Page 11 of Christmas With the Jerk

I can feel the rapid thud of her heart against my chest. I have no idea what this means for us, but in this moment, I don't care. All that matters is the woman in my arms and the euphoria that's left us both shaken and satiated, our bodies finally ready to succumb to sleep.

I roll onto my back, pulling her with me so she's draped across my chest. Her hair is a tangled mess, falling in waves over her shoulders. I can't resist the urge to brush it back from her face. She looks up at me, her hazel eyes soft and unguarded, and I can see the questions lurking there, the uncertainties of what just happened between us.

For now, it appears, we're both content to lie here in the aftermath, our bodies still buzzing with the remnants of our unexpected passion.

The complexities, the adversity, the world outside can wait—for tonight, at least, Woodley Price is mine.

The room is quiet, the heater finally cut off, so at least there is that positive. Finally, the air is blessedly cool for the first time since we got here. Woodley appears to have dozed off, but I quietly get up to close the window so we don’t die of frostbite in our sleep.

I glance over at Woodley. She’s asleep, her body curled under the thin blanket, her breathing slow and steady.

I sigh, dragging a hand over my face, the weight of everything settling on my chest. I should’ve known better. Hell, I did know better. But here we are. Instead of climbing back in bed with her,I move over to the bed she was sleeping in earlier, far enough away to avoid any accidental contact. Whatever that was needs to end there.

As I lie down on the lumpy mattress, my mind won’t stop racing. I tell myself I need to get some rest. We still have to drive over six hours in a few hours, through a goddamn snowstorm, no less. I need to be focused, to have my head in the game. We’ve got this pitch to finalize.

What the hell was I thinking?

She’s not my type. She’s the opposite of everything I’ve ever gone for—too intense, too serious, too much of everything that usually drives me insane. And yet, somehow, that didn’t seem to matter an hour ago.

My body reacted before my brain could stop it, and now we’re here. Stuck in this shitty motel, in the middle of nowhere, and we’ve made it ten times more awkward for both of us.

I rub my temples, trying to make sense of it. Woodley is beautiful—there’s no denying that. But she’s not my world. She’s not someone I could ever see myself with. We’re too different. We live in different universes. God, I should know how to keep it in my pants by now. What a fucking adolescent mistake.

I roll onto my side, staring at the shadowy outline of her bed. I don’t know why I let it happen. I could blame the exhaustion, the stress, the fact that we’ve been stuck together for way too long in this snowstorm. But really? It was just... her. Something about being here, in this ridiculous situation, flipped a switch in me that I wasn’t prepared for.

Now I have to face her in a few hours, get in a car, and drive the rest of the way to Boston. A surge of irritation rises in my chest.

I shake my head, frustrated with everything. The blizzard, this dump of a motel, the fact that we’re driving across half the country only days before Christmas. And now I’ve gone and made everything worse by sleeping with her.

Punching the pillow, I try to find a comfortable spot, but there’s no comfort here. No matter how I try to spin it, I’ve made things infinitely more complicated. Dammit.

I turn onto my back, staring up at the ceiling again. I need sleep, but it’s not coming. Not with the weight of what’s waiting for us tomorrow. This whole trip has been a disaster. I can only hope that at the end of this there will be a positive in nailing this with ValorTech. That’s the only positive that could come at this point.

Keep my eye on the prize. Turn off all the other noise.

I close my eyes, trying to force my mind to shut down, but all I can think about is her.

Fuck.

FIVE

Woodley

Said the night wind to the little lamb / Do you see what I see?

7:02 am

The cold wakes me.A biting chill that seeps through the thin sheet and blanket and into my bones. I blink awake, my eyes adjusting to the dim light filtering through the worn-out window coverings, if they could even be called that.

The first thing I notice is that Thorne isn’t beside me. I’m alone in the bed, the warmth of his body long gone.

I roll over, immediately shivering. Whatever we did to the thermostat last night must’ve worked because it feels like a freezer in here now. I wrap the blanket tighter around my shoulders and glance at the unit across the room under the window.

The once noisy furnace, or whatever it was that was injecting the flames of hell into this room, is silent.

My body feels like it was run over by a snowplow. I'm exhausted still, even if I got a little rest. Oh, and the soreness on my inner thighs hits me and I rub my hand across it, remembering the force that caused it.

A flood of memories rush back—his hands, his lips, the heat between us. I press my fingers to my temples, trying to push it all out. What was I thinking?

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