Justine is drunk, but not off the two beers she had tonight. No, Justine is drunk off proximity to Sherbrooke Station, and it’s a feeling I know very well.

“How do you even function around them?” she demands, as we round the last corner on our walk back to my place. Her breath clouds in the frigid night air. “I felt like such an idiot all night. I wanted to be cool, but they’re just like...so...”

“I know.” I pat her on the shoulder. “Trust me, I know.”

Justine insisted on interrupting her very detailed study schedule with a trip to Montreal as soon as she found out what happened on Halloween. She wanted to get on a bus that same night, but I convinced her I wasn’t all that cut up about Paul, and we agreed to put the visit off. When JP invited me to see his show, it seemed like the perfect occasion to bring her along.

It doesn’t feel so perfect now, when every part of me is aching for him and she’s the one thing stopping me from having what I’m sure would be a night to remember. My knees haven’t felt fully stable since I watched JP play that solo on stage. This might have turned out to be the night for us.

“Come on,” I urge, linking my arm in Justine’s as I try to assuage my guilt over being an ungrateful friend. “It’s freezing out, and I have gourmet hot chocolate mix at home. It will be our nightcap.”

We climb the creepy staircase in my building, and I dig around in my purse for my key.

“Molly.” Justine grabs my arm just before I’m about to unlock the apartment. “What if Ace and Stéphanie are in there? What if Ace Turner is like, having sex on your couch?”

“Welcome to my life,” I joke, gently freeing my arm. “I think they went to Ace’s place tonight anyway.”

There is no naked rock star ass to be seen when I swing the door open. The room is dark and unoccupied. I flip the light on, and we ditch our coats and boots before I get started on warming up milk for the hot chocolate.

“You’re so blasé about it all,” Justine comments, almost reverently. “You’re like, one of them now. It’s really fucking badass.”

I snort. “I’m not one of them. I’ve gotten used to it enough to act like a semi-normal person when we all hang out, but I’m still the weird and awkward outsider.”

“Nope.” Justine shakes her head, inspecting the canister of hot chocolate mix I set down on the counter. “You’re part of the elite squad, Molly Myers. You’ve levelled-up. You’re a full on rock star girlfriend now.”

I snatch the canister away so I can spoon the mix into our mugs.

“You know JP and I aren’t actually dating. We’re just...taking it slow. We’re still trying to work out what this thing between us even is.”

“Oh, I think it was pretty clear tonight that you guys are ready to work some stuff out. He was practically tongue-fucking that harmonica, Molly. It was like...raw, sexual energy. I thought he was going to pull you up on stage and go to town on you right then and there. I’m pretty sure anyone with eyes was thinking the same thing.”

I shake my spoon at her. “Justine!”

She lifts her hands up. “I’m just saying, he’s got it bad for you, Molly, and not only in the raw, sexual way. You guys just look like you...get each other.”

“I want to believe that’s true,” I admit. “I really want to. Sometimes I feel like we could be something big, you know?”

She raises her eyebrows. I wave my spoon at her again to fend off a sexual joke.

“I just get the sense that if we let it, this thing could totally change our lives,” I continue, “and while that’s a really scary thought, part of me is so ready for change, Justine. Everything about my life is shifting right now, like I thought it was this stagnant painting, but really it’s a kaleidoscope, and I’ve just realized how many different shapes I can be. I don’t want to hold back on things anymore—not on my job, or my drawings, or what I decide to do with my life. I especially don’t want to hold back on him. I just look at him sometimes, and it makes me want everything.”

I look up from where I’m stirring the milk on the stove and find Justine staring at me.

“Did that make any sense at all?” I ask her.

She blinks at me, and then we both burst out laughing.

“Um, kind of?” she eventually manages to get out. “I’ve noticed you changing a lot, Molly. Well, maybe changing is the wrong word. It’s like you’re...shedding.”

“Shedding?”

She waves me off. “Hear me out, okay? I’ve always known you were a hot tamale. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been waiting years for you to figure it out too, and it’s like that’s finally happening. I don’t want to get sappy, but if I hadn’t been so busy checking out Cole Byrne’s ass tonight while trying very hard to not look like I was checking out Cole Byrne’s ass, I honestly think I might have teared up seeing you as happy as you were. You’ve got mojo now, girl, and if you don’t want to hold back, then don’t. Go get your man.”

