I Slept With My Ex's Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Years

In Jace's studio Linnea learns how long he's wanted her and takes him to bed, and in the morning Tanner tells the whole campus she cheated on him for months.

"That's not an answer," I said.

Jace pulled away from the curb.

"It's the only one I've got that isn't embarrassing."

"Try the embarrassing one."

He drove two blocks before he said anything.

The heater rattled. A Packers air freshener swung from the mirror.

"You were going to walk out alone," he said. "I didn't want you to."

"So you lied in front of the whole house."

"Yeah."

"Tanner's going to kill you."

"Probably."

He didn't sound worried.

He sounded like a man who'd already done the math.

My phone buzzed in my lap.

Tanner. Then Tanner again. Then a text.

Come back inside. You made your point.

I turned the phone face down on my thigh.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Jace stopped at a red light on Johnson.

My apartment was four blocks left.

His place was somewhere east.

He kept both hands on the wheel and didn't make the turn for me.

"Your call," he said.

The light went green.

Nobody was behind us.

"Yours," I said.

He went straight.

His studio was over a detached garage behind an old house near the lake, up a set of outside stairs with a porch light full of dead moths.

I'd dropped Tanner off here maybe twenty times.

I'd never been up the stairs.

It was one room with a big window and a bed with a navy comforter pulled tight.

There was a drafting table covered in graph paper and a bike hanging on the wall.

Everything was clean.

Not girlfriend-coming-over clean. Just clean.

"You make your bed," I said.

"Every morning."

"Who are you?"

He almost smiled.

He took my jacket and hung it on a hook by the door.

Then he stood there with his hands in his pockets.

That was the first time all night he looked nervous.

It helped.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Yeah."

"Why me? You could've said any name. You could've said nobody."

He looked at the floor, then at me.

"You remember the night you met him?"

"Sophomore year. The Langdon house. Somebody spilled a whole bowl of jungle juice on my shoes."

"I spilled it."

I stared at him.

"I was walking over to talk to you," he said.

"I tripped on a speaker cord. By the time I got back with paper towels, Tanner was already kneeling on the floor drying off your shoes."

I remembered that.

I remembered thinking how sweet it was.

"He used my paper towels," Jace said.

I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the edge of his bed.

He watched me laugh.

"Two years," I said, when I could breathe.

"Two years."

"You never said a word."

"You were his."

"And now?"

He crossed the room.

He crouched down in front of me so we were eye to eye, and he didn't touch me.

"Now you're not anybody's," he said. "So I'm asking. Do you want to be here?"

I didn't answer him with words.

I grabbed the front of his flannel and pulled him in.

I kissed him hard.

He made a sound against my mouth, low and surprised, like I'd knocked the air out of him.

Then his hands came up and cupped my face.

His palms were warm and a little rough.

He kissed me back like he'd been holding still for two years and I'd finally given him somewhere to put it.

I pulled at his flannel.

It slid off his shoulders and he let it drop.

I grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and tugged it up.

He lifted his arms so I could pull it over his head.

His chest was broad.

His skin was hot under my palms.

"Linnea," he said.

His voice had gone thick.

"I've wanted to know what you're like when you stop being quiet," I said.

He looked at me for one long second.

Then he put his hands on my knees.

He spread them apart.

I leaned back on my elbows.

He knelt between my thighs and worked my jeans open.

I lifted my hips so he could pull them down.

My sneakers came off with them.

He hooked his fingers in my underwear and dragged those down too.

I was already wet.

I could feel it against the air.

The lamp was still on and I didn't care.

He looked at me.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

"You," I said. "Your mouth."

He bent his head.

The first stroke of his tongue was slow and flat and it made my whole body flinch.

He did it again.

I grabbed his hair.

He was not quiet.

He groaned against my clit and the vibration went straight up my spine.

He sucked.

I said his name out loud.

He licked me open and I let my legs fall wider.

One of his hands came up and pressed flat on my stomach, holding me down on the bed.

The other hooked under my thigh.

He dragged his tongue over my clit, slow, then slow again, then relentless.

I couldn't stop making noise.

He didn't stop sucking.

