“Exactly.” He slipped his phone from his pocket and scrolled until Coldplay’s “Sparks” began to play.
I smiled as he placed his phone down on my dresser, then walked to my door and locked it.
He stopped in front of me and rested his hands on my hips. “Dance with me.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously,” he said.
I twined my arms around his neck, letting him pull me closer and sway us in time to the music in the middle of my childhood bedroom. My high school self would have swooned at the whole scene. Hell, my adult self was swooning. “Why’d you pick this song?”
“Because you wanted it for your prom theme and were bummed when no one else did.”
“You remember that?”
“G, I remember everything.”
All sorts of emotions rushed through me as I released a shaky breath. I’d been so freaking blind. “Did you really just come by to dance with me?” I asked him.
“What do you think?” he asked, his eyes gazing into mine and turning my brain to mush. He’d left the Canadian snowboarders for me, and I was so damn happy that he had.
“I don’t know.”
“Have you been sleeping okay?”
“Not as good as I slept when you were with me,” I admitted, suddenly realizing how much I loved being in his space until I hadn’t been in it.
He smirked, and he had no idea how sexy he was.
“How was the party?” I asked, needing to change the subject before I foolishly threw myself at him.
“Were you jealous thinking about me in a house full of female snowboarders?”
“Extremely.”
“Now you know how I feel all the time,” he whispered.
A fissure cracked through my heart. I didn’t even have a comeback because he wasn’t wrong. And I was the only one who could fix it. He was the one. The one who showed up. The one who knew what I needed without me needing to tell him.
We danced until the song ended. My room grew quiet, but I didn’t want him to let me go. “Do you have to get back?” I asked, every fiber of my being begging him to stay.
“Depends. Do you want me to leave?”
I swallowed hard, unsure if I even had the right to ask him to stay.
“I could be heading back to go hook up with some girl,” he taunted.
I pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “Do you plan to hook up with some random after coming over here to be sure I could sleep?”
“That’s a stupid question,” he said, as if he hadn’t been the one to bring it up.
“Stay with me, Thayer,” I said, the words coming out in a whisper, as if I wasn’t sure he would.
“Thank god,” he said.
Making it perfectly clear how much I wanted him to stay, I pulled his sweatshirt up and over his head. He reached down and unsnapped the button on his cargo pants. They fell to the floor, leaving him standing in only his boxers.
I released a contented sigh as he shed his shoes and pants and moved to my bed. He held up the side of my comforter, and I realized he was waiting for me to get in. I climbed in first, then he slipped in, his arms wrapping around me and pulling me into his chest. My cheek rested against his bare skin, and all I could hear was the steady thump of his heartbeat as I breathed him in.