CHAPTER 29 


“I wish,” he said, and she laughed. He pulled her to her feet and he swayed for a moment, waiting for the black dots to go away. He hadn’t eaten all day. 


He pulled a thick white towel from the rack and began rubbing her body softly. As he dried her hair, he a shadow crossed her face. 

“What’s wrong?” 


“We didn’t… I mean, I’ve never…” 


JC’s hand paused. 


“We didn’t use a condom.” 


Sadie cast her eyes down. “No.” 


“Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.” 

“Me neither.” 


They stood, frozen for a minute, listening to water drip from the faucet. JC’s heart pounded fiercely; for the first time in his life, the thought of getting a condom hadn’t even occurred to him. It was part of his ritual, part of what he wanted in sex. He liked them. 

How he fuck had he forgotten? 


“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it’s a little late now, but I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I have a clean bill of health. Johnny thinks part of his duty includes monthly checkups, and I’ve been clean for a year.” 


“Me too,” she said, and kissed his nose. He resumed rubbing the towel against her hair. God, she looked good, all naked and wet. Sensation surged through him, but halfheartedly; he wouldn’t be starting up again any time soon. She wore him out. 


Another first. 


“And I’m on the pill,” she said, and his heart stopped. Christ. He’d been so all-fired concerned about STDs that pregnancy hadn’t even occurred to him. 


“Oh, good,” he said, and air rushed out of their mouths in uncertain chuckles. His heart beat erratically in the awkward silence, and he could feel the tension in her shoulders, see it in the line of their jaw. For a few hours, they’d been wrapped up in their own universe of each other, and now the world intruded into their little cabin. He swallowed and fought away the lump of anxiety in his throat. He didn’t want that. He wanted to stay here forever, making love and fucking and sucking and tickling and playing and just BEING with her. 

But he couldn’t do that. And neither could she. 

At the moment, though, he would NOT let the world in their front door. Hell no. 


He wrapped the towel around her and pulled the edges toward himself so their flushed, naked bodies touched. She slipped her arms around his neck and played with the wet curls there, and he suddenly realized he’d do just about anything to wipe that frightened look from her face. He liked the Sadie who yelled at him and danced to Janet. She was fun. She was easy to deal with. This Sadie made his heart ache. 

“Are you hungry?” he asked, and she smiled. 

“God, yes,” she said. “What are the chances of your little buddy have anything to eat in this paace besides whipped cream, oysters and strawberries?” 


He laughed. “Whipped cream and strawberries I can do,” he said. “Oysters, no thanks. But everyone’s got fixings for pancakes, right?” 

“You can make pancakes?” 


“Of course,” he said, and led her across the room. He found a few bathrobes and tossed her one. 


“What CAN’T you do?” she asked, climbing into the plush robe. 

“Um... I can’t go ice skating in a public place without getting mobbed.” 

“OK, you win. Let’s go eat.” 
 

Downstairs, in the enormous kitchen, JC set about collecting the ingredients for pancakes. Oddly, Justin DID stock a pretty hefty kitchen, although everything was frozen or canned; he supposed he didn’t come up here often enough for fresh strawberries. But frozen blueberries would work nicely as a topping. And he found bacon, too, about six packages of it, in the chest freezer. Next to six more boxes of frozen Jimmy Dean sausages. Southern boys. 


Sadie leaned against the countertop and watched him heat the griddle, mix the flour and sugar, occasionally placing a kiss on his neck or jaw or shoulder. All the magazines said he was the shy one of the group, but that was only because he liked his privacy. In reality, he loved attention, and by the time she slipped her arms around his waist from behind and leaned her cheek and damp curls against his back, he was almost purring. 


“I could get used to this,” he said, and turned around to place a soft kiss on her mouth. 


“Mmmm me too,” she said. “Nothing like watching a man who knows his way around a kitchen.” 


“That turns you on?” he asked, and stuck a sugar-covered finger in her mouth. She wrapped her lips around it, running her tongue along the underside. He grinned and she laughed around his finger. 

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “God, yes. Nothing’s a bigger turn-on than watching a man who’s good at something do what he’s good at. Why do you think you fill arenas full of screaming girls every night?” 

Josh turned to find the eggs. “Because Carson Daly says so?” 

“Oh, give me a break,” she said. “Maybe the teenies, but your adult fans… well, admittedly, their motives aren’t always driven solely by the music, but it’s not like you can’t dance or sing, either.” 

“I suppose. What else turns you on?” 

“Oh, new subject?” she asked, and pulled herself up to sit on the counter. “Hmm. Well, you, you, and additionally, you.” 

He cast a look at her and rolled his eyes. 

“You think I’m kidding,” she said, laughing. “Well, I never realized it until today, but porn’s pretty hot.” 

“I gotta say, it’s hot to me that it’s hot to you. Not many women would be into that.” 


“That’s ‘cause they’ve never tried it with a beautiful man beside them. I don’t know. I’m kind of a voyeur, anyway, I guess. Anyone who writes about sex would have to be.” 

“Isn’t everyone a voyeur, to some extent?” 

“Well, yeah, but only to the extent that they’re watching people kiss or get turned on. There’s a difference between that and watching or imagining people have sex and then acting on it. You should know that, Mr. Digital Get Down.” 


JC barked out a surprised laugh and broke an egg in his hand. 

