20. Jonny
Chapter twenty
Jonny
Ican’t stop. I should stop, but I can’t.
It’s like being on the top of the rollercoaster as it starts to rock forward, in the few seconds when it’s starting to pick up speed and you’re holding on for dear life.
But then Lance circles his arms around me and kisses me back, and the rollercoaster car pitches forward, and I’m falling.
One of his hands is on the back of my neck, the other is roaming over my back.
And now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.
I back him up until the back of his legs hit his bed, I push him back onto the mattress.
For a second, I think he’ll drag me along with him, but instead, he lets go.
He lands on the bed and props himself up on his elbows, staring at me hungrily. “Off,” he demands.
I resist. He can demand all he wants, but I am suddenly acutely conscious that it’s all my choice to obey him or tease him.
I feel totally in control, just to see him falling over his words like this.
And it goes to my head like a sugar high.
“What, with this?” I lift the front flap of the sweatshirt he lent me to reveal my tank top and the look on his face makes me feel like I’m a movie star.
For the first time in my life, I feel porn-star level hot.
“All of it. Off.” He peels off his shirt and throws it to the side without looking and then hooks his thumbs under the waistband of his sweats.
I straddle him before he can yank them down and slowly take off my shirt and tank top in one motion.
I watch as he focuses on my tattoos, his eyes hungrily tracing every line.
He slides his fingers along the outline of the phoenix running up my arm.
If there were any brakes on this train, they’re long gone. I push him back down and kiss him, marveling in the feel of him underneath me. He pulls at my sweatpants, and his, and I have a vague feeling of them being kicked away. All I know is the feel of our bodies touching from top to toe.
There’s no time for prep work or foreplay. I grab his cock and milk it with my hands. I’m rewarded when he arcs his back and whispers my name. He beckons me to kiss him again. I do. He squeezes and touches me everywhere he can get his hands on—my midriff, the backs of my thighs, my ass.
I pull away, gasping for air. “I’m a top,” I manage.
“Fine,” he says, and pulls me back to him, and I’m so surprised I don’t even think about resisting or maintaining the semblance of control that I had until now. I’ve been telling myself that this would be the red line that Lance would never cross, but apparently, I’m wrong.
He rolls me over onto my back and kisses down my chest, and then engulfs my cock in his mouth. I yelp and it’s everything I can do not to fuck into him, but he’s doing all the work himself.
“Lance,” I whisper. I want him to stop before I come and shame myself with the shortest fuck in human history. He backs off and lets me out of his mouth.
“You have to—” I start.
“No. Tonight you can fuck me blind, but I’ve waited for this too long. Right now, you are coming.” He lifts my cock and jams it into his mouth without breaking eye contact.
I whimper and strain, trying to deny him the orgasm, but he’s good at what he’s doing, and I’m no match for his determination.
When I finally feel it boiling out of me, I try one last time to pull him off but he sinks in, staring at me defiantly as my body starts to spasm.
I clutch the sheets and shout as I orgasm, and when it’s over, I collapse into a limp puddle. I look at him. He’s taken it all.
“Kiss me,” I demand. He crawls up and kisses me. His mouth has the familiar metallic taste of semen. I push him onto his back. “Now, you.” I crouch next to him and swallow his cock, determined to show him that he’s not the only one who’s learned a thing or two in the past couple of years.
He moans and calls my name, pressing my head down against his cock.
He’s less reserved than I was, and when he starts to fuck my face, I don’t fight it.
It’s swift and urgent, and when he comes, he doesn’t try to pull off like I did.
No, he’s straight down my throat, and it feels like he’s given me about a gallon of it before he’s done.
The second he’s done, he drags me up and kisses me again.
He hooks his arm around my waist and stares at me.
“That was…” I start.
“Amazing,” he says.
Misguided, I wanted to say. But I like his answer more.
I lie there, looking at him, this handsome man gasping for breath because of me.
He’s got the Marine Corps anchor on his bicep, which I think is standard issue when they finish basic, but other than that, he looks like the boy I knew in high school.