She jerks a thumb toward the apartment door.

“What, like, now?” I joke.

She just gives me a look.

“Yeah, like I’m just going to head off across the city at two in the morning and show up at his door.”

Another look.

“Justine, you’re not serious about this, are you?”

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know why you even came back here with me in the first place. After that little display at the concert, I was prepared to take your keys from you and find my own way. You’re passing up the dicking of the century for hot chocolate. Oh, excuse me,”—she points at the canister—“gourmet hot chocolate. Never mind. I guess you made the wise choice. Let’s just sit here sipping our gourmet drinks, talking about all the wild sex you didn’t have tonight.”

“Jesus, Justine.” I shut the stove off and pour the milk into the mugs. “You really think I should go over there?”

“Yes, Molly. In the name of every Sherbrooke Station fan ever, I think you should drink this gourmet hot chocolate and then get your fine ass out the door to go bang JP Bouchard-Guindon.”

I feel like I’m being pimped out. Justine ordered me an Uber and practically pushed me into the street after we finished our hot chocolate. I ride in the backseat and watch the blocks of Montreal walk-ups fly by, the occasional wayward pedestrian making their way up the street as we head towards Griffintown.

It’s only once I’m standing at the locked door to JP’s building that I realize I probably should have texted first. I don’t even know if he’s awake. I dial his number and hold the phone up to my ear.

“Molly?” he answers, his accent lingering on the second syllable of my name.

“Are you awake?” I ask, stupidly.

He chuckles. “I did not answer the phone in my sleep. Yes, I’m awake. Are you okay?”

“I am.” I take a deep breath. “I’m outside your apartment right now.”

The line cuts off. Seconds later, I hear his footsteps thundering down the stairs. When the door swings open, he’s standing there with his chest bare, dark ink crawling up his arms, hair hanging loose to brush his shoulders.

Neither of us speaks.

We’re two magnets right now, inching closer and closer together until the pull between us gets so strong we’re flung towards one another.

His mouth is hot and greedy against mine as he kisses me like he wants to swallow me whole. Somehow, we’re inside the stairwell, the handrail digging into my lower back while I grab onto his biceps, his shoulders, his neck—anything that will keep me standing.

There’s no saving me after that. I’m gone. I’m lost to his body and to the feeling of his hands on me. There is no Molly Myers right now. There is only breath and blood and bones and wanting. The wanting is the only thing that gives me the power to push him off me and lead the way upstairs. It’s almost painful, the ache that seeps into every muscle as I listen to his footfalls behind mine. I feel oddly threatened and thrilled with him stalking behind me like this, his shadow looming next to mine on the wall.

I only stop walking when I’m in front of his unit’s door. I feel him halt just behind me. His panting is even louder than mine as he reaches past me to twist the doorknob.

His hand clamps down on my waist. He whirls me around, and our mouths find one another again. I bury my hands in his hair and tug, hard. He groans against my parted lips. When he grabs my hips and lifts me upwards, I take the hint and twine my arms and legs around him. He marches us through the doorway and into his room, tossing me onto the bed just like he did the first time I came here.

Only this time, I won’t tell him to wait. This time, I know I’m ready.

I kick my boots off and shrug myself out of my coat. JP tosses it off the bed with something close to a snarl.

“The rest of it,” he orders. “Take it all off. Everything, Molly. Now.”

His hands are already on his belt where he’s standing over me.

I feel it too: the strained, almost panic-ridden edge in his voice. What we’re about to do feels imperative, necessary, incontrovertible—we need to do this, and we need to do it now.

I scramble out of my clothing as he tugs his jeans and boxers off. He takes just one moment to stare at me stretched out naked in front of him, one brief second to raise his eyes from me to the ceiling like he’s saying a prayer, and then all of me is touching all of him.

Almost all of him.

“JP, please,” I moan, as he kisses his way down my neck. “I need you. I need you now.”

“Prie moi de le faire.” His teeth graze my collarbone. “Beg me for it, Molly.”

“Please.” His tongue flicks over my nipple. “Oh god, please. I can’t take it anymore. Please. Please, I need to feel it.”

I don’t even recognize my voice, pitched high with desperation.

