Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
jason
I set the pencil down carefully like the sound alone might wake him.
The paper in front of me was a mess of half-solved problems and scratched-out numbers.
I pushed it aside and leaned back in the chair, rubbing my eyes with the palms of my hands.
My shoulders ached. My brain felt overcooked.
Stats had stopped being numbers a while ago and had turned into shapes and blobs.
I turned in the chair without meaning to.
Bennet was fast asleep in my bed.
The sight of him made something deep inside my chest stir the wrong way.
His glasses were off and sitting crooked on the nightstand.
His hair had fallen into his eyes in a way that made him look younger, softer, like the sharp edges he carried around during the day had been set down somewhere out of reach.
One arm was bent over his head, the other loose against his side.
His mouth was slightly open, breath slow and even.
Warmth flooded my chest so suddenly I had to look away.
I dragged a hand over my face and exhaled quietly.
What am I going to do with you now? The thought was soft and tired and a little helpless.
Guilt followed right on its heels.
I shouldn’t have let him fall asleep here. I should’ve woken him, sent him home, kept things clean and simple and professional like he wanted. Like he deserved. Instead, I’d watched him sink deeper into the mattress, his voice fading out midsentence, his hand slipping from his cheek to the pillow.
I hadn’t had the heart to wake him.
No. Scratch that. That was a lie. I wanted him to fall asleep. I wanted the intimacy of him losing himself on my pillow. I wanted to lie in my bed tomorrow night and still find the lingering scent of his cologne.
I stood slowly, every muscle protesting, and moved to the bed. The room was quiet except for Peanut’s soft snoring from the floor. I hesitated, then reached down and pulled the blanket up a little higher over Bennet’s shoulder.
He didn’t stir.
I swallowed and glanced at the floor, then back at the bed. The floor was harder and colder than I wanted it to be. The fact that I wanted to be closer should have made the decision for me. I should have slept on the floor.
I slipped under the blanket carefully, keeping my movements slow and deliberate. I turned my back to him on instinct, creating space that barely existed. My upper back was inches from his chest. Too close. Way too close.
The bed dipped and settled. Heat bloomed under the covers immediately. I stared at the wall and told myself to sleep.
It didn’t work.
Every sound he made registered in my body like a pulse. The quiet hitch of his breath, the faint rustle of fabric when he shifted his arm, and the warmth at my back that felt like a touch.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Don’t be an idiot.
I tried to think about Stats. I pictured the worksheet. The stupid bell curve. The way Bennet bit his pen absent-mindedly when I was trying to explain how I got my results.
That didn’t help at all, because now I was thinking about Bennet. About Bennet with a pen between his lips.
About the way he’d looked sitting on my bed earlier, elbow on the pillow, head tilted in his hand like he was at home. About the way his mouth curved when he corrected me, patient and sharp at the same time. About the kiss I kept pretending hadn’t happened.
My body reacted before my brain could stop it.
Heat pooled low in my stomach. Awareness sharpened until it felt almost painful.
I shifted slightly, then froze, terrified I’d move too much and wake him.
And if he woke up now and got even a faint hint that I was rock hard and flustered inches away from him, I’d never crawl out of the Earth through which I’d hope to fall.
This is not appropriate, I told myself.
That did absolutely nothing.
I lay there, rigid and restless, every nerve tuned toward the inches between us. I tried counting breaths again. I tried thinking about practice. About drills. About the coach yelling. About literally anything that wasn’t the warmth behind me.
It all led back to the same place. It all led to the fact that I wanted to turn around and face him, to lean in, to let my brow touch his, to let our hands reach for one another, and to let the darkness hide the secrets between us.
Then Bennet moved.
It was slow and unconscious, just a sleepy adjustment. The mattress shifted. His breath changed. And then his hand brushed my back.
I sucked in a breath so fast it almost hurt.
His fingers rested against my skin, warm and light, just below my shoulder blade.
I went completely still. The contact burned in the best and worst way. My heart pounded so hard I was sure he could feel it through my back.
Please don’t move. Please.
The thought came unfiltered, selfish, and raw. I didn’t want the touch to end. I didn’t want him to wake up and realize where his hand was. I didn’t want to have to explain myself or my body or the way this felt dangerous and perfect all at once.
