CHAPTER 23 


JC squinted against the sunlight pouring through his window. Who the fuck said the sun was allowed to come out this early in the day? At…. He looked at the clock. Noon. 


He never slept until noon. 


He sat up in bed, and a moment later, collapsed back on the sheets. And who the fuck said it was OK to drive nails into his head? 

He squinted at the blurry shapes on his night table. 

Jack Daniels said it was OK, that’s who. 

He moaned. He never drank whiskey. That was Lance’s thing, for Christ’s sake. Southern boys. He drank wine, vodka martinis, occasionally a really good scotch. But the biggest bottle in the refrigerator last night was Jack, and judging by the three or four other shapes around Jack, he’d dipped into some other whiskeys, too. 

He crawled out of bed, rubbing his stomach—did he throw up last night?—and threw open the draperies. Sunlight cascaded in, brilliant, cold, light reflecting off the snow, driving bolts into his eyes, but he squinted against the light and gripped the windowsill. 

He deserved it. 


Sighing, he stumbled into the bathroom, fumbling through the single-serve packets of medicine until he found the Excedrin, crunched them dry, and stepped into the shower to wait for his head to clear. Normally, he’d take a hot shower over anything after a day like yesterday, but the steam made his head feel a bit nauseous. 

He didn’t owe himself a hot shower, anyway. He cranked the knob to C and hissed as thousands of icy needles penetrated his skin; he flinched away from the stream of water, from the tingles and the ache in his back, but forced himself back under the showerhead, his face upturned, gasping. 


Minutes later, he stood in his bathroom, shivering, toweling himself off, and his head did that magic Excedrin-clearing thing. He gazed at his face in the mirror, his vision sharpened by caffeine and ice water. 

He had to fix this. 


He shook his head. He wasn’t 100% sure she still wasn’t dicking around with him, that she hadn’t deceived him, but he was damn close. His mom always said you couldn’t be 100 percent sure about anything in this lifetime, right? He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against the glass. He thought of how she pretended she didn’t know who he was. 

Then he thought of the look on her face when she said it had always been him. 


His heart pounded. He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t. How the fuck was he supposed to trust her? He couldn’t even trust people who were IN the industry, who knew what he was going through. The only people he trusted were the four guys he performed with, and they didn’t even know he was here. They thought he was spending a quiet New Year’s at home with his family. 

New Year’s. It was New Year’s Eve. 

Moments later, he listened to the trill of a phone. 

“Yo Ceeeeeee!” 


JC rolled his eyes. 


“Hey.” 


“How’s the moms?” 


“Um. Good.” 


JC closed his eyes and could actually see Justin cock his head. 

“You sound weird.” 


“I’m fine.” 


“So why is your mom just ‘good’?” 


“She’s fine.” 


“You aren’t home, are you?” 


“Justin—” 


“Lemme talk to your mom.” 


“No.” 


“Aw, man, I KNEW you weren’t at home. You wanna say hi to Brit?” 

“No—” 


JC heard a distant “Hi, JC!” chirp through the phone and pressed on his temple. Why didn’t he call Lance? At least Lance had a deep voice. Lance didn’t have perky girlfriends. 


“OK, man, ‘sup? Where are you? What are you doin’?” 

“Never mind. I… have an issue.” 


“What, did you meet a girl or something?” 

JC was silent. 


“Oh, shit, you DID! Is she hot?” 

“Forget it, Justin, I shouldn’t have called—” 

“No, wait, man… hey, wait a minute. You never call me about your chickies anymore.” 


“I just called to say Happy New Year. Later—” 

“You fucked something up, didn’t you?” 

JC sighed. “Not really. Maybe. She didn’t tell me she knew who I was.” 

“So? What, you think everyone lives under a rock?” 

“That’s what she said.” 


“Deal, man. Is she cool?” 


JC opened his eyes and thought about her hand under his on the stick shift. 

“Yeah.” 


“Oh, man, are you—” Justin’s voice became muffled, and he pictured him cupping his hand over the receiver. “—are you like really into her?” 

“Yeah.” 


“Well, then, fix it, man.” 


“I don’t know how.” 


A few seconds passed before JC realized Justin wasn’t speaking. 

“You there?” 


“Uh…. Yeah. Did you say you don’t know how?” 

“Yeah.” 


“Then you better go chasing after her or something, man, cause you must’ve fucked up big time.” 


“‘K.” 


“Happy New Year, man.” 


“Happy New Year.” 


JC folded the phone and put his head in his hands. He knew what he had to do. 


He grabbed his jacket and headed for the elevators. 
 

“What are YOU doing here?” 


