Chapter Nineteen Brielle
The ceiling of my room has a water stain in the upper left corner shaped like the state of Florida.
I have been staring at it for the better part of an hour and Florida is the conclusion I keep arriving at no matter how many times I try to see something else.
Sleep is not coming, which I knew before I even lay down. There is a kind of tiredness that lives in the body and a kind of restlessness that lives somewhere deeper, and tonight they are in direct conflict with each other and the restlessness is winning by a considerable margin.
The problem, and I am going to be honest with myself about this even if I’m not going to be honest with anyone else about it tonight, is Evan. Not Evan specifically.
Evan and the park and the ice cream and the October cold and his mouth on mine for two seconds that were not enough, and then my hands in his jacket pulling him back because two seconds was categorically not enough. The walk home after. Our shoulders touching every few steps.
I turn onto my side.
From somewhere down the hall I can hear the low sound of a television, barely audible, the kind of sound that means someone is awake but not fully committed to it.
I lie there for another five minutes.
Then I get up.
The kitchen is dark except for the light above the stove, which someone always leaves on.
A permanent dim warmth that makes the room look like the inside of something rather than just a room.
I fill a glass of water at the sink and drink half of it standing there, looking out the window at the street below, the orange quiet of a city block after midnight.
I hear footsteps in the hallway and then Jase comes in.
He goes straight to the refrigerator, pulls out the orange juice, pours himself a glass, and turns around.
He sees me and takes a short step back, hand tightening around his glass.
“God,” he says. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn't want to interrupt the orange juice.”
He looks at me for a second, then at the glass in his hand, then back at me, and the tension of being startled settles into something easier.
“Couldn't sleep?” he says.
“Couldn't turn my brain off,” I say.
“How was it?” he says. “The ice cream.”
Something moves through my face before I can stop it, some small involuntary thing, and I watch him clock it.
“It was good,” I say.
“Good,” he says.
“The ice cream was good,” I say, which is not what either of us is talking about.
“Gerald’s is always good,” he agrees, which is also not what either of us is talking about.
I set my glass in the sink and turn back to find him watching me with a small smile at the corner of his mouth that he is making zero effort to hide.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing,” he says. “I’m just standing here drinking orange juice.”
“You’re thinking it very loudly,” I say, which is what I said to him in the Costco checkout line, and he recognizes it immediately because his smile gets wider.
“Am I,” he says.
“You are.”
He sets his glass down on the counter and crosses his arms, and I become aware that the t-shirt he’s wearing is not doing anything to conceal the fact that he is built the way someone is built when they played hockey through college and have been doing physical work ever since.
I look at a point somewhere near his left shoulder and remind myself to behave.
“When’s my turn?” he says.
I look at him. “Your turn for what?”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Jase.”
“I’m just asking,” he says, easy, the way he says most things that are not easy at all. “Evan gets ice cream in the park. Max gets breakfast and stays up late on the couch. I’m starting to feel like I’m being managed.”
“You’re not being managed,” I say.
“No?”
“No.”
“Then when’s my turn?” he says again, and this time there’s nothing casual about it at all.
The casualness is still there on the surface, but underneath it, something else entirely, something that has been building for days in the quiet way things build when two people keep ending up in the same room and neither of them is pretending not to notice.
“You took me to Costco,” I say.
“That was a supply run.”
“You told me things,” I say, more quietly. “In the freezer aisle.”
Something shifts in his expression at that. The easy surface of it going still and I know I’ve landed on something real because Jase’s face when something is real is completely different from Jase’s face when he’s performing, and I have learned to tell the difference.
“I did,” he says.
“That counts,” I say. “That’s a turn.”
He looks at me for a long moment.
“Brielle.”
“Jase.”
“You’re playing coy with me.”
“I’m really not,” I say, which is mostly true, except for the small part where I am, because I like the way he says my name when I do it and I am only human.
He pushes off the counter and crosses the kitchen, unhurried, and stops close enough that I have to tilt my head up to look at him properly. I hold his gaze.
“Here’s the thing,” he says, low. “I’ve been very patient.”
“You have,” I agree.
“Remarkably patient,” he says. “For me.”
“I’ve noticed,” I say.
“And I’m running out of it,” he says, and his voice has gone somewhere quieter and more specific, and I feel it in the same place I feel most things about these men, somewhere in the chest that I am becoming very familiar with.
“Then stop,” I say.
He looks at me for one more second.
Then his hand comes up and cups my jaw, and he kisses me with none of the careful patience he’s been showing for the past ten days, and I reach for the front of his shirt with both hands and kiss him back the same way.
