Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
THEN
J ason invites me to visit him at Texas A&M during the spring break of his freshman year. It’s only a few months after his first season of college ball finishes, and he and Wells decide to stay on campus for the week-long holiday. I’ve been going crazy missing him at home, so it doesn’t take much convincing for me to want to go.
It takes my mom and Barry a little more to agree, though. I suppose letting their seventeen-year-old daughter drive alone to visit her boyfriend at college is a little . . . unbecoming . Thankfully, my mother’s love for Jason and her hope for our future together wins out, and she sends me off after I promise to check in with her every day.
The drive from Saddlebrook Falls to College Station is about two and a half hours, and I make it in good time. When I pull into the parking lot of Keahey Hall, the five-story building where Jason and Wells share a dorm together, I soak in the surroundings. The building looks like it’s been here for over a hundred years. The luscious green lawn surrounding it is freshly manicured, and the concrete sidewalks look like they’ve been recently resurfaced. Despite its age, the grounds are well-kept, and I have no doubt plenty of money flows through it.
I check the ribbon tied around my ponytail in the rearview mirror of Mom’s Mercedes before pulling my cheer duffle from the back seat. Pushing out the door, I send a quick text to Jason to let him know I’m here, and then make my way toward the hall’s front entrance.
I enter the double doors to the front lobby just as Jason rounds the corner from the stairwell, a white Aggies T-shirt stretched across his chest, and I can’t help but skip forward to close the distance between us.
“My girl,” he murmurs into my hair as his arms wrap tightly around me. I’ve seen him twice since school started, for Thanksgiving weekend and soon after for Christmas break, but in the months that have passed since then, he’s . . . changed. He’s all angles and hard muscle, so much more the man of my future. “It’s so good to see you. How was the drive?”
I nuzzle into his chest as his familiar smell of clean soap and woody aftershave wraps around me. “God, I’ve missed you,” I confess, the truth of it hitting me harder than expected. I’ve been so lonely this year without Jason around, but to feel his body against mine like this ignites an ache I’ve buried deep. I only have five days here, and I’m already anxious about how quickly it’ll go by. “The drive was good,” I continue. “A little traffic going through Houston but overall not bad.”
He gives me a quick squeeze before pulling away and grabbing the duffle from my hand. “Hope you don’t mind climbing the stairs—the elevator’s been out for a week.”
I laugh, unable to contain my excitement. “I don’t mind at all.”
The stairwell is dark and narrow, the walls a beige-painted brick that glares against the fluorescent lights. Jason’s dorm is on the fourth floor, and as we push through the swing door that leads to a long, carpeted hallway the smell of burnt popcorn overtakes us.
Most of the doors along the corridor are open. The few that are shut are adorned with pictures and streamers. Each door has a dry-erase board that lists two names at the top, and many have colorful notes scrawled in different handwriting.
I trail behind Jason as we maneuver between two girls leaning against opposite sides of the hall, and I try not to notice the way they both stare at me. I catch a glimpse of a shirtless boy with wild blond curls inside a dorm room to my left, sitting on the foot of a small bed. He’s got one foot propped up as he strums quietly on an acoustic guitar and . . . he’s good from what I can hear. His eyes pop up to look at me just as we clear the doorway.
A tall boy with a smattering of freckles and bright red hair flies across the hall from one room to another just as a small cheer erupts from within the first. It’s a lively environment, and Jason nods a hello to everyone we see along the way. It hits me that these are his peers now, the people he sees every day and spends countless hours with, who he’s inevitably built a life with.
“Here we are,” Jason says as he veers toward a room on the right, the names JASON and WELLS marked at the top of the dry-erase board in sharp black marker. There’s curvy red print in the bottom corner that says “Kimmy was here!” drawn with a heart that sends mine tripping over itself.
Jason opens the door, and I’m surprised to see the shared room is tidier than expected. Two beds rest against opposite walls, one with a navy comforter and one with gray. There’s a desk at the foot of each bed that both look well used—good academics are a requirement for college athletes, so I imagine he and Wells spend a lot of real time studying. My eyes trace along the stacks of papers on each wooden surface, the Aggie zip-ups that hang from a hook near the door, the wide window that lets in a ton of natural light. “Wow,” I say, my mind in overdrive as I take it all in.
“Yeah.” Jason nods as he looks around, too. “It’s not much but . . . it’s home.”
I reach for the side pocket of my duffle and pull out my camera—a DSLR I got for Christmas. Popping the cap off the front of the lens, I find Jason in the viewfinder and snap a picture.
He grins. “You’re taking a photography class again?”
I shake my head. “It’s mine. I had to find something to do without you at home.” It was quickly becoming my favorite possession. I’d forgotten how much I loved capturing moments, and these days it was rare for me to not have the Canon hanging from my neck.
Replacing the cap back on the lens, I look around again. Wells has always been organized and tidy with his work around the ranch so I’m not surprised to find his space so clean. But Jason has always been messy. He must have spent some time sprucing up the place before I got here. “It looks good in here,” I admit. “Nicer than I expected.”