He studies me. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
I’m surprised by this change of topic. “The first day of ninth grade?”
“No, before that.”
I shake my head.
“It was at a birthday party at Captain Eddie’s.”
“Was it?” I try to think back, but then shake my head.
“There’s like a wall there. I don’t remember almost anything before the day of the fires.
I mean, it’s all there. I’m sure of it. But it feels like a dream.
Sometimes I know people and I don’t know how it is I know them.
A name will come into my head and I think, oh, that’s so-and-so.
They’ll think we know each other. But I don’t remember anything at all. Like it’s locked up.”
“Does it scare you?”
I look at him. Lance would fight my battles without question. I decide to tell the truth. “Yes. But I can handle it.”
He takes a deep, dissatisfied breath. “Was that what happened with Krista Chambers?”
“I couldn’t even place her. It was mind-numbing, the panic. I feel like I’m in a town full of ghosts, and they all seem to know me and want a part of me, but they’re all strangers.”
He takes it in, and I watch him put something away.
He has just found out that the thing he’s carried since he was seven happened to a boy who isn’t in here anymore.
He wants to pull at it. He wants me to remember, and he isn’t going to ask me to, and I can see exactly what it costs him to swallow it.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. It isn’t. But he says it anyway, and he rearranges the pillow so that we’re sharing it, and I realize that this is the first time I’ve ever had pillow talk in my life.
“No, it’s not,” I say. “You deserved more than that. You always did.”
“Can I tell you something?” he says.
“Please.”
“I told your aunt about my seventh birthday party,” he says. “There was a boy there in a Kermit the Frog shirt who came over while I was bleeding, and hugged me, and told his whole class I was his best friend.”
I wait for it to arrive. Nothing arrives.
“That was you,” he says.
“Oh.”
It ought to be the largest thing anybody has ever told me, and there is nothing there at all.
He reaches up and tucks my hair behind my ear. I don’t fight it. I kiss his wrist when it’s passing by my mouth.
He smiles at me. “Anyway, we met again in the sixth grade, and by the ninth grade, when we had started at Farley, I realized how much you’d sunk into yourself. I wanted to be someone special for you.”
“You idiot, you were already special for me.”
“Well, I didn’t know that.”
“So, since I had been living with this shadow for such a long time, I thought, at least I can protect him. But I can’t do that if I’m still weak.
So I decided I was going to be strong, because my best friend, Parker Bishop, needs a friend he could count on.
And then I realized that I didn’t want you to be my friend.
I wanted you to fall in love with me.” He cringes.
“I really didn’t understand as much about how this happened then, so I wasn’t really thinking about, you know, how you felt about it. ”
I laugh. “I was obsessed with you. Are you kidding me?”
His smile is huge. “Really?”
“Finish the story, Lance.”
“And then, years later, after a lot of ups and downs, I finally crossed a line, and you sent me away. So I went home and cried for a while. And then I went off to the Marines because I couldn’t sit at home and mope.” He pauses. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
He smiles at me. “The reason I joined up was because I thought that if I came back in my uniform, you’d take one look at me and…”
I can’t help grinning at him. “And drag you into bed?”
“Among other things. But then you disappeared…”
“And eventually, you married someone else,” I finish.
“Yup. On the rebound from the only man I ever really loved. And now it’s your turn. Tell me the story of how Jonny on the Spot came to be.”
He puts his hands behind his head and leans back.
“Wow. Okay. Where to even start? I guess I was being a bit sentimental. I was also thinking that maybe, just maybe, you’d see the video and reach out to me, even though I had been the one who closed that door.
But then I remembered you were married, so I decided I would just document my day and my travels.
That first episode was so amateurish, but somebody noticed it and recommended it to friends, and people asked me questions.
So, I made another video to answer questions and show a few more things.
And then another, and another…and that’s how it started. ” I shrug.
Lance leans toward me, touching my chest with the tips of his fingers. He doesn’t meet my eyes. “And did you fall in love?”
