Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(56)
I ducked my head and therefore almost missed the first rocket. It erupted above us in a shower of green and white sparkles, the boom concussing our eardrums.
“Lean back on me,” Jace said in the silence afterward, barely doing more than whispering against my earlobe. “And pull your right knee up. Otherwise we might make a scene.”
“Wha—” My voice rose in alarm, but it was drowned out by the next explosion. I obeyed without thinking, leaning against the arm he had planted on the blanket behind my ass. Then I drew my right knee up toward my chest, creating a barrier between us and the rest of our party.
The deafening report of the next rocket to go up masked my squeak when his hand slipped into my lap.
“Oh God.” I gasped, trying to pretend nothing was happening. Nope, absolutely nothing weird about cuddling with a near stranger in the presence of my secret ex-lover. The pace of the detonations picked up, cloaking my gasps as the flat of his finger and then his palm rubbed up and down the crotch-seam of my jeans.
He brought me right to the quivering brink of blowing my load in my pants, then backed off, cupping his hand almost protectively over the bulge there, covering but not trying to stimulate.
“Here’s how it’s gonna be,” he growled in my ear between booms. “When this is over, we’re going back to my room, and I’m going to f*ck you until you can’t remember your own name. Then, when you can form words of more than one syllable again and string them reliably together into sentences, you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on here. But get this straight in your head: I. Don’t. Hide. Not from anyone, not for any reason. I don’t care what’s going on; if you expect me to be with you, don’t even think of asking me to pretend I’m not. Got it?”
I nodded quickly, looking at him in some distress at the thought that he might believe I was asking him to be my secret. I hadn’t meant to do that. Had I? Or had I been putting my worry about Brendan’s theoretical hurt feelings at seeing us together above any consideration that Jace’s feelings might be hurt?
Fuck, I was an idiot. I hadn’t even put the words “Jace” and “feelings” in the same thought. I’d been treating Jace like a good-time guy with no real depth.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, feeling very, very small under a massive wave of remorse. I knew then that if I pulled away from that arm he’d told me to lean on, we’d be done. He’d go back to Chicago and I’d never see him again. So instead I turned my face in toward him, letting my head rest against his shoulder.
After a moment, the arm behind me slipped around my waist, drawing me against him more fully.
Holding me.
I didn’t deserve it, just as I didn’t deserve Mo’s affection. But here we were, and I liked it, and there was nothing deceitful about accepting it from Jace, at least, because I knew I wasn’t going to mislead him like I was doing to Mo. I’d tell him everything.
Somehow I kept slipping a little lower every couple minutes, until by the time the fireworks display hit its grand finale, I was lying with my head on Jace’s thigh and his fingertips gently scritching my scalp. Each explosion vibrated in his quadriceps. I still didn’t want Brendan to be hurt, but the fact was, Brendan’s feelings needed to stop being a variable in the calculus of my decision-making. He’d chosen his path just as I had mine, and I wasn’t responsible for rectifying everything for him any more than I was responsible for doing it for my mother. I wasn’t with him anymore and I would never, ever be with him again. I had to move past thinking of him as a part of my life. I still wouldn’t out him unless I had no other choice, but beyond that, he was on his own.
After the thunderous grand finale, we got up and folded the blankets for Robin to take back onto his boat. While we packed up our things, Ling complained good-naturedly that the baby had gone out of her mind with each and every mortar that burst, and she would never get any sleep tonight with Zhen so worked up. Despite their dutiful sympathy for Ling’s plight, Robin and Geoff couldn’t help but beam proudly and pat the visibly shifting lump while Adele commiserated and shared war stories from her own pregnancy with Mo.
When we reached the cars, I hugged Mo tightly and said good-bye, since she’d be leaving for Big Rapids in the morning. While I did that, Robin turned to Jace.
“We have some wine left over from making the sangria. Wanna come to our house for a drink before you head back to your room?”
Jace hesitated, and I—excruciatingly aware of Brendan’s presence behind us as he loaded a cooler into the back of their SUV—said softly, “I need to grab some clothes first, anyway.”
If Brendan reacted, I didn’t turn around to see it.
Mo squeezed me in adamant approval of this development, and Jace smiled, looking slightly taken aback. “Sure.”
Brendan muttered something about having a headache and needing to get home, giving everyone a general and understated good-night before shutting himself in the driver’s side of the SUV.
I flinched when the door slammed, but I didn’t let my smile falter.
You know I don’t know the way
To find where my love is
I weave a twisted story
Of what I feel, of what is real
—Casey Stratton, “Maybe for a Minute”
Ling went straight to bed, while Jace had a glass of wine with Robin and Geoff in the dining room. I packed a change of clothes for the next day, not even bothering to pretend I was going to have time to come back here to shower and get ready for work before I had to be at the tattoo parlor.