Jason narrows his eyes as the corner of his mouth tugs. “What did you expect?”
I shrug. “I don’t know . . . forgotten food containers. Empty beer bottles. A general ‘ass’ smell.”
Jason laughs. “Ouch. Ass, huh?” I nod, and he laughs again. “It’s a small space, and we’ve learned through a little trial and error that we’re both happier when it’s clean. Plus, beer isn’t technically allowed, so . . .” He leans in close, his mouth hovering close to my ear. “We keep the case of it tucked behind Wells’s clothes in his closet.”
I roll my eyes, smiling. “Where is he, anyway?”
He circles me, tosses my duffle on the floor by his bed—the one with the gray comforter—and bounds down on top of it, smirking. “I don’t know, but he’s not here, so . . .” He winks.
“Jason!” I gasp, turning around to face the still-open door. A girl with a shaved head casually walks by, her blue headphones covered in colorful cartoon stickers. I slide my focus back to Jason, brows arched. “There are, like, a million people out there.”
Jason’s smirk rises. “Trust me, there are ways to create privacy when you need it.” He effortlessly rolls off the bed and shimmies past me, shutting the door gently with a light click. When he turns back around, his eyes have lost all trace of humor.
“Oh.” I swallow as my stomach rolls in anticipation. “How convenient.” The weight of the metal door drowns out most of the noise from the hallway, and it suddenly feels like it really is just me and Jason.
He hums as he saunters toward me. “Do you know how much I’ve missed you, Layla?”
My heart pounds as I pull my dry tongue from the roof of my mouth. “How much?” I ask.
He’s inches from me in the span of a breath, and even without a single inch of our bodies touching, I feel him everywhere . Leaning forward to ghost his lips against mine, he whispers, “So. Fucking. Much.” And then he drives his tongue into my parted mouth and pulls my body tight to him.
My hips press against his, and I feel how hard he already is beneath his shorts. He reaches to swipe a hand beneath my shirt, fingers skating across my ribs, but the metal door groans open, and sounds from the hall bleed back into the room. Jason snatches his hand back from under my shirt but makes no attempt to move away from me. “Wells,” he says simply, looking at me as his eyes dim in frustration.
“Uh . . . hey,” I hear Wells say awkwardly, though I can’t see him behind Jason’s wide shoulders. “Sorry.” He clears his throat. “I can?—”
“No, it’s okay!” I nearly shout, standing on my tiptoes to look over Jason’s shoulder and ignoring the way his face falls. “Hey, Wells.”
His mouth quirks into a smile. “Hey, sunshine,” he says lightly, dropping his black backpack onto his desk. He’s got that old Wild Coyote hat on backward, and it stirs a longing inside of me. A yearning for the ranch, for Jason and Wells to be home. For the horses that I haven’t seen in over a year. “I almost forgot you were coming today.”
I snake around Jason to hug him, careful not to knock my camera against his shoulder. His arms are stiff as they wrap around me. “It’s good to see you,” I admit.
He nods once. “Yeah, you too.” He quickly looks past me to where Jay stands. “Colton said he texted you about The Stampede?”
Jason snorts. “He’s got his panties in a wad because I left him on read for forty-five minutes?”
Wells shrugs. “I think he’s just trying to make plans.”
“What’s The Stampede?” I ask.
Wells’s eyes flash back to me. “A bar.”
My brows pinch. “You aren’t old enough for a bar.”
His lips curve, and he looks back at Jason. I turn to find Jason walking toward us, smiling. “We’re not in Saddlebrook Falls anymore, babe,” he teases. “Here, we’re kings.”
Turns out Jason was a little overconfident about his self-acclaimed royalty status. The bouncer at The Stampede is a surly brute of a man, and Jason’s charms do nothing to get us through the door—but we get lucky when a fight breaks out on the street in front of the bar, causing enough of a distraction with all the bouncers that all three of us can slip inside unnoticed.
A tall boy with a bright smile and a sleeve of colorful tattoos beneath a Red Wings T-shirt stands and waves from a booth in the far corner. Jason steers us toward him through an open dance floor in the middle of the bar. Two couples dance on opposite ends as “You Look So Good in Love” plays from the jukebox. It’s a country bar, through and through, and I immediately love it.
“Nice to finally meet Jason’s betrothed,” Colton says when we’re introduced.
My cheeks heat. “You too,” I say.
Two girls are seated in the booth, and Colton fumbles through introductions. Apparently, he just met them today during a game of lawn bowling at their sorority house. Jason hooks his arm around me as we exchange hellos, and a zip of pride flashes in my chest at the gesture. But it doesn’t seem to matter, because it quickly becomes obvious that both girls are very interested in Wells.
“I’m going to go get us some drinks,” Jason says, his gaze already skimming across the bar. “Stay here with Wells, yeah?” When I give him a confused look, he continues. “You’re seventeen, babe. We may have gotten in the door, but you need to lay low with the staff.” He gives me a swift kiss on the cheek and pulls himself away before I can respond.
