Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
bennet
I stepped into the cold evening chill without thinking. My backpack was filled with only the necessary things for a quick session, and I walked a few hundred paces down the curving street, then looked up.
Jason’s pride flag glowed with the warm light of his room. I walked to the door and almost pressed the doorbell, then remembered Peanut. I turned the knob, and the door opened.
Stepping into someone’s house uninvited felt like intruding, but as I did, a couple of guys looked at the door, unbothered.
“Hey,” one of them said. He wore a matching hoodie and sweatpants, but that didn’t mean anything.
Guys like this wore the same clothes regardless of whether they were staying in, heading to the gym, or meeting the president. “What’s up?”
“Um, hi,” I said, clearing my throat. “Looking for Jason. Is he in?”
“Yeah, upstairs,” the guy replied. “Know the way?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
And that was it. I was free to walk around their house all I liked, apparently. They didn’t even ask me my name.
I went upstairs and down the hallway to the end, where the last door was Jason’s. My heart hammered in my chest, and I realized that this could have been a mistake.
Why was I here? Why was I doing this? Why was I more invested in his football career than he was?
I risked a lot coming here, not even twenty-four hours after the kiss that had apparently made Jason not want to even learn from me, let alone do anything else.
And yet, I couldn’t just let him fail Stats because it would be awkward for me to tutor him.
So I raised my fist and knocked on his door. My heart thundered as a bark came through the door. “Come in,” Jason called.
I turned the knob carefully and pushed the door, light pouring out of his room and into the dark hallway.
Jason, shirtless and wearing his favorite gray sweatpants, lay on his bed with a comic book in his hands.
Peanut was already running around the room excitedly and leaped at me as I stepped into the room.
Jason blinked and sat up abruptly. He cleared his throat, then looked around the room. “Oh. Hey. Um. Hi.”
“Hey, hi yourself,” I said, closing the door and bending down to give Peanut ear scratches. That was it. The Thinkers had to get a dog, too.
“Wh-what are you…what are you doing here?” he stammered as he closed the comic and set it on the nightstand, resting his hands in his lap.
Those sweatpants were thin and baggy, draping over his thighs and crotch so lightly that every shape was clearly discernible, but I swallowed the knot in my throat and refused to look again.
If only he would put on a T-shirt, things would be so much easier. That said, it was boiling in here. “We had a session,” I pointed out, still busy with Peanut instead of looking into Jason’s eyes.
“Aw, shit,” Jason said. “I’m sorry, Bennet. I was swamped.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
He was silent for a long while. I was looking at Peanut, down on one knee to make scratching him easier.
“Who’s a good boy?” I whispered excitedly as Peanut danced a little jig around me. “You are. Yes, you are.”
“That was a lie,” Jason said in a low voice.
“Yeah,” I said, glancing at him. I wished I could hold his gaze for longer than a second, but I couldn’t.
He was too pretty and too intense and too chaotic, so if I looked into his eyes, I would lose myself in the storm.
I looked at Peanut instead, who was the calming element despite his infinite excitement. “I figured.”
“You’re the smartest guy I know,” Jason said. “I knew you’d see through it.”
“I just…” I shrugged. “I don’t understand why you would tank your career over something stupid like that.”
Jason swallowed hard. I heard it from two paces away and with Peanut between us. “Well, I did a stupid thing, and I figured you might feel a certain way about it.”
That made me look up. Damn, his muscles were defined. Was he flexing? No. He just looked like that.
Jason shifted on the bed, one knee up, forearm braced on it like he needed the angle to steady himself. His eyes flicked down to Peanut, then back to me, and I could see the calculation happening behind them.
I saw him trying to decide which version of himself he was supposed to be.
“You don’t have to stand there on the floor,” he said. “You can sit. I mean, if you want.”
“I’m fine,” I said, still scratching Peanut because it gave my hands something to do that wasn’t trembling.
“Right. Cool. Fine.” Jason rubbed the back of his neck.
He was trying to look casual, but the motion only highlighted the lines of his shoulders and the taut stretch of his biceps.
It would have been indecent if I had been in the mood to appreciate it.
I was, unfortunately, always in the mood to appreciate it. “Look, I’m sorry. About the library.”
I glanced at him again. His cheeks were faintly pink. Either the room was even warmer than it felt, or he had been thinking too much.
