Jase swallows a mouthful of food, then turns to me. “Want to go?” The look he gives me is so hopeful. Before I can think about the ramifications of my answer, I’m nodding my head yes. He smiles an adorable lopsided grin. “Cool. We can go by your house to get your suit on the way.”
Shit! This is exactly why I should’ve given this more thought before saying yes. I need to tell him the truth. He needs to know I’m only eighteen and in high school. That I live in a trailer park with my drunken mother, and my only way out is the summer internship in New York Nick surprised me with. Jase would understand. He comes from a broken home. And I am of legal age…
I open my mouth to tell Jase I need to talk to him, when Quinn says, “I have a spare.” She shrugs. “It’ll save time.”
“You good with that?” Jase asks, taking another bite of his food.
“Yeah,” I mutter with a plastered-on smile. Later… I’ll tell him later.
Once we’re done eating, and we’ve worked together to get the dishes done and the kitchen cleaned, we head out in Jase’s Dodge Charger to the beach. It’s such a man’s car. Black on black with smooth leather interior. It’s not flashy or expensive, but it’s damn sexy. And it totally fits him.
When we arrive at the beach, Quinn takes off on her photography mission, and Jase and I head toward the ocean to find an empty spot to lay a blanket down near the water.
After stripping off Quinn’s shirt and shorts, leaving me in only her bikini—which fits a tad loose on my body since she has more curves than I do—I turn my attention to Jase. He reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head, exposing his delicious tattoos, along with his firm chest and ripped abs. I never imagined falling for a guy like Jase. I always pictured a wealthy, put together businessman, dressed to the nines in a designer suit. Nowhere in my fantasies did it include a tattoo artist bad-boy. The term causes my heart to skip a beat. My mom fell for the tattooed bad-boy. She’s not only brokenhearted but broken. It’s not the same, I tell myself. Jase isn’t really a bad-boy. He just looks like one. He’s educated. He has a college degree, and he wants to open his own business.
Does it really even matter when this time next week I’ll be in New York?
My heart sinks at the thought of leaving Jase. Can I do it? Can I walk away from him?
You don’t have a choice, my inner self argues. It doesn’t matter how fast and hard I’m falling for him. New York is my future. I can’t give that up for a man. There will be plenty more men in New York.
“You okay?” Jase asks, forcing me out of my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I say, and then quickly add, “tell me about your tattoos,” in hope of distracting myself from my own thoughts. My mind and heart are warring with one another, and it’s not a battle I’m ready to enter yet.
Jase looks down and runs a hand along the planes of his abs. “Which ones?” he asks. “I kind of have a lot.” He laughs, and the melodic sound calms my nerves. No, he’s not a bad-boy. He’s a good guy wrapped in a bad-boy body.
He drops onto the blanket and lays next to me. His leg entangles with mine as he explains each one. They all mean something to him in some way. We spend the next several hours laughing and talking and kissing, completely lost in our own little world. We watch people come and go, and eat the lunch we packed. The water is warm, so we go swimming as well. Eventually Quinn makes her way back over to us, ready to go home. I have no clue how the entire day passed so quickly, but what I do know is I’m not ready to say goodbye to Jase yet.
So when he murmurs, “Come home with me” against my lips, I agree without thought. On our drive back, Nick texts, asking where I am. I text him back that I have a couple things I need to do before graduation, immediately feeling guilty for lying. But I’m not ready for him to know about Jase yet. It’s pointless for him to know about a man I can’t have a future with. It’s not like I’m going to stay. And on top of that, I lied to Jase. Sure, they’re technically lies by omission, but a lie is still a lie. He doesn’t even know I’m planning to leave soon.
Jase’s hand squeezes mine, and my heart feels like it’s going to thump right out of my chest. How did this happen? How did I manage to fall for someone this fast? This isn’t who I am. I want to be mad at myself for being so stupid, but I can’t muster up the negative energy. My heart feels too full…too happy. And suddenly I can almost empathize with my mom. Imagining how I’m going to feel when I leave next week nearly has my heart crumbling into pieces.