“Thank you.” I pried open the box and dipped my pinkie in the icing. Tasting it, I nearly moaned at the sweet richness.
Jase swallowed as he looked away. “I think I’ll sit down. You should too . . . you know, because of your leg.”
Like I somehow forgot that.
Jase watched me as I eased down, finding my knee stiffer than normal. “Is your leg bothering you?”
I opened my mouth, but he rushed on. “I didn’t even think about that. You probably shouldn’t be on your leg so much and—”
“I’m okay.” I took a quick bite of the cupcake. It was like a sugary orgasm in my mouth. “Want some?”
“Hells yeah.”
I broke the cupcake in half and handed him his half. Within five seconds, he’d devoured it. I finished mine off pretty quickly and after tossing the box in a nearby trash can, I took a deep breath. “You didn’t come here just to give me a cupcake, right?”
“Ah, no.”
“What . . . what are you doing here, Jase?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but when his gray gaze settled on me, his eyes were surprisingly sharp. “I want to talk to you.”
“That much I got, but I think you said everything you wanted to say already, and you showing up here is the last thing I expected.” I felt like a bitch for throwing it out there like that, but it was true. And he sort of deserved it. I was no one’s doormat.
Jase looked away as his shoulders tensed, then he came forward and sat down beside me. The smell of alcohol was faint as he looked at me. Without saying a word, he reached over and plucked up my free hand. My eyes widened as he lifted my hand, turned it over, and placed a kiss against my palm.
Yep. He was drunk.
And my skin tingled from where his lips had met, like an electrical jolt. Speechless, I watched him lower my hand back to my lap.
“I’m a jackass,” he said.
I blinked slowly.
“I shouldn’t have said the shit that I said to you earlier. It wasn’t right and I was lying.” He took a deep breath, shifting his gaze to the empty bench across from us. “I wasn’t drunk that night. I was far from it.”
My heart had begun pounding from the moment he kissed my hand and went up a degree as he spoke, and my voice was barely above a whisper. “I know.”
“And I really didn’t think you’d assume it meant anything because you had a crush on me or whatever.” One side of his lips tipped up again, but he had been right on that aspect. The kiss had meant everything to me. “I just . . . I shouldn’t have kissed you that night—touched you. Not because it was gross or any of that shit, but because you’re Cam’s little sister. You’re untouchable.”
As I stared at him, the butterfly moved from my chest to my stomach. Was that Jase’s problem? He felt bad because Cam was his friend. Seriously? Part of me wanted to smack him upside the head. The other part of me wanted to crawl into his lap, because if that was his big hang-up, we could work with that. Couldn’t we? Or did it matter?
But I just sat there, staring at him like I had all those times he’d come to visit Cam. If I started giggling, I was going to punch myself in the face.
“The moment . . . it had gotten away from me that night, Tess. You . . . you are a beautiful girl. Always have been and, goddamnit, that hasn’t changed.”
He thought I was beautiful—wait. The moment had gotten away from him? Torn between being elated and insulted, I shook my head.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” He glanced over at me, half of his face shadowed. “And if you think I’m the biggest jackass out there, I completely understand.”
What he had said earlier still stung like I’d kicked a nest full of hornets, but what he was saying now soothed a little of the burn. “I don’t think that.”
Jase stilled for a moment and then he twisted toward me, his head cocking to the side again. Our eyes locked, and I found that I couldn’t look away. “You’re still so . . . sweet.”
Sweet? I resisted the urge to spit on the ground. Of course Jase thought I was sweet and nice and as innocent and cuddly as an old, raggedy teddy bear. Not exactly how I wanted him to see me.
He broke eye contact first, and the air leaked out of my lungs. Wetting my lips, I ran the edge of my key card over the soft flannel of my jammie bottoms. “So you decided to come over in the middle of the night to tell me this?”
“It’s not exactly the middle of the night,” he said, smiling slightly. “More like early late night.”
My brows rose. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“If you drank half of an eighteen-pack, it just might.”
I pursed my lips, remembering he was more than just a little buzzed. “Why didn’t you just wait until, I don’t know, you were sober and the sun was out to have this conversation?”
“I couldn’t wait,” he said without a moment of hesitation, so quickly that there was no doubting how important it was to him. “And the party sucked.”