Be with Me

He broke eye contact first, and the air leaked out of my lungs. Wetting my lips, I ran the edge of my key card over the soft fla

“It’s not exactly the middle of the night,” he said, smiling slightly. “More like early late night.”

My brows rose. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

“If you drank half of an eighteen-pack, it just might.”

I pursed my lips, remembering he was more than just a little buzzed. “Why didn’t you just wait until, I don’t know, you were sober and the sun was out to have this conversation?”

“I couldn’t wait,” he said without a moment of hesitation, so quickly that there was no doubting how important it was to him. “And the party sucked.”

“It did?” For some reason, I couldn’t picture the big luau sucking that much.

Jase nodded and his brows lowered, furrowing together. “This . . . this has been banging around in my head. Tried to drink it out. Didn’t work. Decided I needed to tell you before I developed a mean case of alcohol poisoning.”

So the party hadn’t really sucked, but more of a case of him feeling guilty enough to seek me out. I didn’t know what to think about that or any of this. I’d obsessed over him and was convinced at one point that I was madly, deeply in love with him. And the night when he’d kissed me, I thought . . . well, I thought a lot of stupid things. That he would wake up the next morning and profess his undying love and devotion to me in front of baby Jesus and my entire family. And everyone would be thrilled by the prospect, even Cam. That somehow a relationship between a senior in high school and a college junior could work. Jase would visit me instead of my brother every weekend and he would come to my dance recitals and visit me in New York City when I left for the ballet school and . . .

And none of that happened.

Jase and Cam had left that next morning before I even woke up, and I hadn’t seen him up until I started school at Shepherd. At some point during that last year, I’d thought I’d come to terms with Jase, chalked it up to stupid, naive fantasies, and even dated a time or two, but I’d been really off about all this. I hadn’t come to terms. Obviously. And seeing Jase, being near him, made me remember everything that had drawn me to him—his kindness, humor, intelligence. And even if some of those qualities weren’t so apparent now, I knew they were still there. The fact that it was after one in the morning and he hunted me down to apologize was proof of that.

He leaned back, stretching out his long legs. “Tess . . . Tess . . . Tess . . .”

“What?” I forced my gaze back to him after staring at a square hedge for far too long.

Jase was watching me again, the look on his face completely unreadable. His eyes were so bright now, almost silver, as his gaze dipped. He made a sound deep in his throat, half curse and half groan. I didn’t understand it. My attention followed his, and I drew in a shaky, surprised breath.

That was about when I realized I wasn’t wearing a bra, and the cooler night air and thin tank top did nothing to hide what I had going on.

And right at that moment, I had a lot going on.

My nipples were hard, pressing against the material. Heat swamped my cheeks and I started to fold my arms, but then it struck me that Jase was looking, like really looking. And for someone who claimed that “the moment” got away from him . . .

Wait. He was drunk right now.

I folded my arms over my chest. “What?” I demanded again.

He dragged his burning gaze up, and I swore it had lingered over my lips. “Why did you come here? To this place?”

The question caught me off guard, and so did the way he asked it, like he’d never in a million years expected me to be here, at the same college as him. “I . . . my leg . . .” Couldn’t I speak in complete sentences? A soft wind picked up, tossing my hair around. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You never pla

“No. Not like this.”

“So what . . .” Jase paused, catching a piece of my hair. As he tucked it back, his fingers grazed my cheek, causing a fine shiver to work its way down my spine. His hand lingered for maybe a second, and then it fell into the space between us—a space that suddenly seemed much smaller. “What are you studying?”

It took a moment for my brain to turn over the question. “Elementary ed.”

The corner of his lip curled up once more as he draped his right arm over the back of the bench, still facing me. “That takes a special kind of person.”

“How so?” The major had been a last-minute thing because I hadn’t pla

“Kids are tough, Tess, especially at that age.”

“You’d know.” I smiled as I remembered how he was with his little brother. “But I like kids.”

A sudden shadow passed over his face. “Yeah, look, I better get going. It’s late and you probably would like to go back to sleep.” He started to lean forward but stopped. “We’re friends, right? You and I? Like . . . like before?”

Like before he’d kissed me. I steeled myself against the sudden tumbling of my heart. This was it. Even if Jase thought I was beautiful and he was attracted to me, he wasn’t going to act on it. Whether it was because of Cam or something else, whatever he felt for me wasn’t going to be enough. And it didn’t matter. I could be friends with him. It wasn’t like I pla

Jase . . . Jase would once more become a memory.

I forced a smile. “Yes. We’re friends.”

“Good. Perfect.” His smile spread, and it was that big smile, the one that didn’t lessen his beauty whatsoever, that probably had panties dropping across the nation. He stood, and I watched him stumble to the left. Jase threw his hands out, balancing himself. “Whoa.”

When he pulled his car keys out of his pocket, I pushed to my feet. There was no pain in my knee this time. “You’re not driving.”

He shot me a look and then laughed. “I’m fine.”

“You are not fine. You can’t even stand straight.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that driving doesn’t require standing straight.”

My eyes widened. “Jase . . .”

He took another stumbling step, and I caught his arm, wrapping my hand around his forearm. My fingers didn’t come anywhere close to meeting. He was startled by the contact and his gaze swung toward me. So was I. The feel of his warm skin branded mine, but I took advantage of the situation.

I swiped the keys from his hand and then let go, stepping back. “You’re not driving.”

Jase didn’t make a grab for the keys. “Then what do you expect me to do? Sleep out on this bench?”

I could’ve suggested that he call one of his friends, but that’s not what I said. “You can stay with me.”

His eyes widened, and then he barked out a short laugh. “Stay with you?”

I scowled. “Yeah, what’s so fu

He started to respond, but then he seemed to rethink what he was about to say. Several seconds stretched out between us. “Cam’s go

“Cam will kill me if I let you drive off. Besides, there’s a couch in the suite. It’s not like you’re sharing my bed.”

In the light of the lamppost, his eyes glimmered. The look that suddenly filled his eyes had the tips of my ears burning.

“Suite or your bed,” he said finally. “Your brother is still go

There was a slight chance that Cam might, but he’d be more pissed if I let Jase drive off. And besides, it wasn’t like either of us could call Cam to come get his drunk ass. How could we explain Jase being here? “He doesn’t have to know.”