Page 59 of Burner Account

“He’s not here, though,” Tanner said softly. “I am. And I think you want me as much as I want you.”

“I definitely want you.”

“Right. So let’s give this a chance.” He stroked my cheek as a subtle smile curled his lips. “For all either of us know, I’ll annoy the hell out of you, and you’ll break up with me.”

I managed a quiet laugh as I reeled him in closer. “Somehow I don’t foresee that happening.”

“You never know.” The smile turned to the cutest attempt at a wicked grin. “Idohave a few exes of my own, you know.”

“Their loss,” I murmured, and claimed his lips. They were still curved into a grin but quickly softened into a kiss.

When I broke that kiss, I was out of breath, and I marveled at the fact that he was too.

“So…” He licked his lips. “Give this a chance? See what happens?”

I nodded and drew him back in, because there was no way in hell I was passing up a chance to see where this could go.

Even if we inevitably ended in disaster…

Even if someone else inevitably came along and turned his head…

I couldn’t resist enjoying the ride while it lasted.

Chapter 18

Tanner

There wasno keeping us apart after that.

I mean, there was. Hockey season was a harsh mistress, and apparently so was the school year. Some nights, I was too exhausted or sore for anything. Others, he was buried under an avalanche of papers and tests that needed grading.

But as much as humanly possible—as much as our schedules cooperated—we were together. Any time bodies were on the same page, we were in bed, screwing like we needed to make up for four years’ worth of lost time. It didn’t feel like lost time to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with having as much sex with Isaiah as both of us could handle.

In between, we watched movies and hockey games, and it turned out Isaiah was an amazing cook. He lived with three roommates, so we kept things to my condo, and it didn’t take him long to make himself right at home in my kitchen. I fucking loved it. He was way better at cooking than I was, and one of my favorite things in the world was chilling half-dressed on my couch, my body aching deliciously from amazing sex, while we indulged in whatever Isaiah had whipped up for us that night.

It just didn’t get any better than this.

Tonight, unfortunately, was one of those times when the mind was horny but the body was weak. I’d taken a hard hit during last night’s game, and my back and hip were still making me pay for it. Even slow, gentle sex was off the table tonight. I offered to blow Isaiah or something, but he insisted that it wouldn’t kill us to spend one evening with our clothes on.

Eh, he was probably right.

And it turned out that while my back was beyond bitchy tonight, it could be appeased by lying across my couch with my head in Isaiah’s lap. There was a hockey game later—Boston was playing in Seattle—which we’d watch when it came on. In the meantime, we’d eaten dinner, and now we were happily shitposting together.

As I was typing out a response to some self-righteous douchecanoe, Isaiah snickered.

I craned my neck to look up at him. “What?”

“Nothing.” He pressed his lips together, but I didn’t buy it.

“Uh-huh. Sure it’s nothing.” I quickly pulled up his profile and tapped on his recent posts. He’d been arguing with an incredibly reasonable and rational individual who legitimately thought the solution to everything was restoring voting to what the Founding Fathers had originally set up: restricting it to white landowning males.

This champion of suffrage told Isaiah,Women are emotional while men are logical. Women making political decisions is how we got in this mess.

Isaiah had responded with four screencaps of the guy absolutely losing his mind and cussing people out over various things, and he’d captioned it,Men aren’t emotional? This you?

The response to that,Whatever. Your just virtue signaling.

Virtue signaling?Isaiah wrote back.So you admit that my stance is the virtuous one, but your only means of critique is to claim I’m just pretending to be virtuous in order to look good. Yet you won’t even rise to the level of pretending to be a decent human being. While I applaud your honesty, your commitment to bigotry, stereotypes, and ad hominem arguments suggests perhaps you aren’t someone whose opinion I should value.

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