JC stood in the hallway, cowed by the five feet of attitude blocking the doorway. 


“I’ve come for you to even out my shoes. You only hit one last night and I figured you’d want to hit both.” 

Liz narrowed her eyes at him and cocked her head. 

“Are you going to hurt her?” 


JC rubbed his cheek with his hand. He’d never felt so doubtful, so defeated in his life.  


“Where is she?” 


“Are you going to apologize?” Liz crossed her arms. 

“You know, we both did not-great things—” 

“Well, SHE was the only one sobbing on her bed when I came home, so if you—” 


“Liz, please, I need to see her now.” 

Liz looked at him a second longer and nodded. “I think she went down to the lake. That beach. I don’t know. She walked, so she can’t be that far.” 


JC sighed. “Thank you. You’re a good friend.” 

“Better than you think, so don’t fuck up again.” 

To his surprise, she stood on her tiptoes and pecked him on the cheek. A moment later, an statement crossed her face, a kind of wide-eyed, breathy recognition, followed by a fierce blush and shy, sheepish smile. He’d seen a million times. They called it the “Holy Shit I Touched Him” look. He grinned. 


“So who’s YOUR favorite?” 


“Shut the fuck up and go find my friend,” she mumbled, blushing to her roots, and slammed the door in his face. 
 

Thirty minutes later, he still hadn’t found her. Cars pounded on their horns, pedestrians shook their fists at him, but fuck if he was going to speed up and miss that blue coat of hers. And he couldn’t ask for directions, not in a small town like this. He backtracked to the hotel again and drove east through town, into Nevada and past the casinos and bars, ski shops and motels. 


Nowhere. 


He pulled into an empty parking lot on the shore and rested his chin on the steering wheel, admiring the view. His eyes were like Lake Tahoe, she said. Hers were like the pine trees around it. He couldn’t find her. He fucked up. End of story. 


JC stepped out of the Jeep and climbed on the hood, shivering a bit. The thermometer at the empty lifeguard station held fast at 30 degrees, but with the wind he guessed it was 10 below that; fucking cold, in any case. But he couldn’t take his eyes off of the lake. The blue, clear, long, deep lake. 


And then he saw her. 


She was sitting on a log, off the beach, in a grove of pine trees. She looked like a child, arms wrapped around her shins, chin resting on her knees. A lump grew in his throat. 


He approached her tentatively, afraid of scaring her off with any sudden movements. He didn’t know what he’d do when he reached her. 

So when he did, he just stood behind her, five feet from her, undecided and longing to just pick her up and carry her away. 

“What are you doing here.” 


JC jumped. Her voice sounded flat, devoid of emotion. Her gaze never broke from the lake. 


“I came to apologize.” 


“Why? I fucked up. I’m the one who’s sorry. I was wrong. I should have told you.” 


JC stepped closer, three feet, two feet away from her. “No, Sadie, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I’m sorry.” 

“Fine. I forgive you.” 


She whispered the last few syllables, and he could hear tears welling up in her voice; he hated himself for doing that to her, for letting her do that to herself. He knelt beside her, his foot crunching in the snow, his knee dampened. 


“Thank you.” 


Sadie turned to look at him, and his heart ached. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, accusing and sad at once. 

She looked beautiful. 


“Why do you care? Why are you here?” 

JC sat on the log beside her, facing away from the lake, and cupped her face, brushing a tear from her cheek with his thumb, punishing himself with the wet heat of it. “Because I couldn’t stand the idea of not kissing you at midnight tonight.” 


Sadie smiled, a weak, sad smile. “You can find plenty of girls to kiss at midnight.” 


“I want you,” he said, and tightened his grip on her cheek. He leaned forward and felt her resistance; but a moment later she leaned to him, too, and their lips met in a soft, tender kiss that rent his stomach and made him gasp. Her tongue reached out to touch his lip, gently, like a butterfly’s touch; she didn’t enter his mouth with it, like he so desperately wanted, but just stroked his lips, caressing the upper, then bottom lips, with a touch so light it felt like cotton candy. He breathed into her mouth, sucked in her air, exhaled his own breath into hers, in a dancing, brushing kiss. 


They parted. His erection strained against his jeans, and he saw that her eyes had changed from sad and defeated to needy. As needy as his, he thought. 


“Josh,” she breathed, steam rising from her mouth in the icy air, and he pulled on her then, yanking her body to his, screaming in frustration when all he felt was piles of clothing, puffy jacket, sweater, everything in his way, when all he wanted to do was touch her. He pressed his hands against her soft, hot cheek and thrust his tongue into her mouth, tasting her breath, her desire for him; a moment later she was on him, straddling him on the log, legs wrapped around his waist, scrabbling at his clothes as he did at hers.  

