Chapter 10 #2
His mouth twitched. Under the table, his foot found mine—pressed against it, then slid up my ankle. At some point, he’d toed off his shoe. The contact was deliberate, and when I glanced at his face, his expression hadn’t changed at all. Still frowning at his screen. Still clicking through slides.
I went back to pretending to read. Three sentences later, his knee bumped mine. I bumped back. His foot traced higher, nudging against my calf, and I watched him swallow hard without looking away from his laptop.
“Stop distracting me,” he murmured.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Your existence is distracting.” He shifted in his chair—restless, adjusting. His foot pressed more firmly against my leg. “I can feel you looking at me.”
“Can’t help it.” I let my own foot slide up the inside of his leg, slow, stopping just below his knee. “You’re very lookable.”
His fingers fumbled on the keyboard—a typo he had to backspace through. The flush I’d been waiting for crept up his neck, and under the table, his legs parted. Not much. Enough.
“We’re in public,” he said, voice dropping.
“I’m aware.”
“So behave.”
“This is me behaving.” I pressed my calf against his, let my foot drift higher along his inner thigh. “You should see me when I’m not.”
His breath caught—barely audible over the dying espresso machine, but I heard it. His hand had gone still on the trackpad. When he finally looked at me, his pupils had blown wide, the brown almost swallowed by black.
“Seth.” My name came out strained. “I’m trying to work.”
“So work.”
“I can’t focus when you’re—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening. Under the table, his thighs pressed together, trapping my foot between them. The pressure made my pulse spike. “This is your fault.”
“What’s my fault?”
“That I can’t get enough of you.” The admission came out rough, almost angry. “I couldn’t focus in my morning class. Kept thinking about—” He stopped, shook his head, but his ears had gone red.
“About what?”
“You know what.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He glared at me, but there was no heat in it—or rather, the wrong kind of heat. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, close enough that I could smell his shampoo.
“This morning,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “When you came out of the shower. You had water running down your back, and you were just—standing there, and I wanted—” His throat worked. “We were going to be late.”
“We could have been late.”
“We couldn’t.” But his voice had gone rough, and his foot was moving again, sliding up to press against my inner thigh. “I’ve been thinking about it for hours. What I should have done instead of letting you get dressed.”
My jeans were getting uncomfortable. I shifted, trying to adjust without being obvious, and saw Tanner’s eyes drop to track the movement. His tongue darted out to wet his lower lip.
“And what should you have done?” I asked.
“I don’t—” He laughed, shaky and frustrated. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can’t stop thinking about—about your hands, and your mouth, and—” He broke off, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. “God. This is embarrassing.”
“It’s not.”
“It is. I’m sitting in a coffee shop getting worked up over a PowerPoint because you’re looking at me.”
“I’m always looking at you.”
“I know.” He dropped his hands, met my eyes. The want on his face was raw, unguarded in a way Tanner rarely let himself be. “That’s the problem.”
A group of students pushed through the door, laughing about something. Tanner’s expression shuttered instantly— He pulled his foot back, sat up straighter, and became the picture of a student working on a project. I made myself look at my laptop screen, seeing nothing.
When the students settled at a table near the front, Tanner let out a slow breath.
“I can’t do this here,” he said quietly.
“Do what?”
He looked at me, and the carefully constructed composure cracked just enough for me to see what was underneath. “Keep pretending I don’t want to climb across this table and—” He stopped. Swallowed hard. “I want to go home.”
“Then let’s go home.”
He started packing up his laptop with hands that weren’t quite steady. I watched him fumble with the zipper on his bag, watched the flush that still hadn’t faded from his neck, watched him very carefully not look at me.
When he stood, he grabbed his jacket and held it strategically in front of himself. I bit back a smile.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
I stood too, grateful for the table that blocked me from view for a few more seconds. “For the record, I have the same problem.”
His eyes dropped, then snapped back up to my face. The flush deepened. “Good,” he said. “Then we’re even.”
We weren’t even close to even. But we would be.
“If we don't leave right now, I'm going to do something embarrassing.” His voice cracked on the last word.
I was already reaching for my jacket.