The kitchen is quiet around us, and the stove light is low, and the city does its indifferent thing outside the window, and neither of us is thinking about sleep anymore.
His other hand finds my waist and pulls me closer, and I go without hesitation, pressing my body against his.
I think about the freezer aisle and the way he looked when I said what he said mattered, and the checkout line and two teenage girls and him refusing to let it go, and the first morning when he sat on the floor in front of me and made me laugh when I had nothing left. I pull him closer.
He makes a low sound against my mouth and kisses me harder, deeper, his tongue sliding against mine in a way that makes heat pool low in my belly. His hand at my jaw tilts my head exactly where he wants it.
“Fuck, Brielle,” he murmurs against my lips, voice rough. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”
I answer by kissing him back just as fiercely, my fingers curling into the front of his t-shirt. Jase backs me up until my lower back hits the edge of the counter. The cool tile presses through my thin shirt as he crowds in closer, his body solid and warm against mine.
One of his hands stays cupped around my jaw while the other slides down my side, gripping my hip and pulling me flush against him. I can feel how hard he is already, pressing against my stomach, and it makes me whimper softly into his mouth.
He breaks the kiss enough to speak, his breath hot against my lips. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s not,” I breathe. “Don’t stop.”
His mouth crashes back onto mine, and this time, there is nothing careful about it.
His hand moves between us and cups me firmly over my biker shorts.
The sudden pressure makes my hips jerk forward.
Jase starts rubbing slow, deliberate circles with the heel of his palm, pressing the fabric against my clit in a way that sends sparks through me.
I moan into his mouth, and he swallows the sound, his fingers pressing harder, rubbing faster. The friction is perfect and maddening at the same time.
“Jase,” I gasp when he pulls back for air.
“Yeah?” His voice is low, amused, and wrecked all at once. “You want more, don’t you?”
I nod, unable to form words for a second as he keeps working me with his hand. My hips start moving on their own, rocking against his palm.
He kisses me again, slower this time, deeper, while his fingers keep that steady, perfect rhythm. Then he shifts his hand slightly, pressing two fingers along my slit through the fabric and stroking up and down with more pressure.
“God, you’re already so wet,” he murmurs against my mouth, sounding surprised and pleased. “I can feel it through your pants.”
My face heats, but I don’t pull away. Instead, I spread my legs a little wider, giving him better access. Jase groans softly and rewards me by rubbing faster, focusing on my clit again until my breathing turns ragged.
He leans down and kisses the side of my neck, sucking lightly, then harder. “You’re so fucking responsive,” he whispers against my skin. “I love how you react to me.”
I thread my fingers into his hair and hold him there as my hips keep rolling against his hand. The pleasure is building fast, tight, and hot, making my thighs tremble.
Jase pulls back just enough to look at me, his eyes dark and intense in the low stove light. “Look at me,” he says quietly.
I do. Our faces are inches apart, both of us breathing hard.
He keeps rubbing me in those perfect, relentless circles while he watches my face. “That’s it. Let me see you.”
The intensity of his gaze, combined with the steady pressure of his hand, pushes me right to the edge. My mouth falls open on a quiet moan.
“Jase… I’m—”
“I know,” he says, voice rough. “Come on, baby. Let go for me.”
His mouth covers mine again, swallowing my cry as the orgasm hits me hard. My hips jerk against his hand, and my fingers tighten in his hair while waves of pleasure roll through me. He keeps rubbing me through it, gentler now, drawing it out until I’m trembling and breathless against him.
When it finally starts to fade, he slows his hand and then stills it, cupping me gently as I come down. He presses soft kisses to my lips, my cheek, my neck.
We stay like that for a long moment, foreheads resting together, both of us breathing hard in the quiet kitchen. When we separate I lean back against the counter and look at him and he looks at me and neither of us says anything for a moment.
He doesn't move away immediately. He stays close, one hand still resting at my waist, and I put my hand flat against his chest and feel his heartbeat under my palm, steady and quick, and he looks down at it and then up at me and something moves through his face that he doesn't try to manage.
I could pull him back in.
He knows I could.
He covers my hand with his, holds it there for one long moment, and then steps back.
“Go to sleep, Brielle,” he says.
“You first,” I say.
He picks up his orange juice, finishes it, sets the glass in the sink, and pauses at the kitchen doorway with his back to me.
“Jase,” I say.
He turns around.
I don't say anything else. I look at him in the low light of the kitchen and he looks back at me and whatever it is neither of us has named yet fills the space between us completely.
“Goodnight,” he says.
“Goodnight,” I say.
He goes.