구
NIKKO
M y heart is racing as I stand outside Jase’s hotel room, waiting for the door to open.
I feel like I’m in some romantic comedy that Lux has talked me into watching that neither of us really understand but we’ll both end up crying over. He’ll cry because he’s swept up in the story, invested in the lives of these fictional people. I’ll cry because it doesn’t make any sense to me how these people can be so compelled to make these grand gestures for people they barely know, but I still somehow want them to get their happily ever after.
Even if it seems crazy, I know now that mine is here. With Jase. This is my bold move; this is me risking it all for love.
Love.
I see it now. Recognize it for what it is. I love him. As unlikely as everything about us may be, I can’t let it go. I can’t just wait and see what happens. There have been too many times I have let other people decide my fate and I can’t do that now. Not this time.
The door swings open, and Jase is there, looking surprised but hopeful, and my breath catches at the same time my heart stops and then trips over itself as it picks up at a pace that feels dangerous.
“Nikko.” He says my name like it’s something special. I’ve never liked the way it sounds as much as I do when I hear it from him.
“May I come in?” The words are barely out of my mouth when his hand is around my wrist, pulling me inside.
I reach for the lock and click it to engage, separating us from the rest of the world. Then we are standing there, staring at each other, like neither of us knows what to do next. I don’t know, not really, but I didn’t come this far to lose all my courage now.
The moment I got the text from Kija telling me he was here, I’d decided that this was it. If he could take the chance and come to me, I could take the next step and go to him.
“Nikko, I—”
“No.” I interrupt, even though I know it’s rude. I need him to hear me out. “Please listen to me.”
Jase nods, stepping back further into the room and sitting on the edge of the bed. He is too beautiful for the surroundings, and his eyes seem even brighter in the dull beige of the space. The small smile on his face makes me want to be brave.
“I miss you.” It’s the least of the things I feel about him, but it’s the truth, and it’s as good a place to start as any. “I do not like... this.” I wave my hand around in frustration, trying to encompass everything that I mean. “I am sorry for what I said and how I made you feel when you left. I want to talk to you. I want to see you. I do not know how we would work, but I want to try. I want you. I want us.” I suddenly wonder if that is too much. To say “us,” if that’s even what we are. Or were. Or could be.
Jase stands quickly and closes the distance between us, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me against him. I feel as though my whole body turns to something like jelly, going boneless as the tension and anxiety seeps out of me at his touch. “I miss you, too, Nikko,” he mumbles into my hair before dropping a kiss there. “So much.”
I didn’t know how badly I needed to hear that. I knew I wanted it—hoped for it—but at my core, I needed it. I can’t stop now, though; there is more that has to be said. “I know that it is—that it will be—difficult. To keep this. And if it turns out that this cannot be more than it is right now, I will learn to be okay with that. But I want to keep you in my life. You are important to me. If all we can be is friends, I will take it. Of course, I will wish we could be more. But if we cannot...”
I pause for a breath that I don’t get to take because Jase’s lips are on mine, his fingers slipping along my throat and curling around the back of my neck to hold me where he wants me. It is the best answer I could’ve hoped for. When he pulls away, I gasp, shakily inhaling the air the kiss stole from my lungs.
“That’s not what I want,” he tells me. “If you need me to be your friend, I will. But I want... I want so much more than that, Nikko.” Releasing his hold on me, he moves back just enough to make eye contact. “I know your life is crazy. I know the idea of you and I together is kind of insane. I have absolutely no idea how or where I fit in. But I want to.”
He wants to.
That’s all I really take away from what he is saying. It’s the only part I care about.
I know it won’t be easy. I know there will be obstacles and complications, but I’m willing to figure out how to work around them and get through them. Because the way he’s looking at me right now, the grip that he has on me—on my heart—might be the only thing grounding me. “You want to.”
Jase nods. “I want to. I want to wake up in the middle of the night to talk to you for ten minutes. I want to chase you from city to city, if that’s what it takes to see you. I want to sneak in and out of shitty bars and fancy hotel rooms just to have a drink with you or get my hands on you. We’ll make it work somehow, if that’s what you’re telling me you want.”
I could cry. I might still. I have no idea how I got here. How I came to be standing in a random hotel room with this American librarian who changed my whole life by showing up on my computer screen. Who gave me confidence to speak for myself and made me feel so much more than I ever could have expected.
It occurs to me all at once that when I met him, I also met a new version of myself. I’m not the same person I was before that first call, before all those hours of conversation, staring at someone with a singular focus that I’d never experienced before.
But there is so much in the way he is looking at me now—it feels heavy, like he’s got his hands on me. It makes something inside me sparkle and glow to know that he wants to really try this, to do what we have to do to make it work. I know he wants me. It is so clear in his eyes, his expression, and it makes heat pulse through my veins.
I want to give him everything. All these parts of me I’ve never trusted to anyone, never thought I’d be willing to share. I like the idea of him being the only one to touch me the way he has. I want him to be the first and only one to have all of me. I have thought about it so often on all these nights we have been apart. Thought about doing things with him that I had always wondered about before.
We have the time.
Lux knows where I am. He has already teased me about what could happen tonight. I blushed at his suggestions, but here in this moment, there is nothing I want more.
I want him to have me. To know me in this intimate way.
“ Jase …” I bite my lip, glancing at him through hooded eyes, and hope he knows what I am asking for.