Chapter 19 Jason
CHAPTER NINETEEN
jason
The moment I saw him, everything in my body went a little feral.
My heart jumped so hard it felt like it slammed into my ribs and bounced.
Heat rushed up my neck, ears burning, scalp tingling like I’d just been called on in class without warning.
For half a second, I forgot where I was, forgot the exam booklet open in front of me, and forgot the clock ticking down on the wall.
Bennet was here.
He had slipped in quietly and took a seat at the back like it was the most natural thing in the world to be there. Like of course he would be.
The knot that had been twisting tighter in my chest all morning loosened all at once. Relief hit me so hard I had to swallow to keep my breath steady. I felt taller and stronger and ridiculously invincible, like I could muscle my way through anything with him in the room.
I made myself look back down at the paper.
Get it together.
This wasn’t the time to spiral in a good direction either.
I’d already done enough damage blurting out things I should have taken slower, wrapped better, and protected from my own mouth.
I always did that. I always said the big thing too fast and then watched people flinch like I’d thrown something at them.
But Bennet had still shown up.
That had to mean something.
Even if he didn’t feel the same way. Even if he just cared because he was kind and loyal and incapable of half-assing things. Even if I was still just his tutoring project or his almost something.
He was here.
I focused.
Stats came back into shape. Not perfectly, but well enough.
I recognized patterns. I remembered his voice in my head, calm and precise, nudging me toward the right approach.
Then I remembered him naked on my bed, and it jolted my memory even better.
I worked through problems slowly, methodically, checking myself like he’d taught me.
Confidence crept in sideways.
When I reached the last page, I didn’t feel panicked. I felt done.
I looked up at the clock. Still time left. Plenty of people were still writing.
I stood.
My chair scraped softly as I gathered my things and walked to the front, exam paper steady in my hands. Professor Colby looked up, eyebrow lifting. “You’re finished?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. “Pretty sure.”
He glanced at the paper, then back at me. “You don’t want a few more minutes to review your answers?”
I smiled despite myself. “I’ve crossed all my i’s and dotted all my t’s.”
His mouth twitched like that physically hurt him, but he took the paper anyway. “Very well.”
As I turned, my eyes went instinctively to the back of the room.
The seat where Bennet had been was empty.
I caught sight of him at the door instead, already slipping out, careful and quiet. For a second, something sank in my chest. Not disappointment exactly. Just the sharp awareness that I hadn’t gotten to look at him again.
I packed up the rest of my things and headed after him, heart still thudding, hope and fear tangled so tight I couldn’t tell them apart.
My chest grew tighter the closer I got to the door. I nearly paused there, but my hand reached and grabbed the doorknob, pulling the door open to reveal Bennet standing in the hallway, bathed in the morning sunlight pouring in from the windows to the left.
He blinked and tucked his hands deep into the pockets of his pants, gazing at me and at the door as I shut it behind me.
“Hey,” I said, my voice airy and lost in the silence of the hallway.
“Hey,” Bennet said, a little more firmly.
“Hi.”
His lips twitched near a smile, then smoothed again. “You said that.”
“You came,” I pointed out.
Bennet nodded. “Of course I came.”
“I didn’t think you would,” I admitted.
He hesitated, taking a step toward me. He cocked his head as he looked up at me. “My reputation was at stake,” he said.
That pulled a laugh out of me, and I wasn’t even sorry. “Is that all?”
He gave in, smiling with one corner of his mouth. As he stepped a little closer still, he paused, straightened, and took a step back. “I came to apologize,” he said.
I waved my hand over my shoulder. “Nothing to apologize for, Bennet. Nothing happened. Besides, I should be the one apologizing.” Saying the words hurt unexpectedly, but I put a smile on my face for him. A smile he didn’t buy.
He shook his head. “You told me you loved me,” he said carefully, making my ears burn.
He waited.
The silence dragged on and left me flustered, a little uncomfortable, and a little dizzy. “I did,” I said, mouth dry and tongue touching my lip briefly.
“And I…” He paused again, looking out the window for a moment before forcing his gaze to meet my eyes. “It freaked me out.”
I forced a laugh. “I have that effect on people.”
“It freaked me out because I’m not…like you,” he said.
“Like me?”