His hand stayed.
Minutes passed. Or seconds. Time got weird in moments like this.
I lay there, barely breathing, letting the warmth sink into me until it felt like it had always belonged there. Every instinct I had screamed to turn around, to look at him, to close the distance properly.
I didn’t.
I kept my back to him and took it, the ache and the want and the quiet desperation, because that was the only way I knew how to keep him safe from my mess.
Eventually, his fingers curled slightly, then slid away as he shifted again. The loss was immediate, both sharp and cold. I bit down on it and forced myself to breathe through my nose.
The night dragged on.
At some point, the tension dulled into something heavy and exhausting. My thoughts slowed. My body finally gave up the fight. Sleep crept in sideways, unwelcome but relentless.
The last thing I remembered was the steady rhythm of his breathing behind me and the quiet hope that I wouldn’t do something stupid in my dreams.
Then the dark took me.
It was one of those nights when you wish you’d dream. If I’d dreamed, they would have been the best, the sweetest, the most exciting dreams. But the night passed, and I stirred with a quiet gasp, opening my eyes and tensing all over, unsure what to do and where to move.
A dull ache pulsed in my crotch, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
Bennet’s breathing shifted behind me, deeper for a moment, then uneven. Not awake. Not yet. Just hovering closer to the surface.
I stayed perfectly still.
My body was already betraying me in ways I didn’t want to think about, but it wasn’t the physical ache that scared me. I’d dealt with that before. That was easy, mechanical, something you could walk off or laugh about later.
This wasn’t that.
I’d always been good at keeping things light.
People thought that meant confident. It usually meant I didn’t stay anywhere long enough for things to get complicated. I smiled. I flirted. I let people want me without letting them actually touch anything real. It worked. It always worked. Everyone got what they wanted, and nobody asked for more.
Nobody looked too closely.
Nobody asked why I joked my way through half my life. Nobody stopped and said, “Hey, you don’t actually seem like you’ve got this together.”
Until Bennet.
He hadn’t shown up because it was convenient or impressive or fun. He hadn’t cared that I was the guy people stared at or talked about or assumed things about. He hadn’t treated me like something to collect or orbit or show off.
He’d just…shown up.
With papers. With patience. With that look he got when he was focused, like the rest of the world faded out and all that mattered was the problem in front of him. Like I mattered because I needed help, not because I was useful to him.
He hadn’t once acted like tutoring me was some kind of favor he deserved credit for. He hadn’t teased me about being bad at Stats in front of anyone else. He hadn’t tried to leverage it into anything.
He cared whether I passed because it mattered to me.
That was it.
That was the thing I couldn’t stop circling back to, lying there in the dark with his warmth just behind me.
How was I supposed to let go of that?
How was I supposed to pretend that wasn’t different from every other almost-something I’d ever had?
How was I supposed to resist kissing him when he was so sweet and cute and kind?
My throat tightened, and I swallowed hard, staring at the wall like it might offer answers. I felt stupid for wanting more when I hadn’t even figured out what more would look like. I felt selfish for wanting to hold on to him when I didn’t know how to give anything back without screwing it up.
Everyone thought I knew exactly what I was doing.
They didn’t see the way my chest went tight every time someone expected me to be easy. They didn’t see the panic that set in when things started to feel real. They didn’t see how badly I wanted someone to stay without asking me to perform for it.
Bennet wasn’t asking for anything.
That was the problem.
I let out a slow breath through my nose and stared at the faint outline of the door, willing myself to calm down. He deserved better than whatever mess I was turning into in my own head. He deserved clarity. He deserved safety.
And here I was, lying inches away from him, wanting to turn around and tuck myself into the space he’d already made for me without even realizing it.
Bennet shifted again, closer this time. Not enough to touch, but close enough that I could feel the heat of him more clearly.
My jaw tightened.
I wanted to be the guy who could reach back. The guy who could say something honest without wrapping it in humor or excuses. The guy who could admit that the kiss hadn’t been a mistake and that calling it one had been the coward’s way out.
But I wasn’t there yet.
So I lay there in the morning light, wanting and wanting and wanting, and told myself that holding still was the same thing as being good.