Page 108 of Honeysuckle
“Josh!” I called out to him a few times as I searched the main floor. I barely made it up the stairs to our room, finding him with his headphones on sitting in our bed staring at his textbook with a concentrated look on his dumb, handsome face.
“Why the hell are you so out of breath?” He pulled off his headphones and gave me a dirty look as I dropped to my knees beside the bed. “Tuck, I have too much work to do for you to have one of your dramatic hissy fits.”
“Not a hissy fit,” I said, pressing my hands flat against the messy comforter inches from his leg. My fingers itched to feel him, but this would have to do. “Van said something to me tonight,” I said, and Josh raised an eyebrow.
“He gets too much air to his brain being that tall. Whatever he said is either a lie or altitude sickness.” Josh shut his textbook at his feet and gave me his full attention.
“He said I’m not hurting anyone by loving men, that…” I stumbled over my words, not sure if I wanted to confess everything. I clenched my fingers in the fabric, and his eyes darted down to them. “That I shouldn’t feel guilty about who I am and… I just,” I stopped again.
That time Josh reached out as I dropped my gaze from his, and I could feel him counting in his head as he wrapped his fingers into my hair and tugged my head back, our eyes meeting.
“Spit it out,” he ordered, but it was encouraging and warm.Wanting.
“I like you, I like this… I like us.”
Josh laughed, his eyebrow raising. "What the hell are you talking about?”
“I want this, I want…us.” I waved my hand between the two of us, and Josh stared at me like I was an idiot.
“One make out and you’re on your knees, Tuck?” He teased.
“Begging,” I said without hesitation.
“Begging for what exactly?” Josh smiled, his sharp teeth exposed at the corners of his pretty mouth. When he smiled at me like that, it made me feel alive, like being struck by lightning.
“I want to be your boyfriend, you insufferable asshole!” I blurted out in the most unromantic way I could think of.
“Correction, one make out and you want monogamy,” Josh hummed, his smile never budging.
“Can you stop teasing me for two minutes?” I pleaded with him.
“There’s no fun in that, Tuck. I kind of enjoy you being the nervous one for once,” Josh said. His dark curls licked at his tan neck, and I wanted to memorize the way each one twisted with the pad of my fingers.
“I just want a label,” I practically whined. I had spent the better half of my teenage years until now just hiding, not wanting labels or to have the attention on me. But with Josh, I wanted it, I wanted everyone to know what he meant to me.
“You want a label?” He smiled, still perched so gently on the bed as he watched me with his sable eyes. “Tell me why?” He insisted.
“Because…” I stopped, inhaling as much air as I could to slow down my racing heart. “I don’t want to hide us, to hide this.”
“And what’s this?” Josh waved his hand between us.
“You just want me to say it, to embarrass myself some more.”
“Maybe,” Josh smirked. “Maybe I like the look of Dean Tucker on his knees, begging me to be his.”
“See!” I raised my voice. “You know what I want.”
“Of course I do, you’re not subtle, Tuck.” He let go of a soft, quiet laugh that I wanted to chase around like a dog after a bone. “But what I want is to hear you say it. What doyouwant?”
“I want you to be my boyfriend, I want to hold your hand in public if you’ll let me, and I want to tell the guys,” I confessed. I wanted what Cael described that day at the cabin: I wanted someone to celebrate with, to come back to the Nest with. I wanted an Ella, a Clementine… “I want you to be mine.”
“That’s all?” Josh’s eyebrow arched.
“That’s all,” I confirmed, and he nodded his head softly at me.
“If that’s what you want,” he said quietly. “It’s what I want.”
I wasn’t expecting him to give in that way; so easily and without conditions.
