Chapter 6
six
. . .
JEREMY
I woke to a foreign sensation: warmth. Not the sputtering, half-hearted heat my cabin’s ancient furnace managed before giving up the ghost, but actual, enveloping warmth.
From a body pressed against mine.
My eyes flew open. Cream walls, not rough logs. Eastern light, not western. Sheets carrying notes of clove, vanilla, and the unmistakable scent of sex.
Last night came crashing back to me in vivid, technicolor detail.
I was in bed with Harrison Prescott, a man I swore I hated.
His arm lay heavy across my waist, his breath tickling the back of my neck in a slow, steady rhythm.
Beyond the window, silence had replaced the howling wind.
Snowflakes still drifted down, but gently now—the blizzard that had “stranded” me here had passed, leaving behind this strange pocket of peace and tranquility.
Common sense screamed at me to leave. My clothes lay scattered across his bedroom. I could dress in ninety seconds. Sneak out and be back at my place before he even stirred.
Instead, I sank deeper into that warmth.
Last night, I’d told myself this was it. After this, I’d be free.
But if anything, I wanted him more now.
Wanted mornings that started like this instead of alone in my cold cabin with nothing but regret for company.
I closed my eyes and stifled a groan.
I was so fucking fucked.
Behind me, Harrison stirred, his foot sliding along my calf, and he made a low, contented humming sound that rumbled through his chest and into my back.
“You awake?” I asked, my voice rough with sleep.
Harrison’s arm tightened around my waist, and he pulled me in tighter. “Yeah. You okay?”
Physically, I was somewhat sore—I hadn’t bottomed for a couple of years—but it was a good kind of ache. The type that made sure you knew you’d been well fucked.
Emotionally, though? The jury was still out.
“Yeah,” I answered.
He didn’t respond right away, and as we lay there in silence, I became hyperaware of every point where our bodies touched. The intimacy of it made my skin prickle with something between want and panic.
The want won out.
My hand drifted to the forearm pressed against my stomach, and I traced the line of muscle absently, feeling the fine hairs beneath my fingertips.
When I felt calm enough to speak, I said, “I think we need to talk about what happened.” Harrison went rigid behind me, every muscle in his body seeming to lock up at once.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked, his voice careful. Guarded. Very much like he was bracing for me to tell him this had been a mistake.
I shook my head, my fingers still tracing patterns on his arm. “No. Or yes. But really, about prom … and what happened.”
The silence that followed felt heavy enough to suffocate in.
“Okay,” he said finally.
I rolled onto my back, needing to break our connection. Above me, a crack in the plaster ran from the light fixture to the far corner. I followed it with my eyes, using it as an anchor for what I was about to say.
“I never asked you about it,” I said, keeping my gaze fixed on that jagged line. “About why you took Sarah Fucking Mitchell to prom.” I left the “instead of me” unsaid.
I felt Harrison’s sharp intake of breath beside me.
“I knew we couldn’t go as … boyfriends or whatever. I get that. I wasn’t that stupid.” My hands fisted in the sheets. “But I genuinely thought we’d go together. That whole ‘bros before hoes’ bullshit we were always spouting. Why would prom be any different?”
Something uncomfortable twisted in my gut. Had I ever actually asked him to prom? Or had I just assumed we’d go together because we always did everything together?
Fuck. I’d assumed. Built this whole plan in my head without ever saying the words, “Will you go to prom with me?” Because asking would have made it a date instead of two friends going stag.
Unfortunately, the realization didn’t make it hurt less.
The memory rose up, vivid and cruel: Me in my rented tux, Dad helping me with the bow tie, his hands steady where mine shook. Mom taking a thousand pictures, her eyes suspiciously bright.
What time is Harrison picking you up?
My throat closed up. I forced the words out anyway.
“I waited for you.” My voice came out flat, stripped of emotion—the only way I could get through this. “Mom kept offering me snacks, but I couldn’t eat.”
A broken laugh escaped me. “I’d bought you a boutonniere. A blue rose to match my vest. Had this whole plan for pictures on the porch, and maybe—” I swallowed hard. “Maybe things would feel real. Just for one night.”
Beside me, Harrison had gone completely still.
“Seven o’clock came and went. Seven-fifteen. Seven-thirty.” The words came faster now, like a dam breaking. “By eight, Mom was making excuses. Maybe you got held up, maybe there was traffic—as if there’s ever traffic in Mistletoe Bay. But I knew. Somewhere in my gut, I already fucking knew.”
