Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2) by Mina V. Esguerra

you.”
    “That’s not wrong, but I don’t like how you’re saying it. It’s not a list. It’s a short list, if it’s a list. And it’s done.”
    “What does it say? Get an environment job, then fuck that girl from college?”
    “Hey.” He spun her toward him, finally getting them eye to eye. “That’s not what this is.”
    “Fine, if you say so,” Lindsay said. “It doesn’t fix that we haven’t tried being together, together . We don’t know what it could be like when everything we do and have to keep doing piles up over us.”
    “I told you this isn’t about asking you to quit and move.”
    “How did you expect us to stay together?”
    His gaze dropped lower, to her neck maybe, or lower still. He started to say something, but then stopped. Maybe she needed to prompt him.
    “What’s your question?” she said. “Do you need to ask me anything, after what you heard at the bar earlier?”
    This he didn’t need to pause for. “Was it what you thought it would be?”
    “What exactly?”
    “This.” His hand drifted down, then up, into her shirt, resting against her warm skin. “Everything. You felt something for me but you were with other people. How does it feel now that you’re with me? You seem to be enjoying it.”
    She nodded. “Well yeah, but that’s not your question, is it? How could I know I love you but stand to be with other people?”
    His eyes shifted back to hers, expectant.
    “I couldn’t stand to be with other people. It’s why I...didn’t. Last week, on your first day in New York, Victor actually sort of broke up with me, asked to end whatever we had going on. We hadn’t intended it to go on that long anyway. He started to like someone else, and he knew. He knew that for me, he was a substitute for someone else.”
    “He didn’t want to be?”
    “Maybe no one does, really. It’s not his fault.”
    The past week was a blur or work and adjusting to old and new domesticity, old and new feelings about Jake. She didn’t get to really think about it, how it felt, being with the person she always wished she were with, when she was with other people.
    But then she realized that it didn’t occur to her to think about it because the question never came up. Instead it was an answer, felt like life ironing out a wrinkle, such that it disappeared.
    “It’s different, with you,” she said. “Vastly.”
     
    ***
     
    She forgot when exactly the conversation about this came up, but it had been short, and also casual.
    Would they continue using birth control, knowing they were “all clear.” Yes, they agreed. But maybe sometimes they’d skip the condom. He’d withdraw. She’d tell him if she wasn’t taking her pill. There would be rules, warnings, preparations.
    That night they talked for a little bit longer, because in her mind certain things never got resolved, but then she drifted off to sleep. She woke up in the middle of the night, and felt him stir.
    “Now,” she said. “I want you now.”
    “What?” Obviously he was awake and hard, but not all there yet. “We need...what time is it?”
    She was on her side, still facing him, and with one hand pulled her panties down her legs. She pressed forward, opening her legs to him. And then he realized what she meant, and this was now, and in a second he was out of his boxers, covering her with his body. She felt him hot and hard against her and couldn’t wait, began to guide him inside.
    “Fuck. Slap me.”
    “No. What?”
    “I want to be fully awake for this.”
    “You’re going to be.” She was wet, already, and for some reason she thought this was going to be easy, and she hungrily circled her hips and ground against him, taking him all the way in, deep, the friction inside and outside nothing less than a shock. It was the first time she’d had anyone bare.
    “Oh my god,” she said.
    She tensed up so forcefully that he raised himself up on his elbows and stopped moving. “Lindsay?”
    “Don’t move,” she