Chapter III
The thing about living with a boy who's stopped pretending is that he doesn't let you pretend either.
It's been four days since the lock clicked and he didn't leave, four days of him watching me across the room like he's cataloguing something, four days of him touching me whenever he wants — a hand at the small of my back when I'm at the sink, his mouth against my temple while I'm trying to read, his fingers finding the underside of my breast like it's nothing, like it's his.
We've found each other almost every night since, careful every time in the one way that matters — he pulls out, always, holds himself back at the last second like it costs him something — except for that first time, when neither of us was thinking about anything but each other.
And not once, not a single time since, has he made it sound like a deal anymore.
That word hasn't come out of his mouth in days even though the same mouth still finds my breasts every morning like routine. I've noticed. I notice everything about him now, which is its own kind of problem.
"You're doing the thing," Jake says from his bed, watching me over the top of his phone.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you think so hard I can hear it from here."
I close my textbook without marking the page. "I'm thinking about my reading."
"You're thinking about Thursday." He sits up, drops the phone, and the look on his face is the one that's been wrecking me all week — not cold, not careless, not anything I have a script for. "When I said I wasn't doing this like it's a deal anymore."
My pulse does something complicated. "You didn't say that."
"I'm saying it now." He stands, crosses the room in four steps, and I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him when he stops in front of my desk chair.
Six-two of golden-boy football scholarship, looking down at me like I'm the only thing in the room worth looking at, and six months ago I would have laughed in his face if you'd told me this was coming. "Chelsea. Look at me."
I look at him. My breasts are already heavy, already aching the specific way they ache when he's close enough to do something about it, milk gathering thick behind my nipples like my body knew before my brain caught up.
It's been a little over six hours since he last took care of me.
I shouldn't be like this again already. I am.
"This isn't about the milk," he says. "I mean — it started about the milk. I'm not going to pretend it didn't. But it's not that anymore, and I need you to actually hear me say it instead of finding ways to not believe it." His jaw works. "I don't want a roommate I help out. I want you."
My breath catches somewhere behind my ribs. "Jake—"
"I'm not done." He crouches down so we're eye level, hands braced on the arms of my chair, caging me in without touching me, and somehow that's worse than if he had.
"I think about you when I'm not in this room.
I think about you in the middle of the field.
I had a teammate ask why I keep checking my phone and I didn't have an answer that wasn't your name.
" His eyes drop to my mouth, back up. "I'm in love with you.
I've known for about a week and I've been chickenshit about saying it because every time I get close you do that thing with your face like you're bracing for the joke. "
"I'm not bracing for a joke."
"You are. You've been doing it since you were little, probably, and it's not your fault, but I need you to stop doing it with me.
" His thumb finds my jaw, tilts my face up another inch.
"I'm not joking. I haven't been joking in days.
I want this — you, this room, your mornings, your milk, all of it — I want it for longer than the semester.
I want it for longer than I know how to say without sounding insane. "
"You called me library card energy in front of half the year."
He doesn't flinch from it. "I know what I called you."
"Why?"
"Because you walked into that registration line already knowing exactly who you were, and I'd spent eighteen years getting handed things I never had to earn — the building with my name on it, all of it — and standing next to you made me feel like the fraud I actually am.
So I made it your problem instead of mine.
Easier to make you small than admit you scared me.
" His jaw tightens. "That's not an excuse.
It's just the truth, and you've earned the truth more than another sorry that doesn't explain anything. "
I should say something. I have a whole vocabulary of deflection built over years of making myself smaller than I am, and every word of it has gone missing.
"You don't have to say it back right now," he says, quieter. "I just needed you to know it wasn't a transaction. Hasn't been for a while."
He doesn't move. Doesn't push. Just stays there, crouched in front of me, hands still braced on the arms of my chair, giving me the kind of silence that isn't empty — the kind that's waiting, patient, like he's got nowhere else to be for as long as this takes.