I hesitate. “I thought I had, once.”
He glances at me and real hurt flashes across his face for an instant. “Tell me the story.”
I touch his cheek. I want to tell him that nobody has ever held a candle to him, but he’s staring at me intensely, and I swallow the urge to minimize.
He wants facts. “It was in my third year of filming, and he reached out to me and suggested that I come north to Rajasthan. He met me at the train station when I arrived in Jaipur. He introduced me to his family, took me to see the sites. I got weeks’ worth of content in the first day alone. ”
“Was he handsome?”
“Very. And intelligent. And witty. From the very first moment we met, I was bowled over. And then when my visa was expiring, he suddenly started suggesting I return to America with him.” I pause.
“It turns out he sought me out because he wanted to get out of India. What he wanted the most from me was my passport.”
Lance recoils. “He told you this?”
I nod. “Eventually. Once I got over the shock, I talked to some other expats, who all said variations of ‘What did you expect?’ I’d never felt so stupid.
After that, I was more careful.” I pause.
“Okay, enough of my sad love life. Tell me about your ex-husband. Was he good to you?” I’m not sure what I want to hear more: that he was awesome and Lance never suffered, or that he was terrible.
“Nash wasn’t good to anybody. Not even himself. He drank. A lot. And for a while, I did, too. You know how some people bring out the very worst in you? Well, he did. Every time.”
I swallow hard and put my hand on his hip, and my heart breaks open from longing. I want to keep this version of Lance Broussard. The one I have right here.
He looks at me like he’s reading my mind. “I fucked it up the first time. I suffocated you. I did everything wrong.” He searches my face. “But I never, ever didn’t love you with all my heart. Please. I’m begging you.” His eyes glisten. “I’m begging you.”
“You broke my heart,” I confess, and it comes out in a sob that I can’t control. He’s broken me. All that pain just ripples out in a torrent of words. “Do you know how hard it was to look at you and know I had to walk away? Do you know what it cost me to say no?” I palm away the tears.
“I think maybe I do,” he says. “But at the time I just thought it was me.” He purses his lips.
“You broke my heart, too, Jonny. A hundred times over. But if there is still one tiny piece of the boy that loves me in there, I will keep fighting for it, no matter what the cost. If you said that you would have me.”
I swallow hard. “Have you? Have you?” I take a deep breath and feel myself teetering on the edge of the abyss. I want to laugh and cry and sob and spend a week just making love to this wonderful man. For a second, the words don’t come at all.
“Would you?” He looks at me with naked hope. “Would you stay? Here—with me?”
For a second the words don’t come at all. Right now there is nothing in the world that seems more right than staying here with Lance Broussard, and that is exactly the problem. This morning I had a woman’s blood under my fingernails. I don’t trust anything I feel today.
“Ask me again,” I say. “In a week. When I’ve slept and I’m not—” I gesture at all of myself. “When I’m calmer. Ask me again then and I’ll give you a real answer, and you’ll know it’s a real one.”
He takes that in. I watch him decide not to argue with it.
“In a week,” he says.
“In a week.” I take a breath. “But if you wouldn’t mind me hanging out with you today, I’d like that very much.”
And then, because I can’t help it: “For what it’s worth, I think I’d rather be your Parker Bishop than the world’s Jonny on the Spot.”
There’s a beat of silence while he looks at me.
He shakes his head and purses his lips, and then the sobs burst out of him, hard and furious, gasps of air that wrack his body.
He puts his hands on my hips and then on my face, and then on my heart, as if he’s trying to map everything, secure it to him by touch alone.
I kiss his palm and he lurches forward. I can taste the tears on his lips, but I don’t care about anything but calming the storm I’ve unleashed.
I tentatively put my hand on the side of his ribcage, where I can feel his heartbeat hammering against his chest, like it’s straining to touch my fingertips.
He puts his arm down, trapping my hand there, and I realize I haven’t just been carrying around his bracelet.
I’ve been carrying around a piece of Lance’s heart all along.
Because a part of it has always belonged to me.