Lover (Court University 4)

His nod touched the air, his hair a perfect wave of ebony dark curls. “Can I ask you something else?”

In that moment, I felt like he could ask me anything short of spreading out on the table for him, completely not me. Again. What. The. Hell? “Depends on what it is.”

He played with my fingers as he looped them together, forcing my palm to face the light. He drew soft circles over my flesh, like he was trying to read my palm but simply teasing me instead. “Would you tell me why you were going to jump tonight?”

I froze, and where I might have pulled away, I only breathed harder. “I never said I was going to jump.”

He threaded our fingers, completely taking my hand. He tugged me closer, and I tasted his air, tasted him, a hot combination of male and confidence. Both of which he exuded in spades. He swallowed. “I never said I wasn’t happy.”

I hadn’t assumed he wasn’t. But maybe, he wasn’t.

And maybe I was going to jump.

Maybe I wasn’t happy either, two not happy people together. Maybe I’d been at the wedding tonight when I didn’t want to be, and maybe he was forced to stand idle while another man married his first love. Maybe we were both two freaking losers and who were being losers together.

“Want to get out of here?” I asked, my breath heavy. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I didn’t do this, anything like this.

“That depends,” he stated, dampening his lips. It was quite possibly the most erotic thing I’d ever seen, and hell, if I could explain that. He looked up at me. “What are the odds that you’ll be there too?”

Quite high. “I wanted to jump tonight.” Crazy I was admitting this, admitting to a stranger, this. I nodded. “I was sad.”

And confused, confused why the sheer happiness of the evening tonight would make me want to do such a thing. That someone else’s happiness would physically pain me. It didn’t make sense and sounded almost cruel. Like I was evil.

Like I was petty.

I expected him to let go, but he didn’t. If anything, he held me closer. His fingers wrapped around my wrist again, his throat jumping. “I’m less happy than I am something else,” he admitted too, nodding too. “Most days something else.”

We were the same, both of us but in different ways. My head bobbed twice in acknowledgment. “It doesn’t have to be that way tonight. You could be more happy than something else.”

Who was this person? Certainly not me. I mean, I was basically propositioning this complete stranger for sex, his smile soft. Taking my hand, he used my finger to pull down an entire strand of my dark hair.

“And maybe you don’t have to jump,” he stated, but then a shrug. “Or maybe I could jump. Jump with you? What do you say, Jersey girl?”

I wouldn’t make him, of course. But something told me no one could make this guy do anything. He had a lot of his own control, his dedication to his friend told me that. He’d stood back once upon a time, allowed someone else to come in who he knew would love her. It told me so much about the control he had over his life as well as something else.

This Midwestern boy’s heart.

Chapter Five

Ramses

I should ask her last name.

But before I could manage the thought, things were moving too fast and I was taking her home.

Why the fuck was I taking this woman home?

Why had I revealed shit I barely acknowledged myself? Things about my past and who I was? The night started as me trying to save her from... whatever this shit was she was dealing with, and now, she was doing the same for me. This was fucked up.

Right?

My thoughts couldn’t help but say yes, and that was opportunist as fuck. I wasn’t this guy. I didn’t take women home. Well, I took women home but not like this and not under certain situations like this. They also definitely weren’t anyone remotely close to Brielle. I’d been with a handful of older women before but...

No, they weren’t like her. They didn’t feel like her if that made sense, and I most definitely didn’t play out all my shit in front of them like I needed some kind of therapy. I mean, what the hell had I sounded like tonight? I sounded needy, like I needed her.

I hadn’t even talked to December about all this.

True, I never aired out all my dirty laundry to my friend, made easier in the past with all the land mass between us. I told her things from time to time but nothing heavy, and I most certainly wasn’t a “sharer.” I wasn’t scared of my feelings or anything, but I wasn’t one to sink into them either. I was pretty laid-back. I simply dealt with stuff as it came up.