Sweat slicked his chest, highlighting every corded muscle as Jacob single-handedly manhandled the heavy oak patio tables in the backyard. The afternoon sun was brutal, and he had ditched his shirt an hour ago, putting the sculpted, lethal physique of a former heavyweight champion on full display.
Even now, years after a devastating shoulder injury forced him out of the ring, he still stuck to a punishing fitness routine. Every time he hoisted a table, the thick cords of muscle in his back and arms bunched and strained under his tanned skin, drawing my eyes right to the faded, jagged surgical scar slicing across his right shoulder.
Now, I was the one breaking a sweat just watching him.
“You're almost done, Ruby?” my mom called from downstairs, her voice thick with sleep.
“Almost!” I yelled back, yanking the curtains shut with a sharp twinge of guilt. Half-heartedly, I shoved a haphazard pile of clothes into my closet before gravitating right back to the window, my heart hammering against my ribs as I went back to creeping on him.
This weird, persistent flutter in my chest was new. I’d first noticed it about six months ago, and ever since, I kept catching myself obsessing over things I’d never paid attention to before. The rough edge of his morning voice, the deep rumble of his laugh, the clean, purely masculine scent of him after a workout—and now this, watching beads of sweat trace the deep valley of his toned back.
My biological dad had walked out on my mom when she was seven months pregnant with me. Jacob showed up when I was six, and he’d just… stayed. He married my mom and stepped into the role of a father without ever demanding a medal for it. When he wasn't at the local gym running drills and coaching the next generation of fighters, he was right here with us. He didn’t do guys' nights out; he didn't pull disappearing acts on the weekends. He poured every spare second, every ounce of his fierce, undivided attention, into Mom and me.
When Kyle Morrison dumped me in the eighth grade, Jacob let me sob into his shirt for hours. When mean girls spread vicious rumors, his calm, steady voice had grounded me. "Their behavior says everything about them, Ruby, and nothing about you." He was the one who never left.
So why was I standing here, turning eighteen tomorrow, feeling my pulse throbbing in my throat at the sight of his bare chest?
As if sensing the weight of my stare, Jacob paused. He turned toward the house, his eyes locking onto mine through the glass. A slow, familiar smile curled on his lips—the same charming, easy smile he’d given me since I was a kid.
He gave a small wave.
I swallowed hard, offered an awkward wave back, and quickly dropped the blinds, my heart going like a jackhammer.
"Ruby!" Mom's frantic voice echoed from the hallway, followed by the rapid-fire click-clack of her heels. She appeared in the bedroom doorway, keys in one hand and her phone pressed to her ear.
"I can't believe the bakery actually butchered your name on the cake. 'Riby'? Seriously?" She groaned, lowering the phone. "I have to drive down there and raise hell to make them fix it."
"Mom, it's fine, we can just scrape the 'i' off—"
"Absolutely not. You only turn eighteen once, and everything has to be flawless." She rushed over, planting a quick kiss on my forehead. "I'll be back in an hour. Help your stepdad finish setting up the string lights in the yard, okay?"
Before I could even get a word in edgewise, the front door slammed shut. The house suddenly felt entirely too quiet.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the sliding glass door and stepped out into the humid, late-afternoon air. Jacob was standing near the edge of the patio, untangling a massive spool of Edison bulbs.
"Mom's off to go nuclear on the bakery," I announced, aiming for a breezy tone.
Jacob chuckled, a deep, resonant rumble. "I give the baker ten minutes before he waves the white flag." He glanced at me, his gaze lingering just a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
"I can help." I walked over, stubbornly gluing my eyes to the tangle of wires to keep from drifting back down to his bare torso.
"Alright. Grab that end and help me string it over the trellis."
For the first few minutes, we worked in a comfortable silence. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, casting a warm, golden-hour glow over the yard.
"Are you excited?" Jacob asked, passing me a loop of wire. "Big day tomorrow."
"I guess," I muttered, reaching up to hook the wire onto the wooden beam. "Eighteen just feels… heavy."
"Heavy how?"
"Like I’m supposed to suddenly have all my shit figured out."
Jacob laughed softly. "Ruby, trust me, no one has it figured out at eighteen."
"Easy for you to say. You're ancient."
"Ouch." He smirked. "Fair enough. Here, you're not tall enough for that hook. Let me."
I was already reaching for a high nail on the trellis, teetering precariously on my tiptoes on a small wooden step stool. But instead of taking the wire from my hands, Jacob stepped up right behind me.
Before I could even wrap my head around how close he was, his chest brushed against my back. He was radiating heat. My breath hitched instantly.
"Keep your hand steady," he murmured, his gravelly voice dropping an octave as it brushed against my ear.
He reached over my shoulders, his large, calloused hands covering mine to guide the wire onto the nail. The contact was electric. His skin was scorching, his muscles bunching tight against my back as he stretched upward. I was effectively trapped between the wooden trellis and the solid, unyielding wall of his chest, swallowed up entirely by the scent of cedar and his clean sweat.
"I... I got it," I stammered, my voice barely a whisper.
"Just a little higher," he instructed softly.
As he shifted, the slide of my shoulder blade against his chest sent a spark straight to my core. The wire clicked onto the nail, but he didn't step back. Instead, his breath ghosted over the frantic pulse at the nape of my neck.
"Hold it steady for a second," he murmured, the deep timber of his voice vibrating right down my spine. "Let me adjust the bulb angle before we test the strand. The connection looks a little loose."
To do that, he had to reach right past my face. His heavy hands remained trapped over mine, his long fingers completely swallowing up my smaller ones as he slowly twisted the glass socket. He was so close that his bare, sweat-slicked chest branded my back with its heat. With every shallow breath he took, the hard, sculpted ridges of his abs pressed flush against me.
I could feel the erratic, heavy thud of his heartbeat hammering directly beneath my shoulder blade—or maybe it was my own, beating so violently I thought my ribs might splinter.
A sharp shiver wracked through me, sending a heavy, liquid warmth pooling in my lower belly. The thick, suffocating tension snapped when the string of Edison bulbs suddenly flared to life above us. Startled by the abrupt burst of warm, golden light, I instinctively turned my head just a fraction.
My lips brushed dead-center against the hot, pulse-beating skin of his neck.
I froze. My breath caught in my throat as I slowly tilted my head up. The vintage amber glow of the bulbs washed over him, throwing the sharp, rugged lines of his jaw into stark relief. He looked devastatingly handsome in the atmospheric light.
The mortifying reality of what I'd just done hit me like a ton of bricks. I gasped and jerked back wildly.
But in my blind panic, I'd totally forgotten I was still teetering on the very edge of the step stool.
My heel slipped off the wood, catching nothing but empty air. A sharp, terrified shriek tore from my throat as gravity snatched me, my arms flailing as I tumbled backward into the void.
Jacob didn't even hesitate. A thick arm banded around my waist like a vise, snatching me out of midair and hauling me flush against his chest to shield me.
The momentum, however, was way too forceful to stop. We went down together in a tangled heap.
He hit the wooden patio deck with a heavy, breathless grunt, having twisted his body at the very last second to eat the brutal impact so I wouldn't have to. I landed flush against him—but it was the jarring slide of our bodies coming to a dead stop that made the blood roar in my ears.
My knees had instinctively parted to brace my fall, leaving me entirely straddling his narrow hips. In his desperate bid to stabilize me, his large, calloused hands had clamped high up on my bare thighs, his