Page 51 of Late Nights

Her scrunched face told me she wasn’t loving the image I was painting.

“What’s wrong with getting distracted?” I asked with a grin. I’d definitely gotten distracted seeing her in a swimsuit.

“Nothing.” She smoothed out her expression. “Just thinking about my brother and distractions is rather unpleasant.”

I laughed. “You can’t blame the guy for being crazy about his girlfriend.”

“True.” She nodded, the blonde messy knot on her head bouncing with the movement.

She looked so effortlessly beautiful, wisps of her hair surrounding her face and against her neck. The lake behind her, reflecting the last light of the sun as it dipped past the mountains, framed her in a breathtaking glow. I wanted to take a mental snapshot of that image. And I wished I could reach out to her, tug her toward me, pull her onto my lap, and trace my fingers along the side of face, tucking a few of the escaped strands of hair behind her ear, and have her talk to me about anything and everything while I held her close to me.

“If I had a girlfriend, I’d be guilty of getting distracted too.” My voice came out too rough, too raw, as my eyes locked onto hers.

Her lips parted, looking at me in what seemed like equal parts surprise and desire. “But you don’t ever have a girlfriend.”

“I don’t, but I can imagine.”

Our eyes remained glued, an unspoken message being conveyed. I was pretty sure both of us were imagining how things could be between us. The water was hot, but I hadn’t felt overheated until Demi had come out.

“It’s so cold,” Kate’s voice screeched as she tiptoed across the patio toward the hot tub, breaking the tension between us. I hadn’t heard the sliding glass door open, even though Demi and I hadn’t been talking, but she had a way of taking over all of my senses.

Jax was right behind her, but he hurried to pick Kate up and throw her over his shoulder.

“Jax!” she screamed.

“What? I’m just helping you get to the hot tub,” he said, but started to walk toward where the lawn was covered in snow.

“You’re not even going toward the hot tub,” she exclaimed.

“Are you sure?” He swung his body in one direction and then in the opposite direction, her body mimicking his movements as he pretended to look for the hot tub. “I could have sworn it was over here.”

“Jax, put me down!” Her voice sounded serious, but she was smiling.

“If you say so.”

He began to bring her back down, but she screamed, “Don’t you dare put me in the snow! You know I hate the cold.”

He chuckled, keeping her over his shoulder. “I do know you hate the cold.”

He turned back to the hot tub, and she relaxed against him, trusting him to carry her. But after taking one step he pivoted, pulling her down against him and falling down into the snow, partly using his body to break the fall.

“Ah!” Kate yelped. “Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh!”

Jax laughed, barely covering his face with his arm in time before she took a handful of snow and threw it at him, as if he knew she was going to do it.

She scrambled to her feet. “Jax Kennedy, you are in so much trouble.” Her voice shook from how hard she was shivering, but there was no real threat in it.

He smiled up at her, still lying in the snow. “That’s for spoiling the ending of the movie for me last night.”

She stood above him, her hands on her hips. “Like you didn’t know what was going to happen,” she argued. “Anyone who has seen one Nicholas Sparks movie knows how the rest of his stories will end.”

“Maybe I wanted to live in my denial and hope, did you ever think of that?” he asked, pushing himself up to stand.

As I watched their interaction, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy at what they had. Jax was a clever guy to tackle the woman he was secretly crushing on when they both wore swimsuits under the guise of playful fun. Maybe I needed to be taking notes. If he could get away with that kind of physical touch because they were supposedly just friends, then maybe I could keep getting away with the playful touching that happened between Demi and me.

“Maybe I hoped you wouldn’t cry all over my pillow if I told you what was coming,” she said, still defending her reasoning for telling him the ending of the movie.

Wait. They had watched a movie together in her bed? Is that what best friends did? If so, then me and Demi needed to become best friends stat. We could be just like Kate and Jax—super touchy, sharing a bed during a movie, talking to each other all night. The more I thought about it, the better an idea I thought it was.

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