Never (Never, #1)

by Jessa Hastings

A real man will allow you to be your whole entire self, with breathing room and space to change your mind and even evolve it. A mere boy might let you be yourself just an eighth of the way, if you’re lucky.

Being with him can be scary and uncomfortable, but god, the view on the way down, the rush you get when he remembers you—it’s intoxicating. And there are worse things than being forgotten accidentally. Say, someone choosing to forget you, someone choosing to hurt you because you accidentally hurt them? That’s worse. Peter isn’t the villain. He might be occasionally misguided, and he might need a little bit of refining—he is inarguably in dire need of a mother—but he isn’t the villain.

Jamison breathes out a laugh and then wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly against him, and within seconds, the shivering stops. “Th-thank you,” I whisper, my voice a bit raspy. He nods, slowly lowering his chin to rest on top of my head. “O’ course.” I’ve had his hands on my waist and his hands on my face, but not this. It’s my favourite feeling I’ve ever had in the world, his arms all the way around me.

Jamison crawls over me, takes my chin between his finger and his thumb, and angles my head so I’m back to looking at him. “Aye, and what do ye want?” My cheeks have turned into full-bloom roses, and I poke him in the ribs. Jem gives me another look. “Say it.” I swallow nervously and take a few deep breaths that come out shallow. “I’d like you, please.” A smile breaks over his face, and he drops his body on top of mine, my face still in his hand. “Then ye shall hae me.”

His face pulls. “Sure, are ye going to blether on the whole time then?” I give him an indignant look. “Perhaps.” A little smile escapes his lips, and he plays with some of my hair between his fingers. “Okay.” He nods, watching me. “Okay?” I give him a proud look. “Aye.” He nods. “Works fer me.” That makes me happy, and he rests his chin on my bare chest, looking over at me. “Will I talk ye though it?” “Oh!” I nod quickly. “Please, if you wouldn’t mind.” He licks his bottom lip and sits up, staring down at me. It’s a funny kind of stare; it would have been awfully intimidating if his mouth wasn’t so pink and his eyes hadn’t gone all tender at the edges.

The best way I can describe sex is this. You know when you’re lying in the sun at the edge of the water, and you’re quite close to where the tide laps on the sand but not close enough that the waves will get you every time? It feels like you’re lying there, eyes closed, the sun is warming your whole body from the inside out, and you’re getting hotter and hotter, and you’re feeling it through you more and more, thirstier and thirstier, and you know a wave is coming. Soon something is going to crash into you and cool you down and balance will be restored, but until the wave comes, you’re this sweaty, breathy, grippy mess of a girl.

I stare over at him, him who I thought fate had called me to, and I think of what he said about me… I let my lovesick heart bathe in what I saw before, when he called me names and nothing. I drink deep from that cup, let the poison run down my throat, fill up my stomach, and push down and away the nagging feeling I have that he is good and steady and stable like the earth I love so much. I remember that under its beautiful surface is just fiery rocks and a molten core that would burn me alive the second I let it. I remind myself that the earth can crack and shake, spilt itself wide open and swallow you whole. So I let myself fall back into the crack in the ground that I fell through when I heard him and glare back up at him through that darkness his words pushed me into.