Tessa Ever After (27 page)

It barely registers when Jason slips into bed behind me, his arm reaching around my waist and pulling me back against him. My body wants to sigh at how right, how
perfect
it feels to be pressed up against him like this, but my mind won’t shut off. It keeps spinning, images of a thousand faceless girls in an imagined bachelor pad flitting through until I can’t stop the words from spilling out of my mouth. “You know I’ve never seen your apartment?”

Jason’s hand stills on my stomach, and it’s not until he freezes behind me that I realize he was brushing his lips back and forth over my shoulder. I close my eyes against what I fear is coming. This is when it’ll finally be too much for him. When he’ll start retreating, pulling away from me, all because I wanted to see where he lives.

And then he laughs. Puffs of air blow out against my skin and his chest shakes against me.

“What the hell are you laughing at?”

“You.” He presses a kiss to my shoulder, then pulls me tighter against him. “I have no idea how your mind works. In the span of five minutes, how did you go from coming so hard I had to press my hand over your mouth to keep your scream from waking up Haley to wondering what my apartment is like?”

I don’t know how to answer that, so I just shrug. And I can feel the way the smile he had pressed into my skin slowly fades away, and then he props himself on his elbow so he can peer down at me. “Wait, does this really bother you?”

His brow is furrowed, his eyes flitting between both of mine, and I breathe for what feels like the first time in five minutes.

With a nod, I say, “Yeah.” Glancing between his eyes, I see the genuine confusion there, and sigh. “So I take it this was a boy thing?”

“What was a boy thing?”

“You not inviting me over . . .”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘boy thing,’ but if it’s me being a dumbass and not thinking you’d even want to be there in the first place, then yeah.”

I stare up at him, trying to read his expression. He looks contrite and sincere, but the part of my brain that wove all those detailed exploits in his imagined apartment isn’t pacified yet. “Did you . . . I mean, have you ever had anyone, you know, other girls or whatever, there? At your place?”

When the smile slowly spreads across his face, I want to reach up and slap it off, shove him in the shoulder and push him off me, then off the bed altogether, because I’m embarrassed that I’ve been reduced to this kind of insecurity. It’s something that doesn’t happen very often, and for that I’m thankful, but with a rap sheet like Jason has, it was inevitable.

“You’re jealous,” he says with a grin.

“Shut your face, I am not.”

“You are.” He huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “I can’t believe it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t, because I’m not.” I jerk away from him, rolling over and curling away from him and his stupid face and his smiling eyes.

“Aw, come on, baby, don’t be like that. It’s cute. It’s
nice.
I don’t think anyone’s ever been jealous about me before.”

“I can probably name twenty girls off the top of my head who’ve been jealous when it comes to you.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that: no one who’s important to me.”

I turn my head and peek at him again, my chin pressed to my shoulder, and wait for him to continue.

“No, no one’s ever been there, unless you count Adam or Cade, and believe me, I don’t. They don’t smell nearly as good as you do.” He slides over closer to me, fitting his body against mine again as he presses a kiss to my neck. “Is this the cold shoulder? I’m new to all this, so I’m not so good at picking up these subtle hints. If you’re pissed at me, you need to just come out and tell me.”

I look up at him, all messy hair and whiskey eyes, and I realize he’s being completely and totally honest with me. I release a deep breath and lift up to kiss his lips. “I’m not pissed. I wasn’t ever pissed, just . . . uncertain, I guess.”

His once-playful eyes turn serious as he reaches up and brushes his thumb over my lower lip. “You don’t need to be. It’s just you, Tess.” He leans down and kisses me, slow and deep, his tongue sliding against mine before he pulls back, his mouth brushing against mine as he repeats, “Just you, baby.”

•   •   •

THE SOUND OF
deep, rumbling laughter wakes me, and I stretch, reaching back automatically, even though I already know I’ll come across just cold sheets and an empty bed.

After our talk last night, after I exposed the first crack in my armor, Jason proceeded to kiss and lick every inch of my body, as if he was trying to prove his words to me. Prove to me I was the only one. I think he was worried that I suddenly felt like that because of the rushed and hurried way he’d taken me on the couch, afraid I’d think I was just like all the others who came before.

Little did he know that was the exact moment I realized I’m in love with him.

I take a deep breath, absorbing my thoughts, smiling when it doesn’t send me headfirst into the panic it did yesterday, though the flutters in my stomach are still there and no doubt will be for a while.

I push back the covers and pull on a pair of yoga pants under the oversize T-shirt I slipped into last night before finally falling asleep pressed against Jason. When I step out into the hallway, I hear the laughter again, only this time I’m aware enough to realize it’s not Jason’s normal laugh, but an exaggerated, deep, and haunting one followed closely by a higher-pitched, softer laugh attempting to mimic the original.

“That’s good, but do it deeper. Like this,” Jason says, then proceeds with the maniacal laugh again. “From your belly, shorty. Make ’em think you’re crazy evil.”

My perfect, angelic daughter who dresses up in tutus and has tea parties with her teddy bears does as Jason instructs and lets out a perfect replication of his evil-villain laugh, and I can’t help the smile from spreading across my face. Quietly, I creep down the hallway and through the living room, peeking around the corner and into the kitchen, where they sit at the island, way more donuts than the three of us could reasonably eat spread out in front of them. Haley’s arms are around the pile perched on the plate in front of her, like she’s protecting them from all the trolls roaming around the house.

