I chew the last of the gummy peach in my mouth, considering. “You know, I hate when anyone who isn’t me is right, but I think I have to give this one to you.”
He flashes me a grin. “Tell me I’m right again, Juliette. It just does something to me.”
“You’re an easy man to please.”
“I mean, I’ve got the wide-open road, you in my passenger seat, ten different kinds of gummy candy, and we’re eating dinner tonight in an actual igloo. What’s not to be pleased about?”
He grins at me, and I get a long, liquid pool low in my belly. With a backwards baseball hat, his aviators, jeans, and a long-sleeved dark green t-shirt that hugs his muscles like it was custom made for him, he is almost unfairly hot. And now that I know exactly what he looks like under all those clothes, mymind has gone to some pretty dirty places. I thought it would be awkward and weird this morning. And for a minute, it was. But then Asher did his thing where he makes something that feels terrible not terrible at all. I don’t know how he does it—he might be magic.
After last night’s little show, I woke up this morning with my stomach twisting with anxiety, wondering whether I should grab the first flight I could find out of St. Louis and have Hallie pick me up at the airport later today. I couldn’t make sense of it all—what it would mean for Asher and me, if it would mean anything, and whether I wanted it to. How he would act and how I would act and whether the rest of the trip would be awkward and weird.
But then he was outside my door with his signature grin and my latte and his giant soda and that irritatingly endearing habit he has of getting me to talk about things that I never talk about with anyone, and before I knew it, I was sitting on the carpet of a hotel hallway in his lap, with his arms tight around me.
I would never take anything from you that you didn’t want to give me.
Those words have been playing on a loop in my head since the hotel, and I’ve been trying to make sense of why they hit me so hard. It’s not that anyone has ever taken anything from me that I didn’t want to give, exactly. It’s more that I give so much, the people in my life don’t even realize that they’re taking. I need control and I need to take charge because I need everything to be perfect, and I always think the only way for it to be perfect is to do it myself. I hand out assignments and I organize everyone to within an inch of their lives and I worry about everyone and everything, and I’m beginning to see that maybe this life hasn’t served me so well.
Because what do I have to show for it? The constant thrumof anxiety in the background. A reputation for being a hardass who never takes a break. Hiding the more vulnerable parts of myself so my friends and family don’t realize what a disaster I am underneath my Lawyer Mode shield. I mean, I canceled my entire life for two weeks for a road trip with a man who was basically a stranger rather than tell my brother and my friends—the closest people in the world to me—I had a panic attack. That can’t be healthy. And yet. As the days go by, I realize more and more that I don’t want to be anywhere else except for right here, with him.
And isn’t that a kick in the ass?
I sneak a side glance at Asher, who is bobbing his head to the music we have playing, mouthing the lyrics as he hits the blinker to change lanes. He must have a sixth sense when it comes to me because he glances over and gives me a wink before turning his eyes back to the road.
He sure doesn’t feel like a stranger. We’ve only been on this trip for three days and he might know me better than anyone else in my life. He just gets me. Somehow, this man, who is likely a future hall of fame NFL quarterback, who is constantly named one of the best-looking players in the league, who looks like he just stepped off the pages of a magazine, really looks at me, and he seems to like what he sees.
I like what I see too.
I like the way he constantly searches for fun wherever we go, and when he can’t find it, he makes it himself, like deciding this morning when we got in the car that we were going to rank the best gummy candy in his stash. I like the way he lights up when he talks about his family. I like how he’s not intimidated by me—how he likes it when I beat him at things, and when I take swipes at him, and when I’m in a crap mood. He doesn’t want me to be anything except exactly what I am. I think this is the first time in my life I have experienced that, andpart of me wishes this road trip would last forever. That maybe we would last forever.
Forever? Back the truck up, Jules.
Because we might be having fun now, but vacations end, and real life happens, and in real life, the lawyer with awful anxiety and a mile-wide perfectionist streak who can’t even give up control and relax enough to have an orgasm with another human does not end up with the gorgeous, happy-go-lucky, golden-boy quarterback. No matter how much she wants to.
“So, what are the final standings?”
Asher’s voice yanks me out of my head and back into the car.
“What?”
“The candy. We’re ranking the candy, remember? For science, Juliette. Science is counting on us.”
I snort out a laugh. “I hated science. If science is counting on me, science is doomed.”
Asher’s phone rings then. An unknown Pittsburgh area code flashes on the car’s LCD screen, and he rejects the call. The phone immediately rings again with the same number, and he rejects that one too.
“You didn’t need to get those?”
“Nah, I don’t like answering unknown numbers.”
He reaches over and tucks a piece of hair that fell out of my ponytail behind my ear, and traces his fingers down my jaw, letting his hand linger an extra second. Tingles explode out from where he touches me, and he smiles like he knows exactly how this contact is affecting me. I swear the man can read my damn mind.
“Good thing for us, I love science.”
“You do?”
“I do. Bio major in college.”
“Like, biology?”
