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[12:15]: Do I get a say in any of this??

[12:15] Heather: No.

[12:15] Matty: nope

[12:15] Hunter: hahaha no

[12:16] Erin: Why don’t we have dinner at our house instead of going out?

[12:16] Matty: ummm because neither of us can cook?

[12:17] Erin: Yes, but I can order pizza with the best of them

[12:17] Erin: Our place at 8?

[12:17] Heather: Sounds great!

[12:17] Hunter: We’ll be there

[12:17] Matty: woooo

“Crap,” I mutter.

“Mm.” Jacob is waking up, stretching absently against me. He blinks up at me sleepily. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.” I put my phone away as he shifts in bed to sit up next to me. “My friends want to have us over for dinner

tonight.”

“Ah.” Jacob looks uncomfortable. “I guess they’re probably not my biggest fans.”

“It’s not that,” I say quickly. “I’m just not sure I want to spend our first night back together eating pizza with Matty.”

He presses his forehead into the crook of my shoulder. “I thought last night was our first night back together.”

“Yeah, but—” I cut myself off abruptly. It sounds a bit immature to say “Yeah, but we didn’t even have sex.”

But seriously, we didn’t even have sex.

Jacob grins, like he knows what I was going to say. “Tell you what,” he says. “Let’s go get some food, then I’ll run home

and get some clothes for dinner, and then we can just... hang out here all afternoon.”

“Mm.” I snake an arm around his waist and pull him closer. “That sounds good.”

“Right?” He grips the front of my T-shirt and kisses me deeply. A moment later, he pushes aside the comforter so he can throw a leg over my hips, settling all his warm weight on top of me. I run my hands up his legs, sliding my thumbs under the thin cotton hem of his boxers.

“You know what sounds even better?” I murmur, after a few minutes of increasingly heated kissing. He pulls back, his eyes

very dark.

“Doing it right now?” he says.

I grin. “Fuck yes.”

He laughs at me cursing—I guess I didn’t swear as much around him before—and then kisses me again, deep and urgent.

I kind of thought the first time we had sex again, I would spend ages taking him apart, but now that we’re here, I don’t know

why I thought I would have the self-control to do that. We’re hurtling forward so fast, everything is happening in quick,

breathless flashes. He’s pulling my T-shirt over my head. I’m shifting on top of him and dragging his earlobe through my teeth.

His warm, bare skin is sliding against mine; my fingers are working him open, making him cry out every time they curl. Then

I’m sinking into him, all tight heat and pressure, and his eyes are on mine as I move.

And this, this is different than before. That layer of distance that used to live in these moments has been stripped away,

and my name is slipping out of his mouth like a fucking prayer, and he only breaks eye contact at the very end, when his head

tips back and the sexiest, most desperate sounds drag their way out of his throat.

I think it’s the hardest I’ve ever come, watching him like that. It seems to go on and on and on, till I feel almost wrecked

with it. Even the aftershocks kill me, little stabs of pleasure that have me clutching his hips like a lifeline. I think he’s

feeling it, too. He’s holding my shoulders painfully tightly, and his head has tipped forward, tiny sounds almost like whimpers

escaping his lips.

“ Fuck ,” he manages finally.

“Fuck,” I agree.

It makes him laugh again, a breathy, strangled sound.

“I can’t believe I went ten months without you,” he says.

And hell, if that doesn’t cut straight to my heart. For a second I feel like I’m back in the ICU, pressing my lips to his

skin and asking him not to die. I never want to lose him again.

I lean forward carefully and kiss him, my fingers digging into his thighs. There’s a new scar on the right, stretching down

from his hip. “I love you so much.”

Color rises to his cheeks, but he smiles and says, “Love you, too.”

We drag ourselves to the bathroom and shower together without having sex, a strange new intimacy. I trace the new scars on

his skin with wet fingertips.

“Do they hurt at all?” I ask.

He watches my fingers move. “Not really. They’re kind of ugly, though. There’s some fancy laser therapy that could fade them.”

“I don’t think they’re ugly.” I run my fingers up and down the long scar on his thigh. “Think you’ll get it done?”

He grins. “Not if you keep touching them like that.”

Afterward, we get back in bed and laze around awhile longer, until my phone alarm goes off, reminding me of a stupid commercial

thing I’ve got to do for one of Harper’s sponsors.

“You can stay here as long as you want,” I tell Jacob as I pull on my jeans. “I mean, you don’t have to—”

“No, I will,” he says. He leans forward in bed, crossing his arms over his knees. “Kelsie’s working on this huge paper for

school, so I’ve been trying to make myself scarce.” He hesitates a moment, then adds, “Might use the sim a bit, if that’s

okay.”

