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‘Having trouble, Hodge?’

‘Clearly not as much as you.’ She looked pointedly down at his erection.

With his mind nothing more than a fuzzy haze ofher, he didn’t think when he moved behind her to grab the box she’d been reaching for. Her breath hitched when their bodies met, cock brushing the plump curve of her ass. He shuddered. Stepped away, unsure if he’d gone too far or not nearly far enough as held the box in front of her. Their hands met around the rim, and he didn’t know if it was intention when she closed the distance between them. Not until she wiggled her hips, torturing him. He held his breath. Tried to remember where he was, and who he was with, even when his mind conjured images of her without the jeans on, without anything on. Would she take him like this, back to him? Or would it be her riding him?

She ripped the box from his hands, bringing him back to the present. Still, she didn’t move away, shoulders rolling against his chest.

‘What are you doing with these, anyway?’ he asked, voice strained at the attempt to make idle conversation while white-hot desire devoured him.

‘Why? Feeling uninspired?’

‘I was.’ He nudged one of her waves off her shoulder to whisper in her ear, ‘not so much anymore.’

‘So the rumours are true. Men really do think with their dicks.’ She tore away from him without warning, leaving him cold – but still amused. As long as she was spitting out those little insults, giving him the time of day, teasing him by getting just a tad closer than was necessary, he couldn’t help but be amused.

Besides, this was all the confirmation that he needed: he hadn’t imagined the chemistry between them. This back and forth might as well have been their foreplay for all it did to convince him that he wanted her, more and more every day, and that at least a sliver of her felt the same. He didn’t know what it was: the confidence, the honesty, the fieriness, or the fact all of those things were barely contained in the body of a gorgeous, short woman with curves no sculptor would ever do justice.

He thought that would be it, that their little fun was over again and she was back to ignoring him, but then she sighed and continued, ‘I’m using them for texture, pressing them against the clay.’ And then, pointing firmly at him: ‘Don’tcopy me.’

He lifted a brow, then two hands in mock surrender. He hadn’t even considered textures, too hung up on the building of the thing. ‘Wasn’t going to. Promise.’

But he did envy her creativity. He could create textures on a canvas, but on clay? That wasn’t something he was used to. He’d been too focused on throwing the perfect vessel, making sure every seam and curve was as smooth as he could make it.

Juniper swayed her hips as she returned to her desk, feeding his lust just a little.

Yep, he was definitely a little more creative now.

14

‘No, Mum, I’m not coming home,’ Juniper droned into her phone, biting down on her tongue to keep from saying something she’d regret. The campus was already mostly in darkness, but she was on her way to the workshop studio to practice throwing, a fact that Mum was revelling in as an excuse to tell her she was better off at home before she burned out.

The line crackled on the other end with what was no doubt a passive-aggressive huff, Mum’s specialty. Juniper could imagine her now, sitting on the sofa watching her TV soaps, socked feet curled under her and short blonde-silver hair pushed back by reading glasses. Dad would be in his armchair, tapping away at the games on his phone and complaining about the ads, while the neighbour’s cat, Nutmeg, looked in through the window.

The twinge of homesickness surprised her. That had just been her normal, the ordinariness she’d been fighting against all her life. But it was home, comfort, ease, and maybe just for a moment, she wouldn’t have said no if offered a place on the couch again.

‘I’m just saying that it doesn’t sound very healthy for you, love,’ Mum said in that all-knowing voice. She had a way of making even support sound like a scolding,like Juniper was one walking disappointment. No hopes, no talent, no ability to take care of herself. ‘You know how overwhelmed you can get, and if classes aren’t going well then you’re throwing all this money down the drain for nothing.’

Juniper collapsed onto the nearest bench, staring at the silhouette of Mags. With only the dim light of a few lampposts to illuminate her, her stone head looked like it was sagging on her shoulders, casting a shadow onto her chin that made her seem lonely, tired.

As lonely and tired as Juniper felt. After another disastrous late shift, her bones ached and her hands were raw from pot washing, a task she’d been given because she was less likely to mess it up. Supposedly. A few plates and mugs hadn’t survived her shift, but she’d promised Gianna that, once she was a master on the throwing wheel, she would replace them with Juniper Originals.

Naturally, Gianna wasn’t all that sold on the idea.

But she was trying, and she had decided to continue to try tonight. With her sculpting work yesterday reminding her that she was capable of something, she was inspired to have another go at the wheel. Or, she had been before Mum’s call.

She was right, a fact that Juniper hated most. The effects of studying fulltime while trying to keep down a job she was terrible at were already taking their toll. Maybe if she didn’t drag such emotional weight, so many doubts, into everything she did, she might have been better at coping, but she only ever felt snowed under. She wasn’t strong enough.

And whenever she was reminded that her mum believed it, too, it felt almost impossible not to let it bury her. ‘It’s not going down the drain,’ she said now, trying to convince herself as much as Mum. ‘It’s going into my future. This is what I want to do. I just didn’t think it would be so hard.’

‘Well, life is hard,’ Mum replied, a patronising edge to her voice. ‘We can’t always manage the things we want to. Part of being an adult is accepting your limits.’

As tears sprang to her eyes, Juniper tilted her head to the indigo sky. The crescent moon hid just behind the spire of the library, hazy from the surrounding clouds. She couldn’t keep doing this. She needed to get through this year, and if Mum didn’t believe she could, then maybe she just couldn’t talk to her about all this anymore.

‘I can manage,’ she decided sharply, finally. ‘I’m managing.’

‘It doesn’t sound like it.’

‘That’s because to you, everything I do is a failure,’ she blurted, and then instantly regretted it. She loved her mum, truly, and knew she had Juniper’s best interests at heart. It was just that she seemed to limit Juniper even more than she limited herself; even more than her neurodivergence did. Instead of encouraging her to try, even if something was more challenging for her than for others, she expected her to just… stop.