“I don’t really know how.”
“Well, I’ll just have to show you.” Jasper pushes to stand, and with two steps, has rounded the table and hovers over me with one outstretched hand. He looks relaxed. The way his hair curls out of the back of his hat makes the tips of my fingers itch.
“I’m good. I’ll just watch you.”
He scoffs playfully. “Come on, Sunny. WWBD?”
“Huh?” My head tips to the side, and I eye his wide, warm palm skeptically.
“What would Beau do? WWBD.”
“I actually think that’s more of a tongue twister than just saying the sentence.”
His hand bounces in front of me. “Stop stalling. Let’s go. Beau would play pool even if he sucked at it. And he’d have fun sucking.”
I quirk a suggestive brow at Jasper. I’m sure that’s not how he meant it, but after several pints of shitty beer, it’s where my head goes.
His usually serious face immediately breaks out in a breathtaking smile as he glances across the room with a laugh. White teeth. Dimples hiding under his stubble. It’s impossible to look at Jasper smiling and not smile too.
Laughter bubbles in my throat, and I slap my palm into his as he pulls me up to standing. “Fine. But I’m going to suck.”
His tongue slides out over his lips almost suggestively, head shaking like I’m in trouble. Something about the combination makes an ache unfurl behind my hips. He is effortlessly sexy. Totally distracting.
“But you’re going to have fun doing it.” He points at me as he drops my hand and reaches for our beers before turning toward the empty pool table in the corner.
We’re toeing the line of this joke, even for us, but the alcohol coursing through my veins has me feeling bolder than usual.
“I always do!” I say cheerily to his broad back that presses rhythmically against the gray fabric of his shirt as he walks away, knowing I’ll follow because he has my beer and a killer ass.
I watch his head tip back at my words. A small prayer for patience, I’m sure. “Jesus Christ, Sunny.”
After setting our drinks on a tall table, he grabs two cues and turns toward me with a challenging glint in his eye. My heart flutters in my chest, and relief hits me like a tidal wave. I’ve been so damn worried about him. When he retreats into himself, he scares me. I worry that if he goes too far back—if he slips into those dark cracks—that he won’t come back out.
Or he won’t come back out the same. Broody and shy but sweet. Jasper Gervais is so damn sweet under his standoffish exterior that it almost makes my teeth ache.
That’s another side of him few people get to see. And I think I like that about him too. He doesn’t give his attention away willy-nilly. He doesn’t absently hum along to what you’re saying while scrolling on his phone. If you have Jasper Gervais’s attention, you’ve got it all, and that’s because he wants you to have it.
He doesn’t just listen to me. He hears me. He sees me.
And there’s something precious about that, the way he can look at someone and make them feel like the only person in the room. He’s not showy, he’s not the life of the party, but he knows how to make a person feel special, to feel loved and cared for.
I’ve never known a soul more truly present.
The way he is? It speaks to me. It always has. He’s like a warm blanket that I want to wrap myself up in. And when his eyes are bright and his smile is soft like right now?
Forget it. He’s breathtaking.
“Ready to play?”
“Let’s do it.” My eyes widen. God. What is wrong with me? “Pool. Let’s do the pool.” I hold a hand up. “Play pool. Not do the pool. Ha.” I quickly reach for my beer and take a deep swig while Jasper chuckles at me.
Handsome fucking brain-cell-killing jerk.
“Do I need to cut you off?”
“Shut up, Gervais. Let’s play.”
Fire blazes in his eyes and he stares back at me. “Okay, Sloane. Let’s play.”
15
Sloane
Jasper: Why are you taking so long in there?
Sloane: Giving myself a drunk pep talk.
Jasper: What is that?
Sloane: It’s where I splash water on my face at myself in the mirror. Then I tell me to pull together and be cool.
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.