My hips came up off the comforter and he just pulled me closer and held me there.

"Jace," I said. "Don't stop. Don't stop."

He didn't.

He licked and sucked until I couldn't think and I came with both hands fisted in his hair and my thighs shaking around his head.

He kept going until I pushed at his shoulder.

Then he looked up at me.

His mouth was wet.

His eyes were dark.

I reached down and grabbed his belt.

I pulled him up.

"Now," I said.

I opened his belt.

He watched my hands.

I worked his jeans open and pushed them down his hips.

His cock was hard against my palm when I took it out.

It was thick and hot and I stroked him once, slow.

He made a sound like a man holding on by one hand.

"I want you to fuck me," I said.

I said it out loud, plain, to his face.

"I want your cock inside me."

His jaw tightened.

He pulled my cardigan off.

Then my tank top.

Then my bra.

He lifted me and laid me back on the navy comforter.

He kicked his jeans off somewhere.

He knelt over me and pushed my thighs apart with his knee.

He looked down at me.

"Tell me again," he said.

"I want you to fuck me."

He pressed the head of his cock against my clit and I gasped.

"Like this?" he said.

He dragged it down through my wetness.

"Yes."

He pushed in.

Slow.

I felt every inch.

I locked my legs around his hips and he went deep, all the way, until he was buried and I couldn't breathe.

"Look at me," he said.

I opened my eyes.

He was staring down at my face like he was memorizing it.

"Good," he said.

He pulled back and pushed in again.

Slow.

Deep.

The bed frame knocked against the wall.

He kept his eyes on my face.

I dug my nails into his back.

"Harder," I said.

He gave me harder.

The frame hit the wall in a steady rhythm.

I said his name.

He fucked me deep and slow and then I said it again, "Harder, Jace, please," and he stopped holding back.

He drove into me.

The sound of it filled the room.

I came again on his cock with my head thrown back and his name broken in my mouth.

He slowed, breathing hard.

I pushed at his chest.

He let me roll him onto his back.

I straddled him.

I reached down and guided him back inside me and sank down until I was full.

"Fuck," he said.

I rode him.

I braced my hands on his chest and moved.

He held my hips and let me set the pace.

Then he thrust up into me.

I cried out.

"Yes," I said. "Like that. Just like that."

He fucked up into me while I rode him.

I was close again and I could feel it building low and tight.

I leaned forward and he sucked one nipple into his mouth.

That was it.

I came on his cock, grinding down, and he grabbed my hips and thrust up hard.

"Linnea," he said.

His whole body went tight under me.

He said it again, my name, like a word he'd been holding in.

He came inside me.

I felt it.

I collapsed onto his chest.

For a long minute neither of us moved.

Our breathing slowed together.

He ran his hand down my back, once.

"You make your bed every morning," I said.

My voice was wrecked.

"Not tomorrow," he said.

I laughed against his skin.

The lamp was still on.

The navy comforter was on the floor.

I could hear my phone buzzing from somewhere across the room.

I didn't get up to look.

I woke up to the smell of coffee and a phone vibrating itself across a drafting table.

Jace was standing at the counter in sweatpants and nothing else, pouring two mugs.

His bed was not made.

I counted that as a personal achievement.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning."

He brought me the coffee. He'd put milk in it. Just milk, no sugar, the way I always ordered it at the house on game days.

I hadn't known anyone noticed that.

My phone went off again.

Jace picked it up off the drafting table and handed it to me without looking at the screen.

A dozen missed calls from Tanner.

Nineteen texts from Gretchen.

I opened Gretchen's first.

LIN.

LINNEA.

CALL ME RIGHT NOW.

Then a screenshot.

It was from the campus gossip account, the one with eighty thousand followers that posted bad parking and worse breakups.

The photo was me on the Langdon house porch last night, with Jace's hand on the small of my back, walking down the steps to his truck.

The caption said: Tanner Rasmus's girlfriend has been sleeping with his best friend for MONTHS. Our candidate deserves better.

Under it, shared to Tanner's own page an hour ago, with a broken heart emoji:

I'm devastated. I don't want to talk about it. Please respect our privacy.

It already had four thousand likes.

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