“Hey, I’m not the one who makes a living writing the stuff,” he said as he washed the egg from his hand. Thank god she brought this up, he thought. He’d been wanting to ask her about that since IHOP. Jesus, was that really only two days ago? 


“I don’t make a living doing it,” she said. “I hope to some day, but right now I just write as a hobby. I’ve only sold a few pieces.” 

“I don’t suppose it’s on the Internet, or anything? Anything I could read?” he asked.  


“No,” she said, and something in her voice made him turn to her. Red flush spread across her cheeks, and her eyes looked as though… as though…. Jesus, he couldn’t think of anything that might embarrass her, but that’s what she was. Embarrassed. 


“Sadie?” he asked. “You OK?” 


“I’m fine,” she said, and hopped off the counter. “Should we put the bacon in the microwave?” 


JC dropped the spoon he was using to stir the batter. 

“Saaaaadie? Are you BLUSHING?” 


She ducked her head so her curls covered her cheek. 

“No.” 


“You are! You DO have stuff online! How could you possibly be embarrassed by your own work?” 


“I’m not embarrassed by it!” she shouted. “I just… don’t want you to read it.” 


“Why not?” 


“Because…” Sadie leaned her elbows on the counter and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook. 

“Are you crying? What’s wrong?” 


She lifted her head, and to his relief and confusion, she wasn’t crying at all; she was laughing. Laughing so hard no noise came from her mouth. “Because… I just… I never thought… oh, god, how the hell did this happen?” 


After a moment she composed herself, wiped tears from her cheeks, and looked him in the eye. “You know how I’m kind of a fan?” 

JC swallowed. “Yeah.” 


“OK, well, I’m a huge fan. Like I love NSync. Like my friends make fun of me and buy me t-shirts because they think it’s funny and I watch ‘Live at Madison Square Garden’ whenever I’m cleaning my apartment and I do the dances and squeal when you lick the stage.” 

He looked away. Jesus, she WAS a nut. She gripped his chin and turned him to face her. 


“Look at me while I’m telling you this,” she said, and he searched her green eyes. “Yeah, it sucks for you to find a girl who’s a fan, but I promise you, I PROMISE you, that I never expected this to happen, that I had no idea you were in that casino until I saw you, and I never, never, in a million years, ever thought I would actually be standing in a room with you, no less have wild monkey sex in a shower with you.” 

He laughed. 


“And you were never supposed to be this cool or this nice, and I was never supposed to be able to actually draw breath in your presence, no less make pancakes with you in a bathrobe. And I swear to you that I have no ulterior motive except to focus your attention back on your pancakes, which are going to get ruined if you don’t keep stirring. I won’t tell a soul about any of this, and neither will Liz, if you’re worried about her. Whatever happens here stays here.” 

He regarded her for a moment, taking in her pink cheeks, her wet dark curls, her eyes, so open and warm, and realized he didn’t like the idea of leaving his days with her in Tahoe. That’s not what she means, his brain whispered. She means you can trust her. But his heart leapt ahead to tomorrow for a moment, and he didn’t like that at all. 

Not at all. 


“Do you believe me?” she asked. He kissed her and pressed his forehead against hers. 


“Against everything I’ve learned in the past six years, yes, I believe you,” he whispered. 


“Good. Now finish your pancakes.” She kissed him again and pushed him back to the waiting bowl. 


“You still didn’t answer my question,” he said as he added another egg to the mix. 


“What question?” 


“Do I get to read your stuff?” 


“Oh. Um. Yeah. Well, what I was getting at before… the thing is, there’s a certain… audience online for NSync stuff, and being that I’m a writer, there’s a certain… audience for that…” 

JC froze. 


“Oh, no.” He turned to her. “You don’t write those stories, do you? Those fan fiction things where we get married in the first chapter, have a kid in the sixth and stand by her deathbed in the 60th?” 

Sadie laughed. “Oh, god, no. The women I write for don’t want to marry you, JC.” 


“Oh, good,” he said, and turned back to the bowl. He dipped the wooden spoon in and began turning it over, blending the dry and wet ingredients, and processed what she might mean. 

Holy hell. 


He spun around, and there she was, a weak grin on her face, blood flooding her cheeks. “You write… that... about ME?” 

“Well, not just you,” she said, and stared at her fingers, which had suddenly taken on a life of their own, tapping and snapping and wiggling. “I mean, I’ve written a couple of ones for friends about the other guys, you know, cause they asked, but—” 

“You get REQUESTS?” JC laughed. 


Sadie’s head flew up, defiant and haughty. 

“If you’re going to make fun of me, I’m not going to show you anything. And you’ll be missing a lot because it’s GOOD.” 

JC smiled. “So does that mean you’re going to show it to me?” 

“OK, but ONLY if you promise not to get offended or mad or whatever, and realized I wasn’t really talking about you, I was writing about JC Chasez of NSync, and whatever kind of perfect man he might be, kind of a pre-made romantic hero, and it was all in fun and sort of for practice—” 

“Oh, shut the hell up and go find a computer.” 

Sadie grinned and darted out of the room, bathrobe flapping at her heels. He dolloped pancake batter onto the hot griddle, watching the liquid sizzle and leap into the air. Her heard her cry of “Eureka!” and shook his head. She’d found a computer. He was about to read what she wanted to do with him.  


Couldn’t be any better than what they’d already done, he reasoned, and dipped the spoon back into the batter. And if it was, he was going to have difficulty walking the next day. 
 
 
 
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