I turned my head just enough to see Harrison’s face. His eyes were squeezed shut, tears tracking down his temples into his hair.
“At eight-thirty, I told my folks I wasn’t going to go after all. But my dad—” I stopped, my eyes burning. “My dad just looked at me with these sad eyes and said, ‘You take my truck, son, and go enjoy yourself.”
A sob escaped Harrison’s throat, but I couldn’t acknowledge it. Had to keep going, because I knew if I didn’t say this now, I might never gather the courage to say it ever again.
“So I drove to the hotel and sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes trying to work up the courage to go inside. Finally, I went in and there you were. On the dance floor with Sarah in that pink dress, your arms around her waist, looking at her like—”
I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say, “Like you looked at me.”
“You were smiling. Laughing at something Sarah said.” My voice had gone hollow again. “And you looked happy. Like you didn’t even realize you’d just destroyed me.”
Harrison sat up abruptly, his back to me, his shoulders shaking. “I didn’t know. Jesus Christ, Jeremy, I didn’t know you were waiting.” His words came out strangled. “I thought—” He stopped, dragged a hand through his hair. “Fuck, I thought … it doesn’t matter what I thought.”
“What happened, Harry?”
He dragged both hands through his hair.
“It was the day before. My dad had been on my ass for weeks about not having a date. About how it looked. About what people would think. And then Tommy mentioned that Sarah didn’t have a date right in front of my dad, and he just …”
Harrison’s shoulders hunched. “He said, ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Call the girl.’ And he stood there staring at me, waiting. So I … I called her.”
My stomach dropped. “Christ, Harrison.”
“I know.” The admission sounded like it cost him something precious.
“I know how that sounds. I thought—fuck. I told myself that it didn’t matter.
We couldn’t go together anyway. I figured we’d still hang out, that you’d understand I had to do it because of my dad.
” He let out a bitter laugh. “I was such a fucking idiot.”
I stared at the ceiling. The day before. He’d asked her the fucking day before prom.
My jaw clenched. Then unclenched. I wanted to rage at him—at how carelessly he’d forgotten about me while he scrambled to make his father happy.
But I’d seen how Harrison’s father treated him. The comments. The pressure. The expectations.
My hands relaxed their grip on the sheets.
“You could have given me a heads up,” I said, my voice eerily calm despite the war going on inside me. “Instead, you made me feel like a fool.”
I felt the mattress shift as Harrison rolled onto his side. In my peripheral vision, I could see him staring at me, his expression desperate. His hand lifted—reaching for me—but stopped midair, hovering for a moment before falling back to the sheets. “It wasn’t like that, Jeremy.”
“Wasn’t it?” I finally looked at him. “You chose making your dad happy over … over us. Over me. And you didn’t even have the balls to tell me yourself.”
I heard him pull in a breath, and then he turned to face me, his eyes rimmed in red, tear tracks staining his cheek, and his mouth twisted in grief.
“My dad had been making comments about us all year, Jeremy. Things like, ‘You spend too much time with that Price boy.’ Or ‘When are you going to find yourself a nice girl? What are you, queer?’”
His hands clenched into fists on his thighs, knuckles going white.
“The closer we got to graduation, the more pointed his comments got. The more insistent he became about me dating. He started watching you and me like a hawk whenever you came over. Why do you think I always wanted to be at your house instead? Then, when I’d get home, he’d grill me about what we did together. Where we went.”
His voice dropped to a whisper again. “And I started to panic that he knew. That somehow he’d figured out what was between us.”
I stayed silent, watching him. Watching the way his chest heaved, the way he’d wrapped his arms around his middle like he was trying to hold himself together.
“He cornered me one night a couple of weeks before prom, and … and … asked me point-blank if I was sucking your cock like some goddamn fairy. Asked me if that’s why my knees always hurt.
He got …” Harrison shuddered, his whole body shaking as he screwed his eyes closed.
“I don’t know if you remember, but we were in the locker room, and you asked about a bruise.
I told you I’d tripped over some socks in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom. ”
He opened his eyes and dragged his teary gaze to me. “I didn’t trip over my fucking socks, Jeremy.”
The world tilted.
I remembered that bruise—dark purple blooming across his ribs. He’d laughed it off, made some joke about being clumsy at three o’clock in the morning. And I’d believed him because why wouldn’t I?
“He hit you.” The words came out flat, emotionless. Because if I let any feeling in, I’d lose it completely.
“Yeah.” His voice was small. Ashamed.