Page 107 of End Game

Barrett sighs in his sleep and pulls me into his chest. His belly is pressed against my back, and I’m pretty damn sure I can feel his dick, too, pressed up against my ass. It should be weird. It should make me uncomfortable. Instead, I feel… oddly warm and cozy. Like I want to do this again every night. Do I like him in that way? Am I still attracted to him?

It would be so easy to fall into a relationship with Barrett. We’re already best friends, so adding sex to our friendship wouldn’t be that huge a change compared to what we already are. We spend all of our free time together, often to the detriment of our studies. We go to dinner, just the two of us or with a group of our friends. We go out to bars and parties, and we have fun when there’s no alcohol involved. We just click.

He’s the person that makes my world make sense. He’s the person I want to spend all my time with. And, yeah, he’s gorgeous. That’s not exactly a secret. But that high school crush is long gone.

I think.

Do I want to date him? I honestly don’t know. I don’t know that now is the right time for us. So much is in flux. Graduation, grad school, maybe living together, my dad…

I can’t lose Barrett, not at a time like this. I need him as a friend more than I want a relationship, even if that relationship is with him. I don’t know that I would be able to survive without him. If something were to happen to us, if we stopped being friends… I don’t think I could take it.

He’s the most important person in my life. He always has been, even when we were separated by the entire country between us. He makes my world make sense. A world without Barrett in it is unfathomable.

I’m pretty sure he’s angling for more. The sex was pretty damn fantastic. He holds my hand all the time, and he’s started calling me “baby.” I can’t deny it feels nice. I enjoy it. If I let myself indulge in the fantasy, it almost feels real. But when I hinted at a friends with benefits situation, he was not enthusiastic about the possibility of more.

So it will be up to me to draw a line in the sand, to enforce the boundaries of our friendship. I was the one who muddied the waters; it’s up to me to put things right again.

Barrett wakes up maybe fifteen minutes after I do. He sighs and tightens his grip on me before it suddenly slackens—like he’s suddenly realized exactly who he’s been clutching in his sleep.

“Dee?” His voice is thick and gravelly.

“Yeah?”

He lets out a sigh of… relief? I’m not sure.

“Good morning.”

I roll over, putting some distance between us, until I’m nearly at the far edge of the bed and facing him. “Good morning.”

“How’d you sleep?” His eyes are still mostly closed.

“Good.” Great. Fantastic. “You?”

He sighs. “Good. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for. I asked you to let me stay.”

“Yeah. I guess you did.” He rolls onto his back. “Ugh. I don’t want to get up.”

“I’m not kicking you out. It’s your bed.”

He’s quiet for a moment.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “For last night.”

Barrett sits up. He scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah. We should talk about it, shouldn’t we?”

“It was a blip. It was one night,” I rationalize. I sit up and cross my legs. We’re both on the far edges of the bed, most of the mattress between us. It’s like neither of us is ready to be physically close again, despite how pressed up against each other we were while we were asleep.

“Agreed,” he says carefully.

“It won’t happen again.”

“I have feelings for someone,” he blurts.

I swallow. “You do?”

My pulse hammers at a thousand beats per minute. He has feelings for someone else, and he let me suck him off? It was just sex, I remind myself. He has feelings for someone else and—why is he not pursuing her? I hate her. I want him to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.