Blackout ✓

12 | the contract

FALL BREAK PASSED SIMULTANEOUSLY TOO quickly and too slowly.

The hiatus in classes flew by before I had even made a dent in the mountain of pre-lecture readings for the semester. Yet the days dragged each morning I woke up, alone on the floor and out of my mind with boredom and loneliness. Every one of my friends left but me.

The Jays and Sophie stayed with Sophie's mom and little brother. Riley drove the short distance to Carsonville, too. Krista took a Greyhound to her humble, quaint hometown—New York City— three days after Callum's party. And the day they returned, I jumped up from the common room couch—where I had been binging the newest episodes of my animes—and exclaimed with glee.

Maybe the fall break had been so insufferable because it felt like things between Jamie and me had been left on an ellipsis. A dot-dot-dot. Logic demanded that I stick to my one-and-done rule, but I had never been great at adhering to logic. I only knew I wanted him again. Badly.

Jamie clearly felt the same because on his first night back in Halston, he visited my room. Somehow I knew without asking aloud that the two insistent knocks had come from his hand. No-one else could say so much in such silence. I let him in, with bated breath.

Without a word, Jamie swept in, locked the door behind himself and pressed me against it.

Our lips found each other like polar molecules, pressing together uncertainly, and then less and less uncertain. More and more craving. Jamie caught the right angle, pulling gently on my hair to tilt my face. The right pressure as he drew my tongue into his mouth. Even when I nipped at his bottom lip, he'd responded perfectly by deepening the kiss and holding me harder to his chest.

It felt like coming home.

Then we'd tumbled onto the bed, and I'd tried to ride him until my thighs gave out. But he conveniently got lost between my legs, keeping my thighs pried open while he tasted me, until I essentially begged him to move up my body and take me. He'd been right, all those months—nearly a year—ago.

He was not a selfish lover.

While I rolled my hips on top of him, Jamie's hands stroked my legs and breasts. He looked ridiculously sexy like that, staring up at me with a heady combination of awe, lust and something... fragile in his eyes. I looked away, throwing my head back to the ceiling as my hands worked at myself below.

So, now, the one-and-done rule was broken. Technically, the first time didn't count because I had been drunk. Functionally, the second time was justified because it was the singular time we both consented. Now, technically, functionally, practically—whatever way I spun it—I had officially crossed the threshold. I had ventured into unknown territory with Jamie.

But I couldn't stop.

"Do you want me to stay?" Jamie murmured, lying on his side in my bed.

I threw a sidelong glance his way. Sweat glistened on his brow, his collarbones, his shoulders. "No. I've got readings to do."

His expression stilled, and then he exhaled leisurely. "Alright. Are we doing this again? Is this a thing now?"

"I know it's a bad idea. I know we shouldn't," I chuckled remorsefully. "But, honestly? It's definitely happening again."

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When the semester resumed, I initially tried to stay away from Jamie. Just for clarity.

We both had a bunch of assignments to submit, and the usual bustle of campus life tore us away from my bed. His time was split between coursework and football, mine between coursework and WISA and the undergraduate tutoring centre and the gym.