Outside, November bit through the thin layers. We kept space between us on the main paths—the discretion we’d agreed on. Four more games until it wouldn’t matter. Students passed in clusters, heads down against the wind, too focused on getting somewhere warm to notice us.
When we turned onto the side street that led to our building, Tanner’s hand found mine.
“No one’s around,” he said. “I checked.”
His palm was warm against the cold. I held on.
We walked half a block before he spoke.
"I'm nervous," he said quietly. Not looking at me.
"About?"
"What happens when we get inside." His grip tightened on my hand. "I want it. I just—I've never—" He shook his head. "What if I'm bad at it?"
"You won't be."
"You don't know that."
"I know I don't care." I squeezed his hand. "We'll figure it out."
Our building came into view. Tanner’s pace quickened—just enough that I noticed. Just enough that my heart rate kicked up in response.
In the stairwell, between the second and third floors, he stopped.
The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting everything in pale yellow. Harsh light, ugly light. But Tanner turned to face me, and all I could see was the want written across his features—parted lips, rapid breathing, the way his hands were already reaching for me.
“I can’t wait anymore,” he said.
Then he backed me against the wall and kissed me like he’d been thinking about it for hours. Because he had. He’d told me so.
I pulled him closer, hands gripping his hips through his jacket. He made a sound against my mouth—low, needy—and I felt it everywhere.
“Inside,” he said. “Now.”
We barely made it through the door.
His hands were under my shirt before the lock clicked, shoving fabric up, palms flat against my stomach. I walked him backward toward the couch, but he shook his head.
“Bedroom.”
The word hit me low. We’d been sleeping in the same bed for weeks—tangled together, waking up hard, pulling back before it went further. This was different. His eyes were dark, certain.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” He kissed me again, slower, his fingers working at my buttons. “I want this. I want you.”
We left a trail of clothes down the hallway. His jacket by the door. My shirt halfway to the bedroom. His belt clattering against the hardwood. By the time we reached my room, he was down to boxers and I was fumbling with my jeans, both of us breathing too hard.
“Wait.” Tanner caught my wrists. “I need to—” He laughed, shaky. “I’ve never done this before. Any of it. And I want it to be— I don’t want to screw it up.”
I cupped his face, made him look at me. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
“That sounds like a line.”
“It’s not.” I kissed his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. “Tell me what you want. Tell me if something doesn’t feel good. We go at your pace.”
He searched my face. Whatever he found made his shoulders drop.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I can do that.”
I guided him onto the bed, followed him down. The sheets were cool against my skin, but he was warm underneath me—lean muscle and sharp angles and the faint smell of that generic shampoo I'd started associating with home.
We kissed until my lips felt bruised, until he was grinding up against me and making sounds I wanted to memorize. Then he pushed at my chest—gentle, not stopping, just shifting—and I rolled onto my back, letting him settle over me.
"I want to look at you," he said.
He straddled my hips, and for a moment he just..
. looked. His eyes traced the lines of ink across my chest—the sunburst over my heart, the script curling across my pec, the clouds and stars scattered between.
I'd gotten most of it sophomore year, back when I thought pain I chose was better than pain I didn't. Tanner didn't know that yet.
But the way he was looking at me made me think he might already understand.
His fingers followed his eyes. Featherlight over the rays of the sun, dipping into the hollow of my collarbone, tracing the letters one by one. I'd gather the sun, the moon and the stars for the ones I love. His lips moved silently, reading.
"Who's it for?" he asked.
"My sister. She used to say that to me when we were kids." I swallowed. "Before everything got complicated."
He didn't say anything. Just leaned down and pressed his mouth to the words, kiss after kiss along the curve of each letter.
When he reached the last one, he kept going—down to the sunburst, tracing the rays with his tongue, then lower, his lips dragging across my stomach while his hands mapped the palm trees inked along my arm.
No one had ever touched me like this. Like the ink was part of me worth knowing. Like my body was something to study instead of use.
"Tanner." His name came out hoarse.
He looked up at me, chin resting on my stomach, and the expression on his face—reverent, wanting, a little wrecked—made my chest ache.
"I've wanted to do that for months," he said. "Every time you came out of the shower. Every time your shirt rode up."
"You could have."