Warmth spreads through my chest. “Go for it,” I answer. “It’s yours.”

He grins at me, a little crooked and a little shy, and I force myself to say goodbye and leave, because otherwise, I’m going

to wind up climbing back into bed with him.

The Harper thing ends up running late—I’m no actor, and apparently my performance as “guy who genuinely likes Panther Soda”

is highly unconvincing—and I arrive home past seven, after a quick detour to pick Morocco up from Heather’s place. I grin

a bit foolishly when she leaps onto Jacob’s lap the moment she sees him, as if he’s an old friend. I kiss Jacob on the lips

and Morocco on the top of her head, then head for a shower. I emerge from my bedroom fifteen minutes later, pulling on a long-sleeve

shirt, to find Jacob standing in front of my cabinets, both him and Morocco staring wistfully at the food inside.

“Hungry?” I say.

“Starving. I got caught up on the sim and forgot to eat anything.”

I laugh. “So, eat something now.”

He sighs and closes the cabinets. “Yeah, but then if I don’t eat whatever your friends have, they’ll think I’m a dick. Even

more of a dick, I mean.”

“They don’t think you’re a dick.”

He makes a doubtful noise. “They should.”

“Jacob.” I curl my hands around his biceps. “You’re not a dick.”

He turns to face me, his mouth twisted a bit unhappily. “I was, though. I was the one who broke up with you. And I was a piss-poor

boyfriend for a year before that.”

I frown. “Do you really believe that?”

“I generally believe things that are true, yeah.”

I tilt his chin up with my hand. “You weren’t a bad boyfriend.”

“Yeah, I was,” he says impatiently. “You were so nice to me all the time and all I did was push you away and treat you like

shit.”

I take a step back and frown at him for a moment. “Did you lose your memory after the crash, or something?”

“What?”

“You know you were nice to me, like, all of the time, right?”

“I wasn’t—”

“Shh,” I interrupt, clamping a hand over his mouth. “I’m still talking. Like, remember Monaco last year, when I had that stupid

flu?”

One corner of his mouth turns up slightly. “Yeah.”

“Well, do you remember how you stayed at my hotel and made me take Tylenol and drink a bunch of water and soup?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “I guess.”

“And do you remember when I lost the championship last year, and you stayed with me over Christmas?”

“You mean when you got me a really expensive present, and I didn’t even say thank you?”

“I remember you making that gross mint hot chocolate—”

“Peppermint.”

“—and making us breakfast, and falling asleep on my lap halfway through that weird cartoon.”

“It was How the Grinch Stole Christmas , and it’s a classic.”

I run my thumb over his jaw. “I could name a thousand things like that. And it wasn’t just that you did stuff for me.” I search

for the right words. “It was the way you made me feel. I didn’t realize how lonely my life was until I met you.”

Jacob looks at his feet. “You had a great life.”

“Yeah, I did,” I agree. “But I didn’t have anyone to share it with.

” I slide my hands down his neck and dig my fingers into the tight muscles of his shoulders.

“Look, I’m not saying everything was perfect all the time.

We both could’ve done things a bit differently.

But I was really happy with you back then.

And I’m really, really happy with you now. ”

He looks up at me, his gray eyes serious. “I’m not going to mess things up again. I’m in this, a hundred percent.”

My lips curve up. “I know.” I kiss him gently, a soft brush of my lips against his. “Now can we please go and eat something?

I didn’t eat all day, either. I feel like I’m going to die.”

“God, yes,” he agrees.

I shoot Heather a quick text on the way to the parking garage. On our way. Can you make sure no one’s hard on Jacob? He’s had a rough time.

My phone dings just as we pull into a parking spot near Matty and Erin’s.

[7:56] Heather: I got you, babe.

I smile at Jacob before we get out of the car. “It’s going to be fine, okay?”

He nods jerkily. It’s really sort of cute, how nervous he is.

True to her word, Heather is waiting for us at the door with a smile and two drinks.

“An old-fashioned, courtesy of yours truly,” she says, handing one to Jacob.

“Is that for me?” I ask, pointing to the second glass.

“This is mine,” she says. “Obviously. You’re not new and exciting.

” She clinks her glass against Jacob’s and then leads us farther into the house, to the kitchen, where Matty, Erin, and Hunter are sitting around a large wooden island.

Matty is unscrewing the cork from a bottle of red wine while Erin and Hunter are chatting over a stack of pizza boxes.

I go a little lightheaded with hunger at the smell.

“Thank god,” Hunter says when he spots us. “If I don’t eat something, I’m going to die.”

Heather rolls her eyes behind his back. “Vegans,” she says. “They’re all weak and frail from eating twigs and shrubs.”