And he moved us all around like chess pieces. For what? For optics? To close a deal?
To benefit himself.
Try as I might, that’s the only thing I can come up with. Having me connected with Jasper wasn’t beneficial to him, so he made sure it would never happen.
It crushed me when Jasper didn’t show up to my first performance. He texted me and said he got caught up reviewing game tape. Sent flowers instead.
I should have been happy I’d finally made it. That he sent flowers. But instead, I cried in the dressing room while wiping off copious amounts of makeup.
I dip my face in the water again, washing away the fresh tears that have tumbled down.
When I pull my head back up and turn my face up to the cool night air, someone sits beside me.
I don’t even need to look to know who it is. I know his smell. I know his size. I know how my body reacts when he draws near.
I know him so well. And yet I didn’t know this.
Letting my head tip back against the tiled edge of the pool, I allow my body to relax and sink into the water.
We don’t talk. What is there to say? So much and so little all at once. His arm brushes against me, and then his pinky finger wraps around mine.
I don’t know how long we sit there like this. Snow falling. Fingers latched together. Steam billowing up around us. Light instrumental music plays through the speakers, and I can hear the joyful squealing of children jumping into the cold pool on the other side of the deck.
Tears continue to leak silently from my eyes. I wish I could make them stop, but I can’t. The ache in my chest is insistent, and the what-ifs or could-have-beens consume me.
What if my dad hadn’t run into him that night?
What if their elevators had passed each other? One going up while the other went down.
What if I hadn’t forced myself to hide my feelings and move on to other relationships?
What could have been if I’d just blurted it all out to Jasper?
What could we have been if he’d done the same?
Would we be together?
Would my parents support it?
Would I even care? Or would I throw it all away for a shot at something with Jasper?
The questions don’t stop, suffocating me under their weight. They say comparison is the thief of joy, and comparing how different my life might look if one tiny interaction hadn’t happened is definitely doing that.
It’s like imagining what you’d do if you won the lottery. Fun to dream about until you get depressed about the fact it will never happen.
One hot tear streaks down the side of my face, and the water swishes beside me, followed by the calloused pads of Jasper’s fingers brushing over the apple of my cheek. A breath hiccups out of me at his touch.
I still don’t open my eyes. Instead, I just let myself feel him. Jasper has wiped many of my tears away over a broken heart, over frustration, impostor syndrome, raw feet.
But never like this. Never over being the one to make me realize I’ve been a puppet. Everyone in my life has treated me like the tiny ballerina inside a jewelry box. Nice to look at and cute to listen to when you’re in the mood, but easily shut away when you have something else to do.
I’m furious with myself for smiling and spinning every time someone opened that box. I’m angry at myself for not flipping them the finger and refusing to twirl around mindlessly. I’m not angry at anyone else.
It’s all directed at myself.
And somehow I’m harder to forgive. I think deep down I expected better of myself.
I wonder if this is how Jasper feels too. Fuck, that must be a heavy burden to bear.
His broad hand slides over my cheek, his thumb and forefinger gripping my chin to turn my head his way. “Sunny, look at me.”
The authority in his voice sends a shiver down my spine even though I’m sitting in perfectly hot water. My eyes open and immediately latch onto his.
I’m transported to that first day I saw him, all tall, lanky, and boyish. Even then he moved like an athlete. His gait, his mannerisms. Everything about him screamed strength and agility. It still does but it’s tenfold.
Looking at him is almost unbearable right now.
His irises are dark sapphires under the night sky as they trace my face. Eyes. Mouth. Throat. Then lower.
A cold snowflake lands on the tip of my nose right as he asks, “Tell me how to make you feel better.”
My heart accelerates in my chest, like a car going from zero to sixty. It’s his voice. It’s his hands. His nearness. It’s the open-ended question he just asked.
I could tell him to carry me up to our room and fuck me, ruin me so thoroughly that all I can think about is him and where he’s touching me, and he’d do it.
I open my mouth to say it, but then I rein it back in, feeling so far out of my depth. Like I have whiplash. Like I need to gather my thoughts before I say or do something stupid.
Like completely ruin this friendship.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” I rasp, holding his gaze and watching his chin dip in a subtle nod.
And then I move across the pool, the water caressing my body like silk running over my skin. The sensation of his eyes roaming my back and my ass as I take the shallow steps up onto the pool is heady.
My body screams at me to go back to him. But I don’t want to be that ballerina in a jewelry box with him. I don’t want him to feel like he needs to save me.
I want to save myself.
I emerge from the bathroom in a puff of warm steam. My skin is pink and raw from how hot I had the water, from how hard I scrubbed my skin.
I feel like I scalded an entire layer of myself away in there. Found a little kernel of strength hiding underneath and latched on to it. Decided I won’t be the girl who goes along with what everyone else around her wants.
I’m going to speak up.
I’m going to get comfortable disappointing other people to avoid disappointing myself.
I won’t apologize for doing things the way I want to do them.
I’m ready to be unapologetically me and let go of the people in my life who don’t approve of the person I am now.
Jasper’s head snaps up, eyes dragging down my body and the small white towel I have wrapped around my torso. He doesn’t bother dropping my gaze or hiding the intense look of want that paints his features.
And I decide to revel in that. The petty part of me hopes it hurts. I hope he feels a fraction of the longing I’ve felt for him while he sat around, not telling me why he’s stayed so close and so far away all at once.
“Shower’s all yours. Bathroom lock doesn’t work.” I hike a thumb over my shoulder and walk straight toward my duffel bag that’s beside the atrocious little cot I’ve told myself I’m going to sleep on.
I’m not sure what point I was trying to prove. The new me would make Jasper sleep on it, but one look at him and his hulking frame tells me that isn’t an option.
I love him too much to do that to him. And he likes me too much to say no.
God. We’re so fucked.
“Thanks.” I hear him move across the room, the floorboards beneath the tightly woven carpet creaking as he lumbers past.
I try to force myself not to turn and check him out as he goes.
But I fail.
Miserably.
I let my eyes wander over his broad, toned shoulders, the way his muscles ripple in his back as he walks. The indent down the column of his spine. The grayscale tattoos that wrap around his arms and a lone one that peeks out on his ribs. I can only see it because he lifts one arm and runs a hand through his hair, but it looks an awful lot like . . .