“I waited,” I said.
“I know.” His voice dropped. “I’m sorry.”
The apology landed heavier than I expected. It made me angry in a quiet, tight way because it was honest. Honest apologies were harder to brush off. They demanded a response. They demanded that I admit I had been hurt in some way.
So I did what I always did.
I shrugged. “It’s fine.”
His expression flickered. Not relief. Not really. More like he had been waiting for me to say it, but now that I had, it didn’t match whatever was going on in his head.
“It’s not fine,” he said.
I forced myself to stand because staying on my knee was making me feel small. Peanut whined a little at the loss of attention and circled my legs, then trotted toward Jason like a traitor and nudged his hand, as if asking him to fix this.
Jason scratched behind Peanut’s ears, distracted for a second. Then his eyes met mine again.
“I didn’t want you to think I was blowing you off,” he said. “I mean, I did. Technically. But not because I don’t take it seriously.”
“Jason,” I said, careful with his name because it still did something to me. “It’s a tutoring session. It’s not a marriage.”
His mouth twitched like he wanted to laugh, but the humor didn’t stick. He looked down at his hands instead, flexing his fingers once.
“That’s the thing,” he said quietly. “You treat it like it’s nothing.”
I held my face neutral. I knew what he was doing. He was pushing at the surface to see if anything cracked. I didn’t crack easily. I had built an entire life around being uncrackable.
“It is nothing,” I said. “In the sense that it should not be a big emotional event. I’m here to help you pass Stats. You either show up or you don’t. If you don’t, that’s your problem.”
The words came out clean and cold. Too clean. Too cold.
Jason flinched like I had slapped him.
“Okay,” he said. “Great. That’s—great.”
He tried to smile, but the smile fell apart halfway. He looked away, jaw tight, then back at me with a kind of stubbornness that didn’t belong on someone who was usually all ease.
“But it’s not just Stats,” he said.
My throat tightened. I didn’t let it show. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
He laughed once, short and breathy. It wasn’t amusement. It was panic trying to disguise itself as charm. “Sure you don’t.”
I should’ve left. I should’ve turned around and walked out before I let this become anything more than a boundary correction.
But I stayed.
Because he had kissed me.
Because he had run from it.
Because I had spent the entire day pretending it was nothing and failing.
“I came because you didn’t show,” I said. “Because I don’t want you to fail. Is that clear enough for you?”
Jason’s gaze sharpened. “Why?”
“Because I’m not an asshole,” I said, then immediately regretted the tone because it gave him something to grab.
“Because Coach Roberts is going to bench you if you keep tanking your grades. Because you live for football, and you don’t even have a backup plan that doesn’t involve you being able to count things. Pick one.”
He stared at me like he was trying to decide whether I was insulting him or saving him. “Wow,” he said. “That was a lot.”
“It was the truth,” I replied. “Which is usually a lot.”
That got a small sound out of him. Not a laugh, but the beginning of one. Then his face sobered again.
He sat up straighter. “You’re mad.”
“No,” I said instantly, because that was safer.
Jason raised his eyebrows. He didn’t believe me for a second.
“I’m not mad,” I tried again, more measured. “I’m…concerned. Because you’re playing with fire. And I’m the person who will have to sit in Professor Colby’s office and explain why my tutoring hours resulted in absolutely nothing.”
“There it is,” he said softly.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Just…you care. You care in your weird Bennet way.”
“I care about the objective,” I said.
He smiled again. This time, it held for longer. “Sure. The objective.”
I hated the warmth that rose in my face. I hated even more that he could make it happen with a single look.
Jason’s gaze drifted over me in that quick way again, like he wasn’t letting himself stare. His eyes caught on my mouth for a second, then snapped back up to my eyes.
My pulse kicked hard.
I had to fight the urge to lick my lips.
I cleared my throat. “So. Are you actually swamped? Or are you avoiding me?”
His whole body went still.
I would have paid money to rewind time and swallow those words before they left my mouth. They were too direct. Dangerous. I didn’t do dangerous questions. Dangerous questions got you answers you didn’t know what to do with.
Jason swallowed. “Both.”
My stomach dipped.
He hurried on. “Not like. Not because I don’t want you around. I mean. I do want you around. That’s not what I mean either.” He exhaled hard through his nose. “You make me stupid.”
I stared at him.