Powerless (Chestnut Springs, #3)(40)

Jasper: You’re talking to yourself in the women’s bathroom to be . . . cool?

Sloane: Exactly.

Jasper: Sunny. Be less cool. Come save me. The waitress keeps trying to talk to me.

Sloane: So talk to her.

Jasper: I don’t like talking to people.

Sloane: You talk to me.

Jasper: You’re not people.

Sloane: Lmao. What am I then?

Jasper: My person.




“Stop it. I’m already dead.”

He barks out a laugh as he rounds the table and leans over it. Is pool supposed to be sexy? Because Jasper makes it look sexy.

His hard body leans against the green felt top. His veined hands wrap lightly around the cue. The way his eyes narrow like this is a Stanley Cup final or something.

The way that boyish smile lights up his face when I complain about him kicking my ass. I hate losing . . . and yet, to see him smile like that, I’d lose over and over again. I’d sit on a cold roof. I’d dance in the rain. I’d go on a road trip and drink shitty beer and eat greasy foods.

For Jasper I’d do anything. Except actually tell him that.

Because when he turns me down, I’ll break. A million little pieces of me scattered into the wind.

It doesn’t matter that my love for him is pathetic and tragically unrequited.

It just is. The sky is blue. The grass is green. And I’ve loved Jasper Gervais from the first day I laid eyes on him.

With a few too many pints of cheap beer, it’s easy to admit to myself because my mental walls have evaporated entirely. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman with a soul-consuming, one-sided childhood crush. It’s hilarious if I think about it.

A drunk, girlish laugh bubbles out of me, and I’m not laughing with me—I’m definitely laughing at me.

“See? You just made a joke about being dead. You laugh at the most morbid shit.” Jasper grins at me from beneath his cap, leaned on the vertical pool cue.

I shake my head with a smile and take another sip. I really do laugh at inappropriate stuff. If he only knew.

“I really am atrocious at this. I hate myself a little bit for it too,” I reply, but I’m chuckling as I say it.

His chin tips out at me before he moves in my direction from the opposite side of the table. “Here. Let me show you. You’re holding it too tight.”

Jasper racks his cue on the wall and steps up behind me, his fresh, minty scent a vivid reminder of listening to him take a shower in the same hotel room as me. The smell of his soap wafted out on the rush of steam that escaped when he emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist and dark tattoos tracing every hard line of muscle. I didn’t get a good look at them all because I didn’t want to gawk.

I forced myself to stare at the e-reader on my lap. Pure torture. I stared at the same page of the same book for the entire ten minutes, like my ability to read grew wings and flew out of my head at the mere thought of him naked and soapy.

Sure, we’ve lived at the ranch house for the past week, but there were so many other people in and out of the place that it never felt like we were truly alone, other than the nights we spent sitting on the roof.

Now? On the road together? It like we’re completely isolated.

“Like this.” His pecs bump into the blades of my shoulders as he stands behind me, arms dropping down around my torso like a cage. My body seizes up, and he doesn’t help matters when he softly says, “Relax, Sloane. Bend over the table.”

My cheeks flame dark like a cherry, and I swallow, before doing as he says. I hinge at the hips, sliding my left hand up the shaft of the cue and lining it up with the white ball.

I’m already bad at pool and having Jasper imitating fucking me from behind in public definitely isn’t going to make me any better. All the balls are just a blur of color before me because my body is entirely homed in on his. The feel. The smell. The way my chest vibrates from the butterflies crashing around in there.

I laugh. “I think I saw this in a Hallmark movie once.”

His right hand cups my elbow and his left hand slides down my arm as he gently adjusts my position.

My biggest worry is that I’m going to grind my ass back into him like a cat in heat. The beer goggles are real. As real as the shame spiral will be tomorrow.

Be cool.

Be cool.

Be cool.

Even my inner voice slurs as I give myself another internal pep talk.

“This isn’t a Hallmark movie, Sunny.” His warm breath caresses the side of my neck and breezes through my hair. I suck in a quick breath and my nipples pebble instantly as his hips line up with mine.

“What is it?” My voice comes out as a hoarse whisper.

His left hand moves up, his thumb brushing once over the bone in my wrist before he slides his fingers out over mine. “Relax.” He gently shimmies my wrist. I think trying to indicate my hand is too tense. And then I watch raptly as the pads of his fingers dust over the massive diamond ring that still adorns my finger.

“This is a friend teaching another friend how to hold a pool cue properly.”

“Right.” It feels like sinking into that freezing cold lake all over again. A cold dose of reality.

He pulls my cue back as he helps to line up the shot and then pushes it back through the crook of my thumb. When the chalk-covered tip hits the ball, we freeze in place. His body on mine. My body flush against his.