Page 20 of A Summer Thing

Chapter Twelve

Declan

I wake in the warmth of a bed that isn’t mine. I hardly remember how I got here.

“Declan?” Jude’s voice caresses my name, but I’m too tired to answer. It comes back as a whisper of memory, followed by more, and more, of the recollection.

“Little D?”

“Hmm?”

Quiet laughter that barely registers. A soft, cool blanket sliding over my skin. The lights going out.

My mind is instantly more alert, though I’m still slipping away into sleep.

The bed shifts beneath me as Jude moves around to get more comfortable, his strong, tattooed fingers sliding through my hair, and a soft kiss is pressed to my forehead.

And then I’m out like a light.

I run a hand over the warm fabric of Jude’s sheets in the here and now, the scent of him beneath me as I sink my head deeper into his pillow. Fresh linen, spice, and thunderstorms.

I can’t remember the last time I slept so peacefully, the last time I woke from sleep and my heart wasn’t already racing, already beating faster with the anxiety living inside my bones.

The absence of it now is so startling that it screams at me in the silence. I’m not sure how silence can be loud, but it feels that way. A quiet I’m not used to feeling when I’m all by myself.

When I finally part my eyelids, sunlight washing into my line of sight, I realize I am all alone. In Jude’s bed. His side is rumpled, still warm from where his body was pressed into it all night.

I half expected us to wake up accidentally entangled in each other, our limbs intertwined, my face smooshed against his hard chest, his hand halfway down my pants like all the best romances have sold. But unfortunately, or fortunately, it isn’t the case.

Confusion swims through my mind.

Where is he?

My question is immediately answered as his bathroom door creaks open, and warmth and hardness crash into me like the world’s most awkwardly comfortable blanket.

I want to pull it around me and inhale its warmth.

“Jude!” I laugh. It’s a tired, light sound that falls from my lips, and the vibration of his chuckle dances along the surface of my skin as it mingles with my own.

“Morning, Little D,” he says, the minty smell of his breath raining over me, causing goosebumps to race up my arms.

Butterflies erupt in my stomach, even though nothing happened last night. And nothing is happening now, not technically. Which doesn’t explain why it feels like something is. Like something between us is shifting.

A needling thought wonders if it already has.

The weight of Jude’s body dips me into the mattress farther, and I force myself to let the thoughts go, quickly deciding that shift or not, I don’t mind the feel of his body on top of me.

I don’t mind it at all.

A blush works its way through me, reaching all the way down to the tips of my toes tucked beneath the blanket.

Beneath Jude.

A warm flush follows in its path, settling low in my stomach.

I have to remind myself to take a breath.

To breathe, with him lying heavy against me.

Like it’s something we do when we’ve never treaded over this line before—me, waking up in his bed; the fact that his body is so perfectly in line with mine, pushing into me, and into me.

“Good morning, Jude,” I finally manage, pushing against him in a halfhearted effort. I don’t want to face the thoughts racing through my mind right now. Thoughts I’m this close to saying “Fuck it” to and acting on, much to what I’m sure would be Jude’s annoyance.

I’m not willing to step over that line, his firm statement rings through my mind.

No matter how much I’d like to. Fair enough.

And no problem, really—until a few weeks ago.

When I spotted him at Boss’s party, entertaining a conversation with a beautiful girl, and I felt my insides curl with jealousy.

I was angry, I realized, staring at them from across the party. Angry, as I stalked across the floor to do only God knows what. And ever since then—well, the feelings have lingered. I’ve fought hard to bury them, focusing instead on the things I can mentally handle.

“Jude,” I say, my words so breathless a wave of embarrassment washes through me.

But he’s still on top of me, weighing me down, and…

“You—you’re crushing me,” I go with. Instead of the hundred other thoughts sitting truthful in my mind.

You feel so good, on top of me. You’re making it hard to think, Jude.

Hard to breathe. And my heart is racing, my limbs trembling, and the only thought I can find, the only one I can seem to latch onto right now, is the one begging me to pull you closer.

To relieve this throbbing ache between my legs and—

“Alright. Alright,” he relents with a soft chuckle, forcing his weight to fall onto the mattress beside me. His bed bounces with the momentum, jostling us both.

