Chapter 35 – Jack
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jack
“I can’t believe you actually slept in this thing,” Paco said, the second we were inside my bedroom, contemplating what was now, clearly, a very-much-too-small bed for three adult men.
“You spent three nights in there with me,” I told him, reaching to pull the pieces of it apart. It was all slat construction. I hadn’t used any screws, thanks to my eighth grade shop teacher.
“I wish I remembered them,” he told me.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said, as he came up to help me with disassembly. “Paco, I—”
“Shh,” he said, cutting me off with a head shake. “Just none of that, okay? No more apologies. You don’t need to make them, and I don’t want them besides.”
“All right,” I said, with a nod. “Should we talk about the blond guy who’s in the shower right now, first?”
But before we could, the water turned off, and Zach came in, still wet, with one of my towels wrapped around his waist and water beading off of him .
. . closely followed by Luna, who flung two semi-damp hand towels at Paco and me, respectively, with a shouted, “So you’re not disgusting!
” before slamming the door behind herself.
I took the hint and used the towel to scrub at my face—and when I was done, the both of them were somehow, miraculously, still there.
“I guess you know I’m a vampire now, right?” I asked Zach.
“Yeah.” He jerked his chin at Paco. “He explained it to me.”
“Thanks for that. For everything.” Paco’d managed to tell me some of it this morning before the sun came up.
“So I know how you feed,” Zach said. “And . . . you could’ve had sex with anyone, right?”
I wasn’t sure where this was going. “Technically. Yeah. I didn’t, though,” I said, trying to wheel things back, just in case.
But instead of depressed, the look on Zach’s face went mischievous. “But you chose to have sex with me. Repeatedly.”
“Well . . . you did live in my apartment complex—” I started off, and Paco cuffed the back of my head.
“Ow! That hurt!” I said, surprised. I whirled on him, and found he’d cleaned himself off some, plus he’d already taken off his shirt—and he was looking at Zach, not me.
“Yes, you lived close by, but you weren’t just a convenience to Jack.
You’re nice, you’re cute, you seem remarkably adaptable, considering,” he said, waving a hand around the room, and indicating the set of wildly inappropriate and ridiculous circumstances that’d brought us all together, “and you’re a good lay.
” After that he looked at me. “Can you just not shit on a good thing for once in your life?”
I hid a laugh with one hand. “Fine,” I said, with mock spite, then looked over to Zach. “Everything he said is true. I just didn’t want to hurt you was all—or you, for that matter,” I said, turning back to Paco.
Paco reached out and put a gentle hand over my mouth, like I had his, twelve hours prior. “I think we’ve both heard everything we need to out of you tonight.”
I swallowed and gave a muffled, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Paco said, taking my shoulder, and using that and his hand to push me to a seat on my bed.
“I think what’s going to happen from now until dawn is that Zach and I are going to spoil you.
Repeatedly,” he said, finally lifting his hand up.
“You don’t just get to go and almost die without there being consequences. ”
I looked between the two of them and licked my lips, tasting the salt of Paco’s palm there. Zach dropped his towel, Paco’s hands were on his belt, and I knew there was only one thing to tell them.
“All right.”