“Yeah.” Jared nodded.
“Good.”
The trepidation in Adam’s voice was almost endearing, except it came from a place Jared didn’t completely understand yet. All he knew was no one else saw this part of Adam, the sexual, vulnerable, totally open person who was asking for something he never expected to get.
Jared rolled over and nudged a recalcitrant Adam until his head was cushioned on his chest. From there, Jared could smooth his hand over the bird’s nest of Adam’s hair and feel the reassuring weight of Adam’s arm anchored around his body. He breathed deeply, relaxing while waiting patiently for Adam to say something. Adam always had something to say.
“This is probably weird,” Adam mumbled after a while. “But I wanted to tell you thank you for last night.”
Jared hid his smile by pressing a kiss to the sharp angle of Adam’s jaw.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “It was good. How are you feeling this morning?”
Adam stretched, as if wanting to test his body before he answered. “Sore,” he said. “In a good way though. And not just in my ass, weirdly. All my muscles hurt.”
“Orgasms can do that to you,” Jared teased, and Adam tickled him hard. “Hey!”
“Don’t be mean.”
“Okay. Sorry.” He kissed the top of Adam’s head and hoped it was enough of an apology. “Did I hurt you at all?”
“No,” Adam mumbled, stretching until he was comfortable, then sighing into Jared’s chest. “Well, a bit. It was okay though.”
“Okay?”
Adam sighed pointedly. “Pain-wise. The sex was great.”
“Just great?” Jared teased.
“Mind-blowing,” Adam said on a wide yawn. “Incredible. Earth-shattering.”
“It wasn’t that good.”
“Fuck you, Rawell.”
“Later,” Jared murmured.
They settled again, but this time it was Jared who wanted to ask something.
“What is this?” he asked, gesturing to their entwined bodies with their linked hands.
“What, your morning wood?”
Jared huffed. “No. This. Us.”
“It’s… whatever the fuck we want it to be,” Adam said with a familiar defiance. “It’s us. Do you want to put a label on it?”
“No. Yes.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know. If someone stops me and asks me what the fuck’s going on between me and Hemlock, I want to have an answer ready. One that fits us both.”
Adam shrugged awkwardly. “Call me your boyfriend. I don’t give a fuck.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Does that work for you?”
“I guess so.” Because he could, Jared ran his hand down his boyfriend’s back, then up again. “People are going to talk, Adam.”
“Psh. People always talk about me. I’m used to it.”
“I want to know we’re solid, you know? I don’t want to be sitting at the fucking lunch table and have some kid come over and tell me you fucked him on the weekend.”
Adam shifted so he was sprawled over Jared, chin propped on his knuckles over Jared’s chest.
“I’m not going to fuck anyone else,” he said easily. “I’ve wanted this for too long to screw it up now.”
“You haven’t waited that long.”
“I’m used to instant gratification,” Adam said haughtily. “This has been a lifetime to me.”
Lightly touching Adam’s jaw, Jared smiled. Like this, Adam looked both childish and very grown up; no longer a bratty preteen, but not yet ready to take on the responsibilities that would fall on all their shoulders in the next few years.
Also, Adam’s bare butt was stuck up in the air, creamy white, and Jared wanted to sink his teeth into it.
“If you’ve wanted it for so long, why didn’t you try to win the bet earlier?” Jared asked, caressing Adam’s face. There was no malice in his words, just curiosity.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t want you to be a bet?”
“Not really.”
Adam sighed and scrunched his nose. “We were so close, all the time, to actually throwing it all away and fucking each other like bunnies. But I knew if I did that then you’d find out about the bet and all the shit with Clare, and it would be over. I liked that you stayed here all the time, I liked making out with you and waking up with you here. You’re the first guy who’s ever slept over, you know?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh,” Adam said with another sigh. “Well, you are. Were. Whatever.”
“You could have just called off the bet with Clare,” Jared said. “Did you really want that car so fucking badly you couldn’t have done that?”
“The car isn’t anything,” Adam said, sounding frustrated now. “I don’t give a fuck about the car. I know it makes me an asshole to say this, Jared, but you don’t know things around here. I couldn’t just walk up to Clare and tell her, hey, I’ve decided the new guy is pretty awesome and I want to date him, so the bet’s off.”
“Why? What would she do?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point. No one backs down around here. You don’t show weakness. It’s like the number one rule. The moment they see a crack in your armor, it’ll be exploited until you’re a mess of sobbing, snotty Jell-O.”
“You can’t live your life like that, though,” Jared said softly. He was starting to understand, sort of. He would never be “one of them,” one of the Harbor Academy in-crowd, so this would never make complete sense to him. What Adam had told him though was starting to fill the gaps in his understanding.
Adam had risen to the top because of his I don’t give a fuck attitude and had managed to stay at the top despite coming out as gay. Jared might not have known much about New Harbor and the way the social elite worked around here, but having an incredibly beautiful, talented, intelligent mother and a father who was a military hero had set Adam up with certain expectations. He wasn’t going to be another face blending into the background; he was more than that.
“I don’t know if I can turn it off,” Adam admitted. “I’ve been like this since I was a kid, Jared. I really am an asshole. I don’t know how to be anything else.”
Jared smiled and
