of possibility, and I don't want it to end.
“Do you want to come up?”
The words are out before I can overthink them. Jay's head turns toward me, eyebrows raised.
“What about Kinsey?”
“She texted me during dinner. Said she's staying at her friend's place tonight.” I roll my eyes at the memory. “She included approximately seventeen winky faces and a message that said 'the room is yours, don't do anything I wouldn't do, which is basically nothing so go wild.'“
He laughs, but there's something hesitant in his expression. “Ally, I don't want you to feel like—”
“I'm inviting you up because I want to spend more time with you.” I hold his gaze steadily. “That's it. Unless you don't want to.”
“I want to.” The words come out fast, almost desperate. “Trust me, I want to.”
“Then come up.”
He doesn't need to be told twice.
The walk to my room feels different with him beside me. Charged. His hand finds the small of my back as we climb the stairs, warm and steady, and my heart is pounding harder than it should be for something as simple as walking down a hallway.
When I unlock the door, the first thing I notice is the roses. Kinsey put them in a mason jar on my desk with a sticky note that says: These are disgustingly romantic. I approve.
“She's something else,” Jay says, spotting the note.
“That's one word for it.”
I shrug off his jacket and hand it back to him, immediately missing the weight of it on my shoulders. He drapes it over my desk chair and looks around the small room—two beds, two desks, a mini fridge, and approximately three square feet of floor space.
“So this is where you live.”
“This is where I live.” I gesture at the cramped space. “Try to contain your awe.”
“I'm awed.” He picks up a framed photo from my desk—me and Kinsey at some campus event, both of us mid-laugh. “You look happy here.”
“I am. Mostly.” I sit on the edge of my bed. “When I'm not being tormented by hockey players with bad pickup lines.”
“That was one time.”
“It was a formative experience.”
He sets the photo down and turns to face me, and for a moment we just look at each other. The room feels smaller with him in it. Not in a bad way—just charged.
“Can I sit?” he asks, nodding toward my bed.
“Sure.”
He settles next to me, close enough that our shoulders brush. The mattress dips under his weight, and I'm acutely aware of how intimate this is. Jay Cross, in my room, on my bed, looking at me like I'm something precious.
“So,” he says. “What do you usually do on a Friday night?”
“Study. Stress eat. Watch trash TV.” I grab my laptop from the nightstand. “Speaking of which—have you ever seen The Baseball Bachelor?”
“The what?”
“It's this ridiculous reality show where a baseball player dates like twenty women at once and eliminates them based on challenges like 'who can catch a fly ball in heels.'“ I pull up the streaming app. “It's objectively terrible and I'm obsessed with it.”
“That sounds... awful.”
“It is. You'll love it.”
I prop the laptop between us and hit play. The opening credits roll—cheesy music, slow-motion shots of a mediocre-looking guy in a baseball uniform—and Jay makes a sound of pure disbelief.
“This is real? This is a real show that exists?”
“Welcome to my world.”
We watch in silence for a few minutes, Jay's commentary getting increasingly incredulous.
“She's crying because he gave her a rose? They've known each other for three hours.”
“That's the point. It's unhinged.”
“This is the worst thing I've ever seen.” He's grinning. “Put on the next episode.”
We make it through two episodes before the laptop battery dies and neither of us moves to plug it in. The room is darker now, lit only by the glow of the streetlights outside my window, and at some point Jay's arm ended up around my shoulders.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
I look up at him. “Hey.”
“I had a really good time tonight.”
“Me too.”
“I want to do this again.” His voice is careful, measured. “Not just tonight. I mean... all of it. The dates, the hanging out, the watching terrible reality TV while you mock my taste in everything.”
My heart is pounding. “What are you saying?”
“I'm saying I want to date you, Ally Hart.” He turns to face me fully, his expression open and vulnerable in a way I've never seen from him. “For real. Not just whatever we've been doing—the chasing, the running, the pretending we don't feel something. I want the real thing.”