It feels like he takes a piece of my sense away with him, though—the absence of awareness as hollowing as the absence of him on top of me. I have the terrifying urge to beg him to come back, to climb back over me and smother out the emptiness inside me with the weight of his presence alone.

His smile, though —his smile. It pushes away the desolate feeling.

I feel almost guilty for not noticing it sooner, for not realizing how much of a contrast it is from his mood of last night. Somber, dour. Gray shadows obscuring any possibility of light.

I’m used to his darker moods at this point, but this was different. Darker, deeper. Entirely too familiar. He didn’t have to say it; I could feel it. That it had everything to do with his late girlfriend’s death.

So this moment right here, this smile of his—bright, unburdened—feels like the first sign of light after a calamitous storm.

It reaches inside my chest and grasps at my heart, tugging at some place buried deep inside it.

Jude shifts closer, his eyes meeting mine, and I can’t bring myself to look away from him. I don’t even want to look away. But his stare is piercing, digging straight into me, planting feelings I know I shouldn’t be feeling.

The more time I spend here, caught in this quiet moment between us, the more his line in the sand starts to blur.

“I wanted to thank you, Declan,” he says, clearing his throat and slicing through the silence, through the thoughts quietly scrambling around in my mind. His eyes still haven’t left mine, and the beats of my heart intensify, climbing faster, pattering against my ribcage in a chaotic rhythm.

“For what?” I ask. Because I don’t really know what he’s thanking me for. For last night, or for still being here this morning, or for something else entirely.

“For staying with me last night,” he clarifies. “I— fuck.” He runs a hand through his disheveled hair, his gaze growing dark enough to hint at the pain I felt radiating from him last night.

I watch his Adam’s apple trek up and down his throat as he swallows, his gaze falling down my nose, my cheeks, and across my mouth before climbing back up to meet mine.

I’m trapped beneath his stare. Unable to move, unable to think. Unable to breathe.

“It’s been four years now… As of last night… Since Brenna’s passing.” Each of his statements is delivered through an exhale, like he needs each inhale between them to steady himself.

Brenna. So that’s her name. The girl who was lucky enough to be loved by this man lying beside me. The girl who tragically lost her life in a way so similar to Quinn.

My throat tightens around my response. “I’m sorry, Jude. I—” don’t even know what else to say. What else there is to say.

“You managed to make me smile, Little D. On a day I wouldn’t have thought possible,” he says, and it sounds like gravel is caught beneath his words. “I just wanted to thank you. For keeping my mind elsewhere when it’s all I would have been able to think about otherwise.”

The knot in my throat grows thicker with his confession.

I guess that was what I was doing last night, without even realizing it was doing it. Because I know what that pain is like and—

Instead of diving deeper, I just wanted to help him forget.

______

I shut Jude’s door behind me after he leaves for practice and make my way down the hallway. Addy’s door opens just as I’m walking past it, and I halt my steps the same moment she pauses hers.

Recognition lights her gaze, her mouth falling open. “Did you just—” Her mouth stays open, gaze darting between me and Jude’s room, a flashing look of accusation passing through her eyes. “Oh, we have so much to talk about,” she says, before turning on her heel and disappearing into her room.

Despite the weight of everything, I crack a smile. Even if there is still something inside me, something about last night or this morning or the unfairness of life in general, that’s weighing down on me, eager to smother my amusement.

Thankfully, though, Addy is right back out in a flash, a pair of blue Converses in hand. She drops them down at my feet. “Put these on,” she demands, a ball of energy as she bounces from foot to foot.

“Why am I doing that, exactly?” I ask, my smile stretching wider. Addy’s feet are only half a size bigger than mine, but my room, with my own shoes, is literally right down the hallway.

“We’re going on a hike, you and me. Because these walls are too thin, and Mom is on high alert, and I have about, oh,”—she tallies a mental list in the air, her eyes squinted as she pretends to shuffle through them with her fingers— “a million questions I need the answers to immediately.”

I breathe out a laugh and shake my head, slipping into her shoes and following her lead as she heads down the stairs. Reason number infinity and one why I love her so much… She’s always making me laugh, no matter the mood.