Page 37 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name

He turned his head to look at her but said nothing. The orange cast of the streetlights illuminated his face. He didn’t smile or attempt any pleasantries. He just looked her right in the eye.

It didn’t feel awkward or weird. It just felt like they’d skipped a bunch of the usual steps in the getting-to-know-you part of a relationship. The self-conscious small talk, the forced niceties, the bad jokes. The parts where you figure out if you actually like this person or not. Where you decide if you have chemistry.

For her and Daniel, they’d figured that out a long time ago. All that other stuff felt redundant. It was like they’d skipped straight ahead to the staring into each other’s souls’ bit.

“Hi,” she whispered.

He gave a tiny smile. “Hey.”

He started the engine and pulled into the street. She stared straight ahead, hands clasped in her lap. The air between them seemed to shimmer, like it was suffused with gasoline fumes.

She had a million questions backing up in her throat. Questions about where he’d been and what he’d been doing there. Questions about his job and his family and why’d he’d moved to Chicago two years ago. Questions about these friends of his and why he felt the need to protect her from them.

She realized that all the questions boiled down to one.

Who are you?

But by the time he brought the car to a stop in the lane outside her house, she hadn’t worked up the courage to ask a single one.

Maybe they’d skipped too many steps. Because they didn’t really know a thing about each other.

The interior light of the car lit them both in a soft yellow glow. The silence stretched. Then, out of nowhere, they both spoke at once.

“Listen—”

“Daniel—”

A second silence followed, this time imbued with humor.

He looked down at the steering wheel and made a soft sound. Like Sebastián’s almost-laugh.

She swallowed and forced the words out of her mouth. “Why did you tell your brother to watch out for me while you were away?”

He lifted his gaze to meet hers and winced slightly, like he had something sharp stuck in his eye. And she saw it in his face. The fear.

He was scared. Of whom? Of her?

Or of someone else?

He exhaled and chewed his tongue for a moment. “There’s a lot of complicated shit in my life, Julia,” he said, not looking at her. His gaze was fixed on the windshield, his thumbs hooked around the steering wheel above his knees. “Shit I don’t want you getting involved with.” He glanced at her now, and that same haunted look was in his eyes. “Shit that could get you really hurt.”

His words settled with a heavy weight on her skin. She swallowed a lump in her throat. She knew that when he said ‘hurt’, he didn’t just mean her feelings.

He looked down at his hands on the steering wheel. “I keep Sebastián away from it. And I’m gonna keep you away from it, too.”

She said nothing, just bit her bottom lip, thinking. Then she looked at him and asked, “What are you saying?”

He swallowed, the column of his throat working. Then he looked at her, right in the eyes, and said in a low voice, “We shouldn’t do this.”

When she spoke, her voice was just as husky. “Do what?”

His eyes settled on her lips. And with that one look, every single one of her questions was incinerated in a blaze of need.

Their kiss was like a collision. His lips pressed against hers. His hands were everywhere. Gripping the back of her neck. Cupping her breast. Sliding around her waist to press against her lower back. Squeezing her butt. It was like he’d grown ten more hands in a very short space of time.

She didn’t even realize he’d pulled her over the console until she was sitting in his lap. He ran his hands up under her skirt, over the bare skin of her thighs, stopping to cup her ass. There was a burning sensation in her stomach, like she’d swallowed something hot.

His mouth had become the center of her universe. His tongue glided over hers, pressing deeper into her mouth.