Page 75 of Sunshine

I shrug. “I don’t know . . . forgotten food containers. Empty beer bottles. A general ‘ass’ smell.”

Jason laughs. “Ouch. Ass, huh?” I nod, and he laughs again. “It’s a small space, and we’ve learned through a little trial and error that we’re both happier when it’s clean. Plus, beer isn’ttechnicallyallowed, so . . .” He leans in close, his mouth hovering close to my ear. “We keep the case of it tucked behind Wells’s clothes in his closet.”

I roll my eyes, smiling. “Where is he, anyway?”

He circles me, tosses my duffle on the floor by his bed—the one with the gray comforter—and bounds down on top of it, smirking. “I don’t know, but he’s not here, so . . .” He winks.

“Jason!” I gasp, turning around to face the still-open door. A girl with a shaved head casually walks by, her blue headphones covered in colorful cartoon stickers. I slide my focus back to Jason, brows arched. “There are, like, amillionpeople out there.”

Jason’s smirk rises. “Trust me, there are ways to create privacy when you need it.” He effortlessly rolls off the bed and shimmies past me, shutting the door gently with a light click. When he turns back around, his eyes have lost all trace of humor.

“Oh.” I swallow as my stomach rolls in anticipation. “How convenient.” The weight of the metal door drowns out most of the noise from the hallway, and it suddenly feels like it reallyisjust me and Jason.

He hums as he saunters toward me. “Do you know how much I’ve missed you, Layla?”

My heart pounds as I pull my dry tongue from the roof of my mouth. “How much?” I ask.

He’s inches from me in the span of a breath, and evenwithout a single inch of our bodies touching, I feel himeverywhere. Leaning forward to ghost his lips against mine, he whispers, “So. Fucking. Much.” And then he drives his tongue into my parted mouth and pulls my body tight to him.

My hips press against his, and I feel how hard he already is beneath his shorts. He reaches to swipe a hand beneath my shirt, fingers skating across my ribs, but the metal door groans open, and sounds from the hall bleed back into the room. Jason snatches his hand back from under my shirt but makes no attempt to move away from me. “Wells,” he says simply, looking at me as his eyes dim in frustration.

“Uh . . . hey,” I hear Wells say awkwardly, though I can’t see him behind Jason’s wide shoulders. “Sorry.” He clears his throat. “I can?—”

“No, it’s okay!” I nearly shout, standing on my tiptoes to look over Jason’s shoulder and ignoring the way his face falls. “Hey, Wells.”

His mouth quirks into a smile. “Hey, sunshine,” he says lightly, dropping his black backpack onto his desk. He’s got that old Wild Coyote hat on backward, and it stirs a longing inside of me. A yearning for the ranch, for Jason and Wells to be home. For the horses that I haven’t seen in over a year. “I almost forgot you were coming today.”

I snake around Jason to hug him, careful not to knock my camera against his shoulder. His arms are stiff as they wrap around me. “It’s good to see you,” I admit.

He nods once. “Yeah, you too.” He quickly looks past me to where Jay stands. “Colton said he texted you about The Stampede?”

Jason snorts. “He’s got his panties in a wad because I left him on read for forty-fiveminutes?”

Wells shrugs. “I think he’s just trying to make plans.”

“What’s The Stampede?” I ask.

Wells’s eyes flash back to me. “A bar.”

My brows pinch. “You aren’t old enough for a bar.”

His lips curve, and he looks back at Jason. I turn to find Jason walking toward us, smiling. “We’re not in Saddlebrook Falls anymore, babe,” he teases. “Here, we’re kings.”

Turnsout Jason was alittleoverconfident about his self-acclaimed royalty status. The bouncer at The Stampede is a surly brute of a man, and Jason’s charms do nothing to get us through the door—but we get lucky when a fight breaks out on the street in front of the bar, causing enough of a distraction with all the bouncers that all three of us can slip inside unnoticed.

A tall boy with a bright smile and a sleeve of colorful tattoos beneath a Red Wings T-shirt stands and waves from a booth in the far corner. Jason steers us toward him through an open dance floor in the middle of the bar. Two couples dance on opposite ends as “You Look So Good in Love” plays from the jukebox. It’s a country bar, through and through, and I immediately love it.

“Nice to finally meet Jason’s betrothed,” Colton says when we’re introduced.

My cheeks heat. “You too,” I say.

Two girls are seated in the booth, and Colton fumbles through introductions. Apparently, he just met them today during a game of lawn bowling at their sorority house. Jason hooks his arm around me as we exchange hellos, and a zip ofpride flashes in my chest at the gesture. But it doesn’t seem to matter, because it quickly becomes obvious that both girls areveryinterested in Wells.

“I’m going to go get us some drinks,” Jason says, his gaze already skimming across the bar. “Stay here with Wells, yeah?” When I give him a confused look, he continues. “You’re seventeen, babe. We may have gotten in the door, but you need to lay low with the staff.” He gives me a swift kiss on the cheek and pulls himself away before I can respond.

He didn’t even ask me what I wanted.

I turn back to the rest of the group and find Wells watching me, amusement on his face. “What?” I ask, feeling a little out of my element.

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