Page 26 of Jump

“An orgy?”

“And in return, I won’t bring anyone else back without first warning you.”

Her eyes grow wider, not in panic, but in surprise. “You won’t?”

“It’s the polite thing to do.”

I grab her keys and cell from the small table, and slinging my bag over my chest, I turn away. “I’m going. Can you either give me a key, or come let me in? I want to go to bed.”

Pleased with his handiwork, Axel sits back in his chair, his legs spread wide beneath the table, and his arm slung across Hannah’s shoulders. A slow, smug smile spreads across his lips. “I wish I could say I’ll miss you, bro. But…”

“Yeah, fuck you too.” I look to Vivian again and lift a brow. “Can we go?”

“This is gonna be pleasant.” She exhales an exhausted sigh and picks up her wine to chug what’s left in her glass. Wiping her lips with a cloth napkin, then balling it and placing it on the table, she oh-so-slowly stands and steps around her chair. “I don’t think this is the best idea, Matt. I’m happy with the status quo, and you’ve already got a setup right here with Axel.”

“No give-backs,” Axel declares playfully. “You already took his first and last month of rent.”

Vivian

NO ORGIES ALLOWED

His headlights reflect harshly in my rearview mirror. His body, a large, angry sentry illuminated from behind when he passes a streetlight.

Matteo Ruiz—Matt!—is the smokejumper I’ve heard about for the better part of a year. The man who wandered into town and never left.

The firefighter whose girlfriend perished on the job.

‘It’s complicated,’ he told me.

Well, no shit, sherlock!

He has already tasted every part of my body. He’s seen me naked. Vulnerable. Afraid, but more alive than I’ve ever felt before in my life.

For the night we had together, he was perfect in every way. Sweet. Challenging. Charming. Endearing. He made me fall in love, if only a small bit, in the span of a single night. And when it was all over, he was generous enough to allow that fantasy to live on into eternity.

Tonight, it was all shattered.

Ruined!

My heart twists and turns in my chest, sending bolts of pain to my stomach, and streaks of nausea rolling through my veins.

Every time he spoke at dinner tonight, my illusions crumbled further. Every moment we sat together at Hannah’s table and endured reality, my fantasy turned grittier, darker, until it oozed with unpleasantness.

He can’t be my Prince Charming in the real world. He can’t be perfect, now that his memory isn’t frozen in time.

Dammit, everything has been destroyed. And his lack of surprise when I arrived tonight says he knew who I was all this time. He knew where I was. He knew everything. I was merely the poor little idiot dancing around town with a flower in my hair and hearts in my eyes.

Shaking my head and swallowing down the black slick of sickness that attempts to crawl along my throat, I pull up outside my apartment and kill the headlights while, behind me, Matt does the same.

My hands shake, and my jaw quivers. My eyes itch, though I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why.

I snag my keys in frustration and fight with my seatbelt until it’s off, then pushing my door open, the hinges creaking in protest, I look anywhere but back at the man whose hands have touched me all over.

Whose body has slid against mine.

Whose lips have tasted.

Whose eyes have catalogued and appreciated.

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