Block Shot

No one has ever pushed me the way Jared does, demanded my surrender at every turn. I am the resistance, and yet I can’t resist this man.

I drop my forehead to rest against his chin. “God, it was so good, Jared. It was like nothing I’ve felt. You know that.”

“I don’t know. I hoped.” His words melt into the curve between my neck and shoulder. “I want you so bad right now.”

Pressing my breasts into his firm chest is an involuntary response to the desperate need, to the passion roughening his voice. I angle my head to kiss his neck, sucking at the warm skin. He tilts his head, offering as much of him as I want.

I’m losing myself in the taste of him, of his saltiness on my tongue, when “Girl Gang” blasts on the nearby counter. We both jump and then laugh, startled by the loud music shattering the early morning serenity.

“What the hell?” Jared walks over and picks up the device, turning it in his hand and looking for the off button.

“Alexa, stop,” I say, mixing humor in my command.

Alexa rewards me with her abrupt, obedient silence, but Quinn’s app immediately follows, charging in with reinforcements.

“Girl, you better rise and grind,” shouts from the living room.

“Is this every morning?” Jared asks, folding muscle-corded arms over his bare chest.

“Pretty much.” I walk toward the living room to catch the app before it digs out a follow-up phrase to make sure I’m out of bed.

I’m inputting the pizza from last night, trying not to think about my points overage, when Jared comes behind me, rests his chin on my shoulder, and hugs me from behind. At first I hold myself stiffly in the circle of warm muscle, but he runs his nose along the line of my neck, smells my hair like he’s absorbing me. I sink back into him and drop my head against him.

“That’s it,” he whispers in my ear. “That’s all I want.”

His erection twitches against my ass, and I turn to look at him with one lifted brow.

“Okay, not all,” he admits, laughing and rocking me from side to side in his arms. “Is this the app your lashes were working overtime to get Kyle’s help with?”

“He actually did help Quinn a lot.” I chuckle and tuck my head deeper into him behind me. “And, yes. This is the Girl, You Better app.”

“Lemme see.” He plucks the phone from my hand and walks away to explore the app’s functions. After a few seconds, I realize my whole life is logged in there. What I eat, how much I exercise, when I—

“You log sex?” he asks, his voice deceptively mild.

“Uh, yeah.” I reach for the phone, but he holds it above his head where I can’t reach. “Jared, give it to me.”

“Wait.” He walks a few feet away, still sliding his finger over the screen. He leans against the mantelpiece over my fireplace. “I’m not in here.”

“What?”

“We had sex two days ago. I see your activity from yesterday, but I’m not in here.”

Stunned silence drifts into discomfort as we stare at one another across the gulf of my living room.

“I . . . well, I didn’t have time.” I bite my lip and know that isn’t entirely true.

“Ahhh.” Jared nods and holds the phone up to read. “Seven a.m. Yoga. Morning salutation.”

I close my eyes and swallow any protest. I know where he’s going, and he’ll see right through any denial I make.

“Nine o’clock. Three boiled egg whites. Zero points.” He glances up at me. “Well, that’s good, huh? Who knew egg whites are free foods? Three slices of turkey bacon, three points.”

“Okay, Jared. I—”

“Lunch,” he continues. “Three points. Not bad.”

“You can stop now. I know—”

“Wow, when I look back, I can even see you had a four-point salad after fucking me,” he says, looking confused. “But somehow there’s no record in here of us actually fucking.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” I brush a hand over my eyes.

“Let’s see about good ol’ Zo.” He scrolls, eyebrows lifting. “Oh, look. Excellent records here. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked.”

He offers me a wry false grin.

“He’s had a good summer.”

I walk out. This is an exercise in futility in which I won’t participate. In my spacious closet, I jerk open a drawer, blindly sifting through all the items I have from Quinn’s line. I need to do something with my hands that does not involve throttling the nearly naked man in my living room. I grab a sports bra, capri workout pants, and a tank. I turn, only to slam into Jared’s chest.

“Should I record this for you, too?” he asks. “What are we doing? Yoga? Pilates? You’re so meticulous in all your records, other than me, of course.”

“I’m not doing this with you,” I mutter.

