Chapter 7
Jenna
I wake up with his voice vibrating in my chest like a tuning fork struck hours ago.
I lie in the guest bed and replay the words of a man who wanted to touch me but chose not to because I hadn’t said yes.
I press my fingers to my lips. They’re still warm from his kiss, or perhaps it’s the lingering memory my body clings to.
I’ve kissed men before, but only a couple: a boy from my sixth placement, who tasted like cafeteria pizza and regret, and a coworker at my first job who kissed me at a holiday party and never mentioned it again.
Both times, my body remained behind a glass wall—present yet protected, engaging from a safe distance, like I do everything.
Last night, there was no glass.
Last night, I kissed a man who has been quietly removing every sharp edge from my world since the moment he carried me out of a ditch. My body didn’t stay behind; it moved toward him as if it had been waiting for permission my whole life, and he’d finally given it.
My forearms itch. I look at them in the low light, the patches flushed pink from sleep, the skin tight where yesterday’s cream has dried.
He knows about this. He’s seen the worst of it.
He stayed in the hallway while another woman touched my body because consent mattered more to him than proximity.
Learning about that single act of restraint has dismantled more of my defenses than anything anyone has ever done to breach them.
I run through the foster kid’s arithmetic one more time. The calculation I’ve been doing since I was six: what’s the risk of wanting this? What happens when it’s taken away? How bad will the hurt be, and can I survive it?
The answer has always been the same. Don’t want it. Don’t reach for it. Keep your expectations at zero, and the fall won’t kill you.
But the answer is different now. The answer is Ethan Sutton, who swapped the soap, stayed in the hall, and said mine as if it were something he’d been carrying for six months and had only just set down.
The risk of wanting him is enormous.
The risk of not telling him is worse.
I’ve been careful my entire life. But being careful hasn’t kept me safe; it’s kept me small.
I push the covers off, drag on a shirt and jeans, and stuff my phone into my back pocket. I’m not sure what my plan is. Knock on his door? And say what? Maybe I don’t need words. Maybe actions speak louder right now.
But whatever vague plan I had evaporates as I step into the hallway and find Ethan outside his room, as if he were just leaving.
He’s wearing his glasses, his hair damp and curling slightly at his collar.
A gray kitten is tucked inside the open neck of his flannel shirt, which is unbuttoned one lower than yesterday, revealing the hollow of his throat, the beginning of chest hair, and the tanned skin of a man who works outside in all weather.
He stops when he sees me. “Hey.”
I don’t return his greeting. My carefully chosen words are gone. “I need to say something before I lose my nerve.”
He gives me his full attention, his blue eyes reflecting the morning light, the scruff dark along his jaw.
“No one has ever fought for me.” My voice cracks. “Until you.”
His jaw works. The tendon in his neck pulls tight, a cord of muscle that runs down into his shoulder, into the body that hauls fence posts and throws hay bales, that held me on that porch like I was something precious.
“Jenna.” My name hangs in the air. The pause is heavy.
But what comes next isn’t steady. “I’ve never let myself want something just for me.
The ranch needs me. Gabriel needs me. My father needed me to be fine after my mother died, so someone could hold it together.
Wanting you feels—” He stops, his hand going to the back of his neck.
“Selfish. And I don’t know how to be selfish. ”
“You’ve spent your whole life being the one who gives,” I say, the words spilling from my lips. “When does someone give back to you, Ethan? When do you get to have something?”
His hands drop to his sides, his eyes bright and devastated, revealing that no one has ever said this to him. I close the distance between us, my body no longer waiting for my brain to authorize my actions.
My hands find the soft flannel of his shirt, worn from countless washes, and I pull him closer. His mouth finds mine, and whatever restraint we’ve held disintegrates.
His stubble scrapes against my chin, cheek, and the corner of my mouth, sending sparks cascading down my spine. This is what I imagined during all those late-night phone calls. This is what I couldn’t let myself picture too clearly because wanting it would have broken me.
His hands—God, his hands—grip my waist and pull me into my room.
My back hits the door as it closes behind me, and I don’t care.
I want the solid surface behind me and the solid man in front of me because the space between careful and this is a canyon I’ve been standing at the edge of my whole life, and I just jumped.
