Page 59 of Stolen

15

LEO

Boyfriend.

I’d called Jacob myboyfriend.

The embarrassment had made its way down to my bones, as I sat in on the editing session the photographers were having from the shoot earlier. I’d also changed into just a regular t-shirt after my shower time with Jacob, not caring that I obviously had a hickey on either side of my neck, and especially not caring that Keith had been staring daggers at me the whole time because of it.

It felt like I was in some sort of strange, liminal space.

I so clearly belonged to Jacob, but he hadn’t claimed anything about me outside of the lodge. And the wholeboyfriendslipup had only made things more confusing, since he hadn’t reacted to it, at all. I’d been expecting him to back off or back away, but he’d moved on from it like it was nothing to him.

Maybe because itwasn’tanything to him.

“What do you think about this one, boss?” Tommy asked from where he sat beside me. He was holding his laptop a few inches away from my face. “I think it came out okay. And we already ran it through some post-edits, too, so?—”

“Looks good to me,” I replied, with an enthusiastic thumbs up. The photo did look good, but I mostly wanted to make sure I came off as present and listening, instead of my mind being a million miles away.

“What about this one?” Tommy smirked before he clicked over to the next photo. I looked down to now see a photo of a shirtless Jacob from the shoot, his gaze flirty as he stared down the camera.

“I was thinking you might want to keep this one all for yourself? The rest of the Jacob ones, too.”

“Why would I want to keep the Jacob photos for myself, Tommy?”

“Oh.” Tommy’s smirk quickly faded. “Never mind.”

“What’s going on, Tommy?”

“Nothing. It’s just—” Tommy shook his head. “I overheard some of the guys earlier, talking about you and Jacob. It seemed like you two were a thing?”

My eyes went wide. “What do you mean? The guys were talking earlier?”

“Yeah, it’s just?—”

“Does everyone know about me and Jacob?”

“What’s the big deal?” Tommy shrugged. “It’s not like anyone thinks less of you or anything. Honestly, it sounds like everyone’s rooting for you two to get together. Or at least, for you to not end up back with Keith.”

“So, what? People are taking bets now?” I scoffed in disbelief. “And this whole time, I thought we were being so careful…”

Tommy locked eyes with my hickeys, which I hastily covered with my palms.

“I mean, we were a lot more careful in the past.” I grimaced. “It’s, um, it’s complicated.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Do you two like each other?”

“Sure, but this whole thing was just supposed to be a fling, I think.” I let out a deep sigh. “You’ve seen Jacob, right? There’s no way I make sense for him out of the context of being snowed in. And it’s not just the physical differences, either. There’s no way Jacob wants to be part of the PR world. He has his own shit to deal with.”

“Have you asked him about what he wants?”

“Why? So, he can let me down easy?” My stomach flipped and flopped. “No, thanks. I’m fine with none of this being serious. Besides, it’s better that way. I can keep my head in the game.”

I nodded toward Tommy’s laptop. “Speaking of, we should probably look through more of the photos from this week, see which ones are going to make it to the press?—”

“Can I talk to you in private? Please?” Keith was suddenly standing in front of us. “It’s an emergency.”

“Really? It can’t wait until we’re done going through the photos?” I frowned. “It shouldn’t take too much longer?—”

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