“There, now you’ve got it! Make sure everyone knows whose donuts these are.”

She lets loose another laugh, growing louder each time until her head is tossed back, and I don’t know whether to laugh or
cry at this sight. This is everything I’ve been striving for for so long—someone to take the occasional early-morning shift so I could sleep in an extra hour. Someone to laugh with Haley, have fun with her, and do things with her I don’t. Someone to take her out at 6 a.m. for a donut run just because she no doubt begged for it . . . just because it would make her happy.

Jason laughs along with her, both of them cackling like crazy lunatics, and I want to go over and smother them both in kisses, squeeze them until this bubble of euphoria has a way of escaping my body. I want to have mornings like this . . . forever.

With them, I want forever.

TWENTY-FIVE

jason

I could get used to this.

All right, so the 5:30 a.m. wake-up call can go fuck itself, but other than that, I’m totally on board with this whole thing. I didn’t even mind going out in the cold-ass weather to get Haley donuts, because when she bats her eyelashes and pouts that bottom lip, I’m pretty much a slave to whatever far-fetched request she has.

After creeping on Haley and me in the kitchen while I was teaching Haley the art of the evil-villain laughter, Tessa went off to shower while her daughter coerced me into a game of hide-and-seek. On all four of her turns to hide, she’s hidden in the same three-foot vicinity, and each and every time, I spend a solid five minutes pretending I don’t know exactly where she is, and I can honestly say there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

It’s my turn to hide now, and I’m flattened against the wall
behind the heavy cloak of the curtains in the living room. Haley’s calling out for me, trying to get me to respond, talking to herself as she goes to every place I’ve already hidden to check if I’m there again. Her footsteps get closer to me when a weird, repetitive ringing-slash-beeping sounds, and she freezes before running over to the coffee table where Tessa’s laptop is perpetually set up.

“Uncle Cade is calling! Jay! Can I answer, can I answer,
can I answer
?”

I don’t have to see her to know she’s jumping up and down, waiting for my response. Of course Cade would call while Tessa is otherwise occupied. I pause for a second, wondering if maybe it would be better for Haley to wait and answer when her mom is out here, but then decide
fuck it
. I’m here, for however long Tessa will have me, and it’s about damn time Cade got on board with that. Coming out from behind the curtain, I say, “Yeah, go ahead.”

She startles and spins around with a gasp. “
Ohh
, good hiding place! I’m gonna hide there next time!” Then she goes to the computer, sitting down and accepting the call.

“Uncle Cade!” she yells at the laptop, her face so close to the screen I’m sure Cade can count exactly how many teeth she has.

“Short stuff! How was your Thanksgiving?”

I watch as Haley’s face dims, her shoulders slumping and the corners of her mouth bending down into a frown, and something twists in my gut. I hate that she had to be there at all, and if I had to go back and do it all over again, I would’ve told my parents I wasn’t able to come and just had Thanksgiving with Tessa and Haley here at their house.

“Not fun. But Jay’s house was so cool, like a zoomeum.”

“Museum,” Cade corrects and Haley nods.

“Yeah, like that. It was real boring and the food was yucky. I like your mashed ’tatoes
way
better and I wish you could’ve been here because I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, short stuff.”

“But Jay’s here now and he took me to get donuts this morning and I got
five
!” she yells, extending her hand toward the screen to illustrate exactly how many she means.

“Wow, that’s a lot of donuts. You have a bellyache yet?”

She falls into a fit of giggles. “I didn’t eat them
all
, silly
.
I’m gonna save some for later.”

“Probably a good idea.” Cade clears his throat, and then says, “Is Jase there now?”

“Yeah, he’s hiding in the curtains.”

“Why’s he hiding in the curtains?”

“Well, he’s not anymore. We were playin’ hide-and-seek.”

“Ah, well, that makes more sense. Do you think I can talk to him for a minute?”

Haley shrugs and says, “Sure.”

“Will you go draw me a picture? One I can hang on my fridge?”

She nods vigorously. “What do you want it of?”

“Anything. Surprise me.”

She doesn’t even wait until he’s finished talking before she shoots off the couch and runs down the hall to her bedroom. With a sigh, I run my hand through my hair, then take a seat at the spot she vacated.

“Hey,” he says when he sees me come on screen.

I return the greeting and brace my forearms on my knees, waiting for him to speak. I sure as shit don’t have a lot to say to him, considering I said all I needed to the other night.

“Where’s Tessa?”

“In the shower.”

He sighs and nods. “I see my lecture did absolutely nothing.” His voice isn’t harsh like I would expect it to be; it’s resigned, and that’s almost worse.

“Actually, it did a lot. Just not what you wanted.” I scrub a hand over my face, then drop it and stare right at him. “Look, man, I know I wouldn’t be who you picked for her if you could, but you can’t change it. I’m here and we’re together, and there’s nothing you can do to stop that. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it, and that’s on me. But it’s happening whether you like it or not. So you either need to get on board with it, or you need to stew quietly to yourself, because you’re never cornering her about it again, got it? Support her . . . support us, or shut the fuck up about it.”

He’s quiet for a minute, then says, “My niece better not be within earshot.”