He didn’t even ask me what I wanted.
I turn back to the rest of the group and find Wells watching me, amusement on his face. “What?” I ask, feeling a little out of my element.
“Shake the Frost” by Tyler Childers starts to play, and the corners of his lips tug higher. One of the girls in the booth says his name, but he doesn’t seem to hear her. “Dance with me,” he says.
I laugh, shaking my head. “No.”
“No?” He makes a show of looking hurt. My shoulders tense in response. I’d almost forgotten what the effect of his approval felt like—or, in many cases, the lack of it. “What if I insist?”
Before I realize what’s happening, he grabs my hand and pulls me toward him, using the momentum to swirl us right to the middle of the dance floor. “Wells!” I protest.
He turns to face me, winding an arm around my waist and pulling me close against him. “What?” he asks.
“We shouldn’t . . .” I hesitate, looking toward the bar where Jason’s giving an order to a stocky bartender with what looks like a barbed wire tattoo snaking up his arm.
“Shouldn’t what?” He takes my right hand into his left, his brown eyes sparking with mischief. “Dance?”
“You know what I mean,” I insist.
“Afraid I don’t,” he volleys. And then he begins to move.
If there was one thing I was sure about only a minute ago, it was that Wells isn’t a two-step country dance kind of guy. But the easy confidence in his steps is shocking as much as it is intriguing.
“Where’d you learn to dance like this?”
He smirks. “Why, you like it?”
I shrug, clearly impressed, and he huffs a breathy laugh that curls around my neck. “Seriously, where’d you learn to do this?” I press after he spins me in two tight circles.
This time, his smile is soft. “At home,” he says. “With my mom.”
I smile, picturing it. “How is your mom?”
His head dips low. He traded his old ball cap for his black cowboy hat before we left the dorms, and now it creates a partition between us and everyone else. “She’s good,” he says. “My dad’s back on the wagon, which helps.”
I’m struck by the casual honesty of it. Everyone knows Bud Bennett has suffered from an alcohol problem for his entire adult life—but this is the first time Wells has ever addressed it directly. At least with me. “How long?” I ask.
“’Bout two months.”
I’m reminded of Rhett’s interruption at church, of my mother’s words about the condition their father had been found in that weekend. I wonder if it’s what eventually propelled him back into sobriety. “That’s something!”
He pulls his head back to look at me, his smile growing. “Yeah.” He nods. “It is.” And then he pushes lightly against my waist, spinning me away from him before he winds me back in for a dip that has me gasping.
His eyes flare at the sound.
“Oh my god,” I say, as a giggle bubbles out of my throat. “I did not see that coming.”
But his smile changes into something more forced than natural. And after pulling me to an upright position, he takes a firm step back.
“Thanks,” he says evenly. “For the dance.”
“But the song isn’t over . . . ?” It comes out more like a question than anything.
He shrugs. “You didn’t want to dance anyway.”
And then he leaves me standing alone on the dance floor as he makes his way back to the booth. My shoulders sag with uncertainty . . . Did I say something wrong?
When I get to the table, Wells is seated on one of the long bench seats talking animatedly with Colton and the girls. Jason waits for me with two beers in his hands.
He does not look happy.
“You’re back,” I say, stating the obvious.
“Yep,” he says.
I frown. “Is something wrong?”
He shakes his head. “Just trying to figure out if I should be concerned about my best friend slow dancing with my girl,” he says.
My frown deepens. “Concerned?” I repeat. “Jason, he just asked me to dance. I didn’t even say yes . . . but, it was just a dance.”
“You didn’t say yes?” he asks, eyes sliding to Wells with an unfamiliar heat. Is he . . . jealous of Wells?
I reach my hands out to press against his shoulders, grounding his attention back to me. “Jay,” I say firmly. “He’s my friend. He’s your best friend. It’s Wells . . . there is nothing to worry about.”
It’s a truth I’m confident in—but it doesn’t explain the images that flash through my mind as I say it.
Wells’s midnight eyes, shadowed from the moonlight by the awning of my doorstep, watching me cry with a pained expression.
His hands on my waist as he carefully hoists me from Champ’s saddle, the pressure of his fingers buzzing through my shirt.
The steady look on his face as he watches me across a crowded room of some party, even when I can hardly get him to hold a conversation.
It’s a seed of doubt that takes root, even as I force the calculated indifference on my face now.
Jason sighs. “I don’t know,” he mutters, looking back at me. A deep line slices between his brows. “I’m gonna go get some air. I’ll be right back.”
For the second time tonight, Jason walks away from me. And this time it burns a hole through my stomach.
“Where’d he go?” Wells asks, surprising me. I startle, whipping around to face him.
“I told you dancing was a bad idea,” I say back, tears stinging my eyes. His eyes grow wide and worried as they flit back toward the door Jason just left through, and I rush to the bathroom.