“Quoi?” he growls. “What do you need to feel? Tell me.”

He shifts, the hard length of him pressing between my legs. I arch beneath him, head thrown back to bare my throat.

My voice is a whisper, but the single word I breathe is somehow the loudest sound I’ve ever made.

“Everything.”

His whole body goes rigid. I hear him draw a sharp breath between clenched teeth, and I realize he’s fighting for self-control. He rolls off me and I wait there, shivering, with my legs still splayed as he rips the drawer of his nightstand open. He’s only gone for a few seconds before he’s kneeling between my legs and spreading them wider.

We haven’t turned any lights on, but the glow from the street outside is enough for me to make out the planes and ridges of his chest, the dips and swells of his ink-covered arms. He thumbs his bottom lip and shakes his head ever so slightly as he stares down at me on the mattress. I know the light is enough for him to see me, too. He’s staring straight at the most vulnerable part of me, the part he’s spent the last few weeks touching and licking and driving to insanity in ways no one ever has before.

“Perfect,” he murmurs, so quiet I’m not even sure I’m supposed to hear. “Just perfect.”

My thighs flex. The fire flares in his eyes.

“Please.”

He shifts his hips forwards.

“Please.”

He wraps his fist around himself and trails the tip of his hard length up and down the slit between my legs.

“P—Please.”

He flexes, sliding just an inch inside. I arch up to meet him, but he presses his palm into my stomach, forcing me to lie flat on the bed.

“Say it again. One more time.”

I’m already clenching around him, thrusting as much as he’ll allow. It’s not enough. It’s not even close to enough.

“Please.”

When he fills me, it’s like seeing every colour in the world at once. The beauty is breathtaking—a swell of shapes and shades that’s so overwhelming I almost want to shut it out, make it stop. Nothing makes sense, but then his lips crash against mine again, and suddenly everything—everything—does.

He’s thrusting into me, a slow rhythm to let me adjust. I cling to him, letting myself settle into the sensation before I buck my hips against him, urging him to speed up. He obliges with a hiss, and I rake my nails down his back while he pounds into me over and over again. We’re both moaning, kissing whatever part of each other we can reach.

I cry out in shock when he flips us over, landing on his back so that I’m straddling him, our bodies still joined. He digs his hands into my thighs and pulls me further down onto him, sliding himself in as deep as he can. I groan and throw my head back, rocking myself in time to the guidance of his hands.

I’m still staring up at the ceiling when his thumb presses against my clit, and my eyes nearly roll back in my head. He criss-crosses over the most sensitive part of me, again and again, until I’m jerking with little spasms.

“I want you to come.” His accent is thicker, harsher than usual.

“I’m going to. I’m going to so soon.”

He shifts his pelvis so he’s somehow hitting me even deeper, keeping up the same tortuous pattern with his thumb. I’m practically mewling, letting out frantic little sounds I’ve never heard myself make. I’m about to fall apart right on top of him.

“I—I’m—”

I come with a cry, my spine arching like I’ve been electrified. I see starlight and hellfire streaking across the ceiling, and then I’m tumbling forwards until I crash against his chest. I’m still gasping from the power of it as he grabs my ass hard with both hands and thrusts into me with a frenzy that’s something close to madness. His lips find my shoulder, and when he loses himself inside me, his long, low moan rumbles against my skin.

I don’t know how long we stay like that, wrapped up as tightly as it’s possible for us to be. It must be several minutes, but it still feels too soon when he rolls me onto my side and disentangles us. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, then leans back to move a piece of hair out of my eyes before he gets up and heads to the bathroom.

I lie there, hugging my knees to my chest and feeling a little shell-shocked. When he comes back and settles down next me again, I wrap my arms around his neck and tuck my head under his chin. He folds himself around me like a fortress. We breathe each other in.

“Come home with me.”

I’m about to lift my head in question when he clarifies himself.

“Come with me to Trois-Rivières. I have to go back next week. I want you there.”

“You want me to meet your family?”

“Yes.” He holds me tighter. “I want you to know me, all of me, and I want to know all of you.”

I know how scared that makes him; I know because it scares me too, but if he can be brave enough to ask, I can be brave enough to answer.

“I want that too, JP,” I tell him. “I want that so much. Of course I’ll go with you.”