“Jay...”
“You don't have to answer now. I know I've been a lot, and I know you have reasons to be skeptical, and I know my track record isn't exactly—”
“Yes.”
He stops. “What?”
“Yes.” I'm smiling, and I can't seem to stop. “I want to date you too. For real.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
His answering grin is blinding. “Okay. Good. That's... that's really good.”
He leans in and kisses me, soft and sweet, nothing like the desperate, frantic kisses we've shared before. This one feels different, like it was earned.
When he pulls back, I don't let him go far.
“Stay,” I whisper.
“Ally—”
“I mean it.” I thread my fingers through his hair, pulling him closer. “Stay with me tonight.”
“Are you sure?”
Instead of answering, I kiss him again—harder this time, with intent.
He makes a low sound in his throat and pulls me onto his lap, his hands sliding up my thighs, pushing the red dress higher.
Higher. All the way up to my waist, bunching the fabric there until I'm completely exposed from the waist down.
He looks down and groans.
“A red thong.” His voice is wrecked. “You planned this.”
“Maybe.”
“Definitely.” His hips push up, the rough fabric of his trousers grinding against my core, and I gasp at the friction. “You've been walking around all night with this underneath?”
I shrug. “It matches the dress.”
“It's going to be the death of me.”
His hands slide around to my ass, fingers spreading wide, palming both cheeks and squeezing as he rocks up into me again. Even through his trousers I can feel how hard he is, and the thin fabric of my thong does nothing to dull the pressure against my clit.
“This fucking dress,” he mutters against my mouth. “You've been killing me all night.”
I roll my hips to meet him, grinding down against the hard length of him, and he groans into my mouth. His fingers tighten on my ass, pulling me harder against him, guiding my movements until we find a rhythm together.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “You feel so good.”
“We're still wearing clothes.”
“I know.” He rocks up into me again, hitting my clit perfectly, and I whimper. “Doesn't matter. You could make me come just like this.”
“That would be embarrassing for you.”
“Don't care.” His mouth finds my neck, sucking and biting while his hands keep me grinding against him. “Worth it.”
I tilt my head back, giving him better access, my fingers digging into his shoulders. Every roll of my hips sends sparks through me, the friction of his trousers against the damp fabric of my thong is almost unbearably good.
“Jay—” I'm panting as my movements are getting more desperate. “I need—”
“I know what you need.” He pulls back to look at me, his eyes dark and hungry. “But I want to take my time with you tonight.”
He kisses me again, slower this time, savoring. His hands slide up my back, his fingers tracing my spine through the fabric of the dress, while I keep rocking against him. The contrast—the sweet, tender kiss and the dirty grind of our hips—makes my head spin.
“You're so fucking beautiful,” he murmurs against my lips. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
Not wanting to answer him, I kiss him again.
When his hands find the zipper at the back of my dress, he asks, “Can I?”
“Please.”
But he doesn't pull it down yet. Instead, he keeps kissing me, keeps rocking up into me, until I'm trembling in his lap, right on the edge of something.
“Jay,” I gasp. “If you don't—I'm going to—”
“Not yet.” He stills my hips with his hands, and I make a sound of protest. “I want to feel you come on my tongue first.”
The words shoot straight through me. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He grins, finally reaching for that zipper. “Oh.”
He lays me back on the bed, hovering over me, and I cup his face, drawing his attention to me. There's no smirk. No cocky grin. Just pure, unguarded want.
Leaning down, he places a kiss on my mouth before traveling down my neck to my collarbone, then the swell of my breasts above the neckline of my dress. I arch into him, gasping, my hands scrambling for purchase on his shoulders.
“Off,” I manage, tugging at his shirt. “Take it off.”
He complies, pulling the henley over his head in one fluid motion, and God, I will never get tired of looking at him. All those muscles I've wanted to touch professionally are now mine to explore however I want.