Page 48 of Unbound
When he needed to reference my textbook, he no longer asked permission. Instead, his fingers would brush mine as he tugged it toward himself, the calluses on his knuckles (from what? Guitar? Weightlifting? A detail I suddenly burned to know) catching against my skin. His knee bumped my thigh under the table as he turned pages, and neither of us moved away.
"The fascinating thing about intermediate scrutiny—" He tapped a citation in my margin, his palm sliding down to brace against my forearm. The warmth of his touch bled through my sleeve like a brand. His fingers flexed slightly, grip tightening just enough that I could feel the latent strength in them, the restraint. When had he gotten so comfortable touching me? When had I started craving it?
"—is how the Court balances government interests against individual rights," he finished.
This time, his hand didn’t retreat. It lingered, thumb brushing absent circles against the inside of my wrist as he spoke. His pulse thrummed under my fingertips where they'd somehow come to rest against his sleeve. Too fast.Hisormine? The flush climbing his neck gave him away.
A silence stretched between us—too thick, too charged. Jesse’s breath hitched when I shifted just enough to lace our fingers together under the table. His grip went slack with shock. For three agonizing seconds, I thought I’d miscalculated.
Then his fingers curled tight around mine.
"It’s strange," he murmured, spinning his pen in his free hand with forced casualness. The barest tremor in his voice betrayed him. "I’ve spent my whole life being told that changing the definition of marriage would destroy society." His thumb traced the ridge of my knuckles under the table. "Corrupt children. Undermine the family."
The enormity of what he was doing crashed over me. Here, in this quiet corner of the library, Jesse Miller—poster child for purity culture—washolding my hand. Stealing touches like a teenager. Letting me see himwant.
When his gaze flicked up through unfairly long lashes, the look in his eyes wasn’t guilt. It was heat.
"Cognitive dissonance is a bitch," I said, voice rougher than intended.
Jesse’s laugh punched out of him, startled and bright. The sound unspooled something tight behind my ribs. His whole face transformed with it—eyes crinkling at the corners, teeth catching his lower lip as if to trap the joy before it escaped. I memorized the way his throat moved with it, the way his shoulders shook. A laugh I’dcaused. A laughnobodyin his god-fearing world had ever let him direct at something taboo.
The warmth in my chest turned incendiary.
"Look at you," I murmured, squeezing his fingers. "Finding humour in heresy."
He didn’t let go.
Monday's session was different again. Jesse arrived with a stack of printouts and a determined expression that told me he'd been doing his own research beyond our assignments.
"I've been looking into the opposition arguments," he said, spreading papers across our table. "Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, traditional values organizations. I wanted to understand their constitutional arguments, not just their moral positions."
"And?"
"They're weaker than I expected," Jesse said, and there was something almost vulnerable in his admission. He looked up at me, those hazel eyes searching my face like he was trying to figure out what I was thinking. "Most of them rely on definitional arguments—marriage has always been between a man and woman, therefore it should continue to be. But that's circular reasoning. Or they make slippery slope arguments without empirical support."
I wanted to reach across the table, cover his hand with mine, tell him how brave he was for questioning everything he'd been taught. Instead, I kept my hands carefully folded and said, "You sound disappointed."
"I guess I am, a little. I expected their legal arguments to be more sophisticated, more compelling. If these are the best constitutional arguments against marriage equality..."
"Then maybe marriage equality is good constitutional law," I finished.
"Maybe it is."
The words hung between us, heavier than the legal texts strewn across the table. Jesse’s gaze locked onto mine with a focus that scorched—not the clinical dissection of legal arguments we’d practiced all week, but something raw and searching. The nape of my neck prickled under his attention, because this wasn’t just scrutiny. It wasrecognition.
He sees you.
The realization sent my pulse rabbiting, my fingers tightening around my pen until the plastic creaked. When Jesse finally glanced down at his notes—too sudden, like he’d caught himself staring—his lower lip was red where his teeth had worried it. I catalogued every stolen glance he didn’t realize I noticed:
The way his hooded eyes drifted to my mouth when I licked a coffee stain off my thumb
How his breath hitched when I rolled up my sleeves, his stare tracing the veins along my forearms
The deliberate way he leaned into my space to examine a highlighted passage, letting his knee press flush against mine beneath the table—no accident this time
His admission about the flawed arguments against marriage equality still vibrated in the air between us. Not a conversion, not yet. But the first crack in a dam.
“The Lovings’ lawyer argued race restrictions on marriage reduced the institution to a ‘system of castes,’” I said, sliding theObergefellbrief toward him. My thumb brushed his knuckles—once, twice—feigning clumsiness. Jesse didn’t pull away.