"Jake." My voice comes out wrecked already, and he hasn't even touched me yet, not really. "I've been scared to say it because once I say it I can't take it back."
"So don't take it back."
I open my mouth and nothing comes out. Try again. My heart's doing something erratic against my ribs, the same panicked flutter I get right before a deadline, except this is so much worse, because deadlines don't get to decide whether they want me back.
"Chelsea." Just my name, soft, no pressure behind it.
His thumb traces my bottom lip, slow, like he's got all night for this if that's what it takes. "Say it."
I take a breath. Then another. The room is so quiet I can hear both of us breathing, the radiator ticking somewhere behind him, my own pulse loud in my ears.
"I love you." It comes out small at first, barely more than air, and then steadier the second time I let myself feel it land.
"I love you." I have to stop, swallow, start again.
"I've started falling for you since the morning you walked out of that shower and saw what I was hiding and didn't make it weird.
I just didn't think — " My throat closes around the rest of it.
I make myself finish anyway. "I didn't think boys like you kept girls like me. "
Something shifts hard across his face, a flinch that isn't quite pain and isn't quite anger, both at once.
"Don't," he says, rough. "Don't ever say it like that again.
Not boys like me. Not girls like you. Just me.
Just you." His hand slides into my hair, fingers curling against my scalp, and he tips my face up the last inch until there's nowhere left to look but him.
"You've always been mine. Since the registration line, if I'm honest, I just spent four weeks being an asshole about it instead of figuring it out. "
"That's a terrible apology."
"I'll apologize properly later." His mouth is an inch from mine. "Right now I want to put a baby in you."
The words land somewhere low and hot, straight through me, my whole body answering before my brain finishes processing the sentence — milk surging behind both nipples at once, a fresh ache blooming low in my belly, my thighs pressing together under my skirt like that could do anything about either. "Jake—"
"I mean it." His voice has dropped, gone rough and low and certain, the voice he uses when he's decided something and isn't asking.
"I've been pulling out like a coward because I didn't know if you wanted forever or just right now.
I know now. I want to watch you get round with my kid and I want to do it because we both decided, not because it happened by accident.
" His other hand splays flat over my stomach, deliberate, and the heat of his palm through the thin cotton of my skirt makes me shudder.
"Tell me to stop and I will. Tell me you're not ready and I'll wait as long as you need. "
I'm not stopping him. Every part of me that isn't currently melting under his hand is busy doing the math — the pill I stopped bothering with two weeks ago because some quiet, hopeful part of me already knew where this was going, the way he's looked at me every single night since, the way he holds me like he's keeping something instead of borrowing it.
I should be terrified. Part of me is — the part that's spent six months being careful, being controlled, never once letting anything happen to her that she didn't manage first. That part goes quiet and still for a second, weighing it, his hand warm and patient over my stomach, not pushing.
"You're thinking again," he says, soft, no pressure in it at all. "Take whatever time you need. I'm not going anywhere."
That's the thing that decides it, more than the words before it — that he stops, actually stops, hand still and waiting, ready to let the whole thing go if I need him to. I don't need him to.
"Then do it," I say, and it doesn't even shake, not really, not the way I expect it to. "Don't stop. Give me everything."
He makes a sound low in his throat, something between a groan and his name for me, and then his mouth is on mine and the chair is forgotten and he's lifting me against him like I weigh nothing, my legs locking around his waist on instinct, my chest already swollen and aching and pressed flush to his.
He carries me to his bed instead of mine — new, deliberate, a small thing that means something — and lays me down like I'm something he's been waiting his whole life to get his hands on properly.
My shirt comes off in one motion, my bra following, and the sound he makes when my breasts spill free, heavy and full and already beading at both tips, is filthy and reverent at once.
"God, look at you." His hand cups one breast, thumb dragging through the slick bead gathering at my nipple, and my hips jerk up off the mattress at the contact. "Every time. I don't think I'm ever going to get used to this."