Page 90 of Hot Ice, Tennessee

“I really did want you in my bed that night, by the way,” Jesse murmured against my skin, kissing all along my jaw. “But it’s okay that you didn’t want to sleep over.”

“I wanted to,” I breathed. “So badly.”

“You really did?”

I swallowed, nodding at him. “It was all fear, Jesse. I wanted to be there with you.”

He gave me one last slow, firm kiss before pulling in a breath and leaning back toward the driver’s seat.

“Well. Thanks for going on a date with me,” he said.

I still felt like I was signing up for a suicide mission as Jesse put his seatbelt back on and drove back out onto the road. We headed to the Hard Spot, his hand resting on my thigh the whole time.

But Jesse had reached out and found me this afternoon. He’d done it more than once, now, when I’d needed it the most. I was known to do dumb things when hot guys asked me to do them, and maybe this would be no different.

Or maybe it was the first good thing I’d done in my life since everything had changed.

16

JESSE

“Wait a minute. You guys arefucking,aren’t you?”

I coughed on my sip of beer. I turned to Mason, who was sitting in the bar stool next to mine with his cheeks rapidly turning beet red. We’d only been sitting in the Hard Spot for five minutes, and I was just starting to get comfortable on the bar stools with the ambient sound of the bar music and chatter all around us.

“You’re imagining things again,” Mason told Max, who was leaning over the bar, smiling at us. “Did the ghost cat tell you that or something?”

“No,” Max said, looking between the two of us. “I just know it. I should have known it earlier. You are boning each other like fucking bunnies.”

“Shh,” Mason said, glancing around.

Kane was far away, over by one of the tables talking to a different group of people.

“Wow. Hundreds of TNU students are jealous of you right now, Mason,” Max said. He reached over and smacked me on the shoulder. “Do you know how many people want this big hunk of meat?”

Only twenty minutes ago, I hadn’t even been sure that Mason would say yes to a date at all. For the past ten days, I went between wanting to punch a hole in a wall and wanting to call him and ask him to date me, about five times each day.

But I forced myself to give it time. To let both of us remember what the world was like if we weren’t tangled up in each other’s lives.

And you know what?

I didn’t fuckin’ like it.

When I woke up this morning after what felt like the millionth dream where Mason was with me in bed, I knew Iwantedto be tangled up in whatever the fuck was going on in his world. Driving over to his house was my last-ditch shot at pulling him out of a fog, like the one he’d pulled me out of on the night we met. I didn’t know if it would work. Didn’t even know if it was a good idea.

But when I finally just let myself trust—let myself go over and do what I trusted was right—everything slid together, like a puzzle finally forming an image.

“What makes you think we’re fucking?” I asked Max.

I ran a finger through the fine condensation on the outside of my beer, feeling like a teenager who’d just been caught red-handed.

“Honestly? Because Mason didn’t come in here and immediately start looking around and asking me if any potentially gay guys are in here tonight.”

Mason ran a hand over his forehead. “You make it sound like I’m a total slut.”

“Tonight it didn’t seem like you cared about looking at anyone other than Jesse,” Max said.

“Forget about the ghost cat who somehow makes people fall in love,” I said. “I think you’re the Cupid of this bar, Max.”

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