“You know…fun. Interesting. Popular and hot and confident and good-looking and the whole package, Jason,” Bennet blurted.
“I’m not romantic, even if I’d like to be.
I’m not funny. I don’t even bring fun facts to a party.
The idea that someone who ticks all those boxes would even notice me in an empty room full of chairs is crazy to me.
” He noticed my grin and frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. Go on,” I said, but the smile won over again, shining.
“Say it.”
“You think I’m funny,” I pointed out. “You just said it.”
“And hot and a whole list of things,” Bennet said, just bewildered enough to have that adorable look on his face.
“Yeah, but funny,” I said. “You admitted it.”
His smile snuck up on him, and he shook his head. “Yeah, I think you’re funny. And cocky as hell, by the way. You don’t need encouraging.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know that.”
“That you’re funny?” Bennet asked.
Maybe I was stalling on purpose. Maybe I wanted us to talk about something insignificant so that we wouldn’t talk about the big L.
But it wasn’t insignificant. People rolled their eyes when I made jokes.
They folded their arms, raised their eyebrows, and tilted their heads in the “Seriously?” way.
I was never going to crack clever jokes to make the NASA scientist chuckle to themselves, but if stupid jokes made Bennet think I was funny, then I loved him twice as hard.
I loved him. There was no changing it.
“My point is that hearing you say, erm, those words instinctively made me think you’d hit your head in practice, Jason,” he said.
“My head’s just fine,” I said. I had to admit it.
I couldn’t keep playing it down. If he thought it was too crazy, too wild, too big, and too much after such a short time, so be it.
I couldn’t keep not being myself for everyone else’s sake.
I couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t feel things so deeply if the alternative was to feel nothing at all.
I would rather love a thousand times and never be loved in turn than never love at all.
“And I meant it,” I said. “I know it’s soon, and it’s serious, and maybe it all falls apart for a million reasons I can’t predict, but dammit, you make me feel good.”
“Well,” Bennet said, licking his lips. “I’m happy I make you feel good.
” He shifted his feet a little, looked down between us, then caught my gaze again.
He caught it and held it. “You make me feel good, too. And that’s not all.
You make me feel better than I thought I could feel.
I didn’t let myself see it because I couldn’t imagine a guy like you falling in love with a guy like me.
Settling. That’s the word I kept thinking of.
I didn’t think you’d settle for me. But that’s my fault.
I worked from a faulty assumption and ignored the evidence of my own heart.
I convinced myself that you were too cool to even like me very much. ”
“Even when we had wild, bed-wrecking sex?” I whispered.
“Especially then,” Bennet said. “Because I convinced myself it was just fun. That was the only way I could keep seeing you without…well…without admitting that I’m so hopelessly in love with you, Jason.
Because I am. And not just in love. I love you in a way that I want to come home to you.
I love you in a way that I want to tell you about my day, hear about yours, and sit quietly on the same sofa next to you, and lean on you, and inhale, and have every tension drain out of me because I feel so good when you’re just there. That’s…how I feel.”
I closed my mouth because it had dropped open sometimes during his speech. “You love me,” I whispered.
Bennet tilted his head a little. “And I don’t know how to say it. Or didn’t know. Because loving you and being loved by you never crossed my mind. I never thought it was possible.”
“You love me,” I said again, tasting the words, testing their shape on my lips. They fit. They were the perfect size and shape and flavor. They were the words that completed me, making everything else click together and fall in place. “You really do.”
Bennet nodded. “And I have the courage to say so, too. You make me brave.”
I didn’t trust my voice at first.
My chest felt too full, like every breath might spill something important if I wasn’t careful.
I looked at him standing there in the sunlight, hands shoved into his pockets like he didn’t quite know what to do with them yet, like loving me hadn’t suddenly made him a different person, but it had made him braver.
That thought alone nearly knocked me over.
“Bennet,” I said, and it came out rougher than I meant it to. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I spent weeks convincing myself I’d ruin everything if I opened my mouth.”
He shook his head immediately. “You didn’t.”
“I know that now,” I said, a soft laugh breaking loose because the relief was finally catching up with the fear. “But I’ve done that before. I kept waiting for the moment you’d realize I was…a lot.”
His brows knit together, not angry, just intent. “You are a lot.”
I smiled despite myself. “Yeah. I am.”