He pushed himself up from the log, her legs still around him, and staggered forward. She moaned under his lips and moved her assault to his neck, his ear. “Oh, fuck,” he cried out, and stumbled her into a tree, her back pressing into the bark, her legs tight around him, and she cried out his name again. 


He supported her back with one arm and gripped the tree with the other. Snow fell from the branches as they rocked against it, slipping down his back and on to his face. The cold somehow turned him on even more, this icy freeze next to his skin, steam rising from their bodies. He never wanted anything more than her, right now, against this tree, oh, fuck. His cock pressed against his jeans and into hers, and she gasped when he thrust forward, rubbing himself against her; she threw her head back, knocking off her ski cap, sending her curls tumbling free, and dug her fingernails into his scalp. 


She moved her hips up and down, reaching for him. Sweat poured down his face; he’d never felt such intense desire in his life. Only forty-eight hours earlier, he’d never even seen her, and now he lived to feel her hot skin surround him. 


“Oh, Sadie, christ,” he hissed in her ear, and to her answering moan, he almost lost it then. “I don’t want to wait for you any more. Please don’t make me wait,” he whispered, a ragged, foreign sound to his own ears, and she opened her eyes. 


“I don’t have anything here,” she wailed, panting, their foreheads touching. 


“In the car,” he said, and she unwrapped her legs from him and they ran, hands linked, to his Jeep. Josh flung open the door and opened the glove compartment—the box he bought yesterday in hopeful anticipation of their outing—and fumbled to open it. 

He couldn’t. His hands were trembling. His hands never trembled during sex. What the hell was wrong with him? 

“Let me,” she said, and slid under his arm. He watched her delicate hands—shaking, too—tore open the box. Pull out a strip. Tear off a condom. His heart stopped in his throat as she turned around to face him, her eyes bright, her cheeks red, her hair damp and matted to her forehead. She grabbed him at his waist and yanked him forward, so they were both leaning against the open car door. She searched his eyes. 

“Once we do this, there’s no going back,” she said, and he recognized fear in her eyes. 


She was afraid, too. 


“I know,” he said, and lifted his trembling hands to her face, inhaling when he felt the soft heat of her skin. “I don’t want to go back,” he said. And she pulled him forward, gasping, and kissed him like she craved his life, like she was trying to drink the lifeblood from him, pull his soul out through his mouth. She could have all of it. 

They ripped their coats off, fumbled for each other’s zippers, hissing and moaning when fingers brushed the wrong place; and in the open door of the Jeep, on the shores of Lake Tahoe, pants undone only as far as needed, she took him in her hand. He closed his eyes, sucked in air through his teeth, and gripped the hood of the car. Sensation blasted through him, and he twitched in her palm, and he felt every nerve ending cry out in ecstasy as she slipped it over him, her hands holding him, keeping him warm, covering him, and then she gripped the back of his head and leaned against the seat. 

“Don’t make me wait another fucking second, Joshua,” she hissed, and he drove into her, his full length, crying out, and stopped. He couldn’t move. She felt so perfect, so slick and hot around him, but they fit together so perfectly, as though she were made for him, and his eyes widened with wonder, and he looked at her face, and realized she had the same amazed, awestruck look, and then he began to move, pulling out, sliding back in, his hand freezing from gripping the roof of the car, the cold wind turning his sweat to ice, and nothing existed but this, her, the wondrous, pained look on her perfect face, the tear that slid down her cheek, the whimpers and moans that escaped her throat. 

“Oh, God… exquisite,” she whispered, and he moaned her name and moved faster. He felt the build deep in his stomach, his body tightening, pulling together, preparing for release, and knew she deserved more than this, than this fucking in a parking lot, but he needed it, and she needed it, and he hissed, “Oh, Sadie, I can’t—” and then showers of black sparks fell across his vision, and he screamed out her name as he emptied himself into her warmth, shuddering and moaning with the force of it, and then he leaned his forehead against hers, waiting for sunlight to make another appearance, and a moment later, reluctantly, painfully, withdrew from her. They stood there for a moment, half in, half out of his Jeep, and then he realized what he’d done. 

“Sadie, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I couldn’t wait, you—” 

She laughed and put a finger on his lips. “If you think I didn’t enjoy that, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought. Now go throw that away so we can go back to your place and take my turn.” 

He grinned. God, she was adorable, with her pink cheeks, her bruised lips, the sleepy look in her eyes. 


Take her turn, indeed. 
 
 
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