“Here we go. Let me help you up.”

I stood and pulled Jameson to his feet. I wrapped an arm around him, and we limped our way outside, eyes on us the whole time. He tugged away and went around the corner. I followed and stood at a distance as he dry-heaved a few times, but nothing came up.

A minute later they came out with my receipt to sign, and somehow had packed up our food in boxes for us. “Thank you.” I turned to Jameson. “Do you need a few minutes, or do you want to get into the car and head home?”

“Second one.”

I helped him to my car, and we drove back to his place with the windows down because he said he needed the fresh air.

I parked in front of his condominium, and he started saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You didn’t even get to eat. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s fine. They gave me the food, and now we’ll have a fun story to tell our friends.”

He nodded before leaning back against the seat, his eyes closed.

“Jameson?”

“Hmm?” he said, half asleep. Which I guess meant he’d almost passed out. He didn’t open his eyes.

“What am I gonna do with you?” I said more to myself than anything. I got out, went around, and opened the door.

I almost had to carry him, and he kept mumbling—half passed out, half slurring due to being drunk—how sorry he was.

“I already said it’s fine. No worries.”

I pulled his keys out of his front pocket and unlocked the door, hoping like hell there wasn’t a killer dog inside that would eat me. I hadn’t heard anything when I picked him up, so I assumed I was safe.

His apartment was really fucking nice, and again, I realized Jameson definitely came from money.

He pointed to the hallway, and I took him down it. The second we were in his room, he fell out of my arms, face-first onto the bed.

“You are such a mess.” I chuckled. I took his shoes off and managed to get him to maneuver himself so he lay the right way on the bed. I took off his bow tie and unbuttoned the top couple of buttons on his shirt, but otherwise left him dressed. I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. There was a blanket folded at the edge of the bed, so I pulled it up and over him.

“I ruined it,” he said softly, his words blending together.

“You didn’t ruin the date.”

“Yes, I did…and everything. I wanted you to be the one. I didn’t know it until I started talking to you, but I did…want you to be the one to have my summer fling with…to lose my virginity to. You would have been nice to me, and I ruined it.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Did I hear him correctly? I felt like I’d been let in on a secret I had no right to know. Sober Jameson wouldn’t have said that to me, and I wished he’d had a choice in it, but there was something else rushing through my veins too. Pride. Not the usual kind I felt when someone hit on me or went home with me, but honor that he wanted to choose me for this, that he liked me and said I would be nice to him. He hadn’t said he wanted me because of my looks or anything superficial, and that felt… Fuck, it felt good.

“I ruined it,” he said again, and this time, I could tell he was asleep.

I ran my hand over his head and whispered, “You didn’t ruin anything.”

CHAPTER NINE

Jameson

Please let me be dead.

It was the first thing that popped into my pounding head when my eyes fluttered open the next morning. The second was that my mouth tasted like I’d been sucking on paper all night and it dissolved against my tongue, which was gross.

At first, I couldn’t make myself move. It was weird when I thought about the night before because even though I’d been a little…or a lot drunk, I remembered it all in this detached way where I was watching as I made a fool of myself with Will.

The drinking. The rambling. Not eating. Telling him I didn’t feel well. Him helping me outside, dry-heaving, him helping me into the house, flopping onto my bed… “Noooooo.”

What had I done?

I shot up in bed, making the thudding pain in my head explode. I’d told him, told him, I wanted to have a summer fling with him and lose my virginity?

“Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.” I rubbed my temples, took a few deep breaths. I could do this. I could handle it. I’d move. I could go back home. My parents wouldn’t care. My phone number was easy enough to change, and then I’d hide out all summer, and that would be that. I never had to see Will Carson again. It wasn’t that difficult. After last night, I was sure he would never want to see me again anyway. Who would? I didn’t even want to see me, and I was me, and now I was thinking about myself in this weird way and I needed to stop.

Tags: Riley Hart Stumbling into Love Romance
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