I try to step around him, but he grabs me and we struggle until both my wrists are cuffed in his one hand behind my back. It’s not uncomfortable, but I’m completely immobile. His handsome face is sketched in lines of grim frustration.

“Am I your bye?” he demands.

“My bye?” I shake my head, clueless. “What does that even mean?”

“On the way to the Carters for that party, you said we should all get at least one bye song. A no-judgment freebie,” he says, a muscle flexing in his jaw. “We should all get one shitty choice. Am I your shitty choice, Banner? The mistake you don’t want sullying your perfect record?”

“I’m not perfect.”

“I know you’re not,” he says sharply. “And I’m fine with you not being perfect, but apparently, it’s a problem for you.”

“Jared, this isn’t about me.” I shake my head, feeling helpless. “You can throw the sheets in the garbage, and I’m sure if you messed with the app long enough, you could figure out how to delete all the records of me having sex with Zo, but you can’t toss him out of my life. You can’t delete him like he never happened.”

“I’m not trying to delete him,” Jared snaps, his frown dark and heavy. “I’m trying to add me. I mean, did I happen? Am I happening?”

He bends until our gazes are level and locked, the whole universe narrowing down to this fulcrum hinging on this handful of seconds.

“Are we happening, Ban?” he asks softly.

I’m at a loss. Beneath the anger, the sheer force of his frustration, lies some strain of vulnerability I’m not accustomed to in him.

“If you want me to say that us having sex while I was still in a relationship with Zo was right,” I say, looking at him as directly as I can, “I won’t ever say that. It wasn’t right, and I’ll always feel awful that I hurt him that way.”

“Yeah,” he says and clears his throat, loosening his grip on my wrists. “I get that.

“But,” I say quickly before he lets me go completely. “That doesn’t mean I . . .”

How do I say this without sounding like a hypocrite? A hussy? How do I convey to him what is still not completely clear to me? That my despair over hurting Zo sits right beside the pleasure I’ve found with Jared, the irrational sense of rightness.

“Doesn’t mean you what?” he asks, eyes guarded. He’s protecting himself from me, like I could hurt him. I never suspected I had that power, but I read it in the cautious way he’s watching me and in the hands that still haven’t let me go.

I lean up and into his body held taut and offer the words to give him the reassurance I never thought he would need.

“We are definitely happening,” I whisper.

And then I kiss him. Not wildly or with urgency like I did two nights ago. This kiss recalls the first tentative press of my lips into his in the laundromat years ago. Like that night, I’m not sure about where this kiss will take us or what it will prove. I’m not even sure what he wants from me beyond the obvious because with Jared, it’s never merely the obvious.

At first, his lips remain set in an unyielding line, and I’m kissing a brick wall. After a few unresponsive seconds, I pull back, ready to give up and possibly put this behind us, but he tightens his hands on my wrists and twists into the kiss, pushing me deeper into the closet until my back is at the wall. He commandeers my mouth, taking control and groaning into the kiss. I tug at his hold on me until he frees my hands to explore his chest and the sleek muscles of his back until I find his hands and link our fingers between us.

“I don’t want to be your shitty choice,” he says harshly, brows drawn together.

“You’re not.” I bite my lip. “I mean, of course I wish Zo hadn’t been caught in the middle of everything. Hurting him has been awful, and it will take time to get over it.”

“Over it?” he asks, eyes never leaving my face. “Or over him?”

“Not like that.” I run my fingers through my hair, still at a loss. “I knew that it was a mistake to start dating Zo, not because I was his agent but because I was his friend.”

I bite back a sob and blink at the inevitable tears.

“I was lonely, and looking for companionship,” I continue. “And wanted someone to . . . God, what if I used him, Jared? That I can’t live with.”

He dips until he hovers over me and drops kisses on my nose, my cheek and finally, my lips.

“I forget you’re Catholic,” he murmurs, humor making its way back into his voice.

I punch his chest and find myself laughing along with him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You guys should patent that brand of guilt.” He settles his hands at my hips and most of the humor flees as fast as it came. “I know we process right and wrong differently, but I refuse to believe what happened between us was wrong, and I don’t think you staying in a relationship that might never be what Zo wanted would have been right. I think we do things and we live with the consequences. We make the best decisions we can with what we have; with what we feel and know, and live through the fallout if it comes.”     PrevNextTip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between pages.

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