Page 58 of Dark and Dangerous

He runs the back of his fingers over my cheek. “What happened after practice?”

“Right.” I come back to the present as he stands beside the van, forearm resting on the roof. “One of the guys on your team, Ryan something?”

Jace nods, his eyebrows dipped. “Did he say something to you?”

“No.” I reach up, flatten the pinch between his eyebrows with my thumb. “He invited us over to his house. He says he always has the team and their girls over after first practice…”

“Why didn’t he invite me?”

“Funny, I asked the same thing. He said he’s invited you the past three years and you’ve never shown.”

“That’s…” He rears back, defensive. “Actually, that’s true.”

“Jace!”

“What?”

“No wonder you don’t get along with your team.”

“Because I don’t go over to their houses?”

“Because you don’t socialize with them.”

“I do enough of that on the court.”

“That’s not the same.”

“How? We talk. We play. We?—”

“Were you or were you not the one who asked for help with this?”

He rolls his eyes. “I meant during school hours. I have far better shit to do than sit around an unlit bonfire while they talk about dumb shit.”

I sigh. “You think it’ll be bad for you? I’m willing to hang out with a bunch of idiot boys who put money on who could nail me first.”

Anger flickers in his eyes, his jaw tensing.

I add, “Besides, you thought the same about movies, and now look, you’ve watched two of them.”

“I like watching them withyou.”

“Kiss me.”

“What?”

I pull him down by his shirt and kiss him quickly before releasing him. “We go for an hour,” I tell him. “If you hate it, we can leave. You just need to make an appearance.”

He looks around the almost empty parking lot. “One hour?”

“One hour,” I agree. “But you have totry, okay?”

“Tryhow?”

I shrug. “Engage in conversation.”

Jace, in social settings, is like a fish out of water. We sit side by side in deck chairs, and he does not engage.At all.He chews his lip, his knee bouncing, and every few minutes, he checks the time, counting down the minutes until it’s time to leave.

Jace was right, though. We’re sitting around an unlit bonfire, and his teammates and a few of their girlfriends are all talking. Jonah is here too, sitting a few seats away. Ryan, whose house we’re at, lives in a massive lake house surrounded by trees. His mom is here, and occasionally she’ll come out with new platters of snacks that everyone dives into.

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