Page 58 of The Match Faker
I yelp in surprise, but like it’s nothing to hear his mother outside his door while his fingers are inside me, Nick slides a rough palm over my mouth, the second time today.
He kisses my cheek once, the scratch of his beard almost pulling another moan from me. “We’ll be down in a minute, Ma.”
“See you soon, honey,” she calls through the door.
My entire body beats with my heart. “Holy,” I whisper.
“Perfect,” he says with the confidence of knowing he was right. He continues to stroke me lazily until I squeeze his wrist in a silent request. With a smirk he stops. Then he drops three kisses along the curve of my shoulder before he looks at me in the mirror. We’re flushed and wild eyed. I’ll have to redo my ponytail.
“Good?” he asks.
“I…what?”
Nick pulls his hand out from beneath my bathing suit. My legs tremble, fawn-like. He doesn’t take his hands off me until I lean against the counter to hold myself up. Only then does he wash his hands, like he’s just stepped behind the bar to start a shift.
“Relaxed?” he asks, inspecting his fingernails.
Words mean things. I can’t think of what, but they do. The bulge in the front of his swim shorts looks uncomfortable. The sight of it is all it takes for the logistics of this moment to fully hit me, how usually these kinds of favors are reciprocal.
“Do you need?” I press my hand to my throat, unsure what I’m even asking. I’m doing my best not to dissolve into a puddle on the heated tile floor.
Nick grins down at his cock as he dries his hands and readjusts. “We’re good. That’s not what this was about.”
My heart stumbles at his earnest expression. “What was it about?”
“You,” he says simply, one brow arched. “How do you feel?”
The tips of my fingers buzz. Not even the threat of his mother walking in on us could ruin what he just did to me. “Relaxed,” I say when I know I won’t sound so breathless.
With a kiss on the cheek, he rests his hand on my hip, another casual gesture like he’s done it every day for years. “You look beautiful when you come, Jasmine.”
My breath stalls, my lungs seizing.
That teasing expression he’s so fond of has reappeared. “I’ll meet you downstairs. In five minutes, Jazz,” he warns, striding out of the bathroom.
“I haven’t forgiven you yet,” I say, shuffling to the threshold. It feels important to make that distinction.
He nods, a quick jerk of his chin, and leaves.
This changes nothing. Nick’s not my match.
15
NICK
For the rest of the day, I’m electrified. Jasmine joined me exactly five minutes later at the foot of the stairs, droplets of water still on her shoulders from the shower she must have taken. I’d spent those five minutes going through every Blue Jays loss in recent memory. Nothing kills a boner better than home team heartbreak.
We walked to the pool with a foot of space between us, but the hair on my arms stood on end the entire way. Each strand a lightning rod in the electrical storm that is Jasmine Palmer. At the pool, she kept her beach cover-up on the whole time, sitting on the edge and dangling her feet in the water. In the end, that was probably for the best. There’s no way I would have kept it together if she’d taken it off. Alex and Robert would never let me near their children again.
After swimming, Jasmine volunteered to help Mom and my sisters with some last-minute errands in town. She didn’t say it, but the way she studied me before she left made it clear she wants me to talk to my dad now.
I take my time climbing the stairs to get my business proposal, telling myself the whole way up that it’s so the creakysteps won’t wake any of the babies who are down for their naps. I loiter in my bedroom, tidying up my things so they’re almost as neat as Jasmine’s. I don’t bother with the bathroom, though. I’m convinced it will smell like her, and if it smells like her, I may just lock myself inside until she returns.
Dad is in the living room watching a hockey game with Alex and Charlie when I return downstairs. Alex lies across one side of the L-shaped sectional, a beer on the coffee table in front of him, his eyes closed and jaw slack. Charlie takes up the other side of the L, a bowl of chips balanced on his stomach, also fast asleep.
Dad has his feet up in the recliner, no food, no drink, just a man and his big screen. Eventually he notices me skulking behind them.
“Come have a seat,” he says. Except there’s nowhere to sit, so I perch on the arm of the couch. I have to shove Alex’s feet off of it, but he doesn’t even flinch. We sit in silence through most of the third period, punctuated only by random snorts and snores from my brothers and grunts from Dad when the Leafs make a bad play, which is pretty often.