“And I like that,” he said. “I like that you feel things all the way instead of halfway. I like that you don’t ration yourself out in polite doses.”
That landed somewhere deep. Somewhere tender.
“I thought you were settling for me,” he went on, quieter now, repeating that terrible world.
I stepped closer before I consciously decided to, closing the space until it felt right. “I don’t settle,” I said. “I never have. I just…fall. And when I fall, I fall all the way. That scares people.”
“It scared me,” he admitted. “Because I didn’t know how to match it.”
“You don’t have to match it,” I said quickly. “You just have to be here.”
He looked up at me then, really looked, and something softened in his face like he’d been holding tension in his jaw for days and had finally let it go.
“I am here,” he said. “I want to be here.”
I exhaled, slow and careful, like I was afraid to move too fast and break the moment.
“I don’t need you to be anything other than you are,” I said.
“You’re already funnier, hotter, and cuter than you know.
I love the way you think. I love the way you show up.
And I’ll make sure you know this and believe this, even if it takes a lifetime to prove it. ”
A lifetime. There I go again, big and relentless and unstoppable. I didn’t just love him for who he was now. I loved him for who he was before and for all he could be in the future.
His eyes went glassy, but he didn’t look away.
“And I love you,” he said again, quieter but surer than before. “Not because you’re a football star or because you make rooms light up. I love you because you see me and don’t try to sand me down.”
I laughed softly, overwhelmed and a little dazed. “We’re really bad at underestimating ourselves, huh?”
“Spectacularly,” he said.
I reached out then, tentative for the first time since we’d met, and brushed my thumb along his wrist. He turned his hand immediately, fingers curling around mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The hallway was quiet around us, sunlight warm on the floor, the world still moving whether we were ready for it or not.
The students began to pour out of Professor Colby’s lecture hall, and my heart twisted a little. Even before I knew it, Bennet took my hand and squeezed it. “Wait a second,” he said conspiratorially.
“Wait for what?” I asked.
“Boyfriend privileges,” he said. And even if nothing came from it, just hearing him call us boyfriends felt incredible.
When the classroom emptied, Bennet tugged me to follow him inside, and we found ourselves alone with Professor Colby in his lecture hall. Bennet held my hand and led the way to the desk where he had looked so cute sitting and lecturing me not too long ago.
“Professor,” Bennet said. “I know it’s too soon, but I was wondering if you could share a hint with us.”
“You were wondering that, huh?” Professor Colby echoed, the corners of his lips twitching near a smile. “Yes, I suppose that makes sense.”
“Well, I’ve put in a lot of work,” Bennet said.
“Oi,” I interrupted.
“We did,” Bennet corrected. “We put in a lot of work.” There was a smile to the quality of his voice, and I loved hearing it.
Professor Colby sat back, threading his fingers behind his head and observing us both, our hands held and expressions anxious. “I don’t know what the score is yet,” he said, but that small ghost of a smile never went away. “But I did look at the answers.”
I nodded nervously. Bennet lifted his chin proudly.
“I am rather proud of myself,” Professor Colby said.
We both frowned at that. “Proud of yourself?” Bennet asked.
The professor nodded happily. “I never thought I was a great judge of character, but it seems like I make quite a matchmaker. Academically speaking, of course.” He glanced at our hands playfully.
“Your results are incredible, Jason. From what I saw, they were above and beyond the passing grade. Well done.”
Professor Colby hopped onto his feet and picked up the stack of test booklets.
“And you may consider your volunteering quota filled, Bennet,” he said.
Bennet and I positively buzzed with excitement as Professor Colby walked out of the lecture hall and into his cluttered office attached to the side. Bennet spun around before I had the chance, yanking my hoodie and rising to the tips of his toes to press a loving kiss against my lips.
Bennet kissed me like he’d been holding it in for weeks, like the relief and the joy and the certainty all needed somewhere to go at once.
His hands fisted in my hoodie, grounding and urgent, and I bent down without thinking, meeting him halfway as the kiss deepened, warm and breathless and real.
It wasn’t frantic so much as wholehearted, a seal pressed onto everything we’d just said out loud.
When we finally pulled apart, foreheads touching, I was smiling so hard my face hurt, and for once, it felt like the best kind of problem to have.