A. Jackson - When We Met

As I lay there enjoying my stolen moments with him, his pinky started lazily dragging back and forth against my stomach before he grumbled, “Power’s back on?”

“Must be.”

He made a tired sound in the back of his throat and rolled away from me. “Do you have anything planned today with your housemates?”

I rubbed at my face and tried to hide how unhappy I felt about him moving away from me. “No, they’ve been gone working, so we haven’t talked about doing anything.”

“Do you want to spend the day with me?”

“Maybe,” I said softly, my smile telling him my answer. “What’d you have in mind?”

His normally golden-brown eyes looked like they were shining from the light filtering in through the window as he studied me. A few moments later he said uncertainly, “A non-Thanksgiving day.”

“Now that sounds perfect.”

After I’d taken a shower and gotten dressed, I met him at the guys’ house. He’d already started to cook breakfast for us. After a non-Thanksgiving meal, we spent the rest of the day talking, watching movies, and eating food that had absolutely nothing to do with the holiday. It was weird, and it was just as I’d thought it would be—perfect.

Yesterday he’d shown up not long after I came back from my run, and we bounced back and forth between the kitchen and living room as I read and worked on two papers I had due within the next couple of weeks, and he finished homework and studied for a test. He’d fallen back into his quiet self, and while I liked that he could spend an entire day with me just doing homework—not mauling me or even touching me, considering that he was always a couple of feet from me—as I tossed and turned last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it started bugging me.

He’d even kept his distance on Thanksgiving—something I hadn’t noticed until now because I’d been so busy feeling comfortable and safe in his presence. And when I thought back, I realized I couldn’t remember him actually being close enough to touch me since we’d woken up in the pillow room.

Saturday morning I knocked loudly on the door to the boys’ house until he answered, his face easily slipping into a smile when he saw me. He took a step back to let me in, shutting the door behind me.

“Good mo—” he began, but I cut him off by grabbing his hand and staring down at it. He watched me and asked, “Is my hand okay . . . ?”

“Why haven’t you touched me since Thanksgiving morning?”

His laugh ended on a sigh. “Honestly? It makes it easier for me.”

“Makes what easier?” I asked, looking up at him.

“Being near you.”

My eyes widened at his blunt honesty and I bit down on the inside of my cheek, looking at where his fingers were playing with mine before glancing back up at his face. “You haven’t kissed me since the night in the pillow room,” I murmured.

“No, I haven’t,” he said simply, his golden eyes never leaving mine.

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting—for him to grab me in his arms and kiss me right then, to try to make an excuse for not wanting to kiss me anymore, something . . . but I hadn’t expected him to just agree. I blinked quickly and dropped my gaze and hands as I felt my cheeks burn. “O—um . . . okay.”

He didn’t say anything, and my embarrassment only seemed to build. I turned and started for his door, only stopping when his hands came down around the top of my arms, his chest pressed firmly against my back. “You came over to say those two things, and then leave?”

“Uh, yeah . . . pretty much.”

His laugh was quiet and deep, the sound sending vibrations from his body to mine. “What did you want me to say?”

“Nothing, I didn’t have any expectations.”

“Liar.”

I gritted my teeth and dropped my head to stare at the floor, and my eyes fluttered shut when the faintest touch of his nose trailing up the back of my neck had a shiver going through my body.

“You didn’t ask why, so I didn’t tell you why. But I could already see your mind working in ways that are dangerous for both of us, and I’m not gonna let you leave when you’re thinking up some kind of bullshit that has you prepared for me to leave you.”

“We’re not dating—technically you can’t leave me,” I whispered, and he laughed against my skin.

“Now you’re bringing technicalities and labels into this?” His hands moved down my arms to wrap around my waist, and he leaned in to speak in my ear. “And you and I both know people don’t have to be together to leave each other. But us? No, we don’t have a label. I don’t need one, but if you do—we can talk about that on a day that isn’t today. I’m your safe place, and when you’re ready, you’ll be mine. If you ask me, that means more than a bullshit label.”

“Again with the ‘when you’re ready’?” I asked, and turned in his arms to look up at him.

Kier gently pushed me back until I was pressed against the door, and rested both his forearms against the wood, leaning in so our foreheads were resting against each other’s. “It’ll always come back to waiting for you to be ready, Indy. You weren’t ready to tell me about Ian, or face what you were doing to forget Dean—because you weren’t ready to get over him—so you weren’t ready to know what I was doing for you. I kissed you, partly because I thought I would go insane if I didn’t, but mostly because I needed you to be able to see what you were doing to me, to get a glimpse of what you’ve come to mean to me, and to see that no matter what you could possibly have told me, I wouldn’t run.”

I brought my hand up to his stomach and grabbed at his shirt, bringing his body closer to mine. “So why stop?”

“Because you told me everything. You laid yourself bare. You had to feel vulnerable after that, and I didn’t want anything I did to feel like I was taking advantage of you. So now everything’s out there, and now I’m waiting for you to be okay with that—to be okay with moving on from Dean and not keeping Ian a secret anymore. I won’t push you to get there, and I won’t kiss you until you are there. Not to speed things up, and not to make you think I don’t want you, but only because I’m waiting for you to be ready. Once you’re ready, I’m taking you and I’m not giving you back. You’re going to be mine, Indy. I’ll keep you safe from yourself. I’ll be there for you when you struggle with urges and what happened to Ian . . . but there won’t be anything between us. No Dean . . . no worries of me leaving you. Do you understand now?”

I swallowed past the tightness in my throat and nodded. My breathing was rough from having Kier this close to me, and hearing his words. That alone had me straining not to close the inches between our lips—but I knew what he was saying, and I knew I would wait.

No guy had ever talked to me the way Kier did, or said the kinds of things he said to me. No guy had ever been as considerate, and no guy had ever known me better than I’d known myself. And though I wasn’t in love with Kier yet, I loved him for what he was doing for us.

“And after I’ve barely tasted you, it’s hard not to. That’s why I haven’t been touching you. Not because I don’t want to, but because being this close makes it harder to keep reminding myself why I can’t have you yet.”

He pushed away from me, that crooked smirk crossing his face as he stepped back farther into the house, his arms crossing over his lean, muscled chest. With a slight raise of his eyebrow, his golden eyes darted to the space next to him. “So, are you leaving or staying?”

I bit back a smile and took a step toward him before pausing. “I shouldn’t stay.”

His eyebrows pinched together, but he didn’t say anything.