“God.” The word punches out of him against my mouth.
His hands slide down to my hips, fingers digging in, pressing me harder against the door.
I can feel him now, the thick, undeniable evidence of what I do to him straining against his jeans.
The knowledge that this quiet, controlled man is hard for me, desperate for me, sends something molten through my center.
He kisses me like he’s been starving. Not like last night on the porch—that was careful and intentional.
This is need, hot and graceless, as his tongue slides against mine, and I make sounds into his mouth that I didn’t know I could make.
His hand slides into my hair, fisting it, tilting my head back so his mouth can drag down my jaw, my throat, his teeth scraping the tendon there.
I feel it everywhere. A current runs straight down my spine to pool between my thighs, and my hips roll against him without my permission, seeking friction, seeking him.
“Jenna.” I’ve never heard him say my name that way, scraped raw. He sounds like someone who’s been holding back for so long that the release is tearing through him. “God, Jenna.”
I pull at his shirt, yanking it from his waistband, desperate because I need to feel him.
My fingers find his bare stomach. He’s warm.
So warm. Hard muscle flinches under my touch as I follow the trail of hair leading down from his navel.
The skin there is softer than I expected, softer than his hands, which are rough and calloused and currently sliding under my shirt.
His palm flattens against my bare back, and I arch into him. My body craves more, craves proof this is real, that he’s real, that he is here and touching me.
His forehead drops against mine, his eyes dark and close, the blue almost swallowed by black as his chest heaves.
“Six months I’ve been lying in the dark imagining—” He swallows audibly. “You have no idea what your voice did to me.”
“Tell me.”
“This.” His hand slides higher under my shirt, palm gliding up my ribs, thumb brushing the underside of my breast through my bra.
My spine arches off the door, and a whimper escapes my throat.
“My hands on you. Whether you’d arch into me like that or pull away.
” His thumb traces the curve again, slow and deliberate. “Whether you’d make those sounds.”
“Ethan—”
“Whether you’d say my name like that.” His voice is gravel against my ear, his stubble scraping my cheek. “Like it’s the only word you remember.”
I fist the open flannel and pull him closer, our hips grinding together, the friction making us both groan. “I want you closer. I want—”
His mouth crashes into mine again, and whatever thread of control he was clinging to snaps.
He lifts me with one arm, as if I weigh nothing, as if throwing around hundred-pound hay bales has made this effortless.
I gasp against his mouth as I wrap my legs around his waist. The new angle presses him directly against my center, hard and thick through two layers of denim, and my head falls back against the door.
“Fuck.” His hips roll, grinding against me, the friction hitting exactly where I need it. His hand braces against the door beside my head, forearm flexed, veins standing out beneath his tanned skin. “You feel—I can’t—”
“Ethan.” I grip his shoulders, nails digging in through the flannel.
He keeps moving, his hips setting a rhythm that has me climbing toward something terrifying. The seam of my jeans presses in exactly the right place, and I should be embarrassed by the desperate moans spilling from my lips, but I can’t find it in me to care.
His mouth finds my throat, opening hot against my pulse point. His teeth graze, his tongue soothes, and his stubble drags like a brand. I’m going to come just from this, from grinding against him fully clothed against a door.
“I need—” My voice breaks. “Ethan, I need—”
He pulls back to look at me, his eyes wild, his hair tousled. “I know what you need.”
His hand moves to the button of my jeans.
He stops, eyes locked on mine. A question lingers, even now, even with both of us shaking, even with the evidence of his arousal pressed hard against my thigh.
I grab his wrist and push his hand lower.
The button gives. Then the zipper. Cool air brushes my hip where my shirt has ridden up, and then his hand slips inside against my bare stomach. His fingers trail down… and I stop breathing.
“Tell me.” His voice is barely recognizable, scraped down to bedrock. “Tell me you want this.”
“I do.” I cup his face, forcing him to look at me. “I want you, Ethan. I’ve wanted you since you talked me through a panic attack about a spreadsheet and didn’t hang up until I laughed.”
His expression cracks open, becoming raw and vulnerable, a man who doesn’t know how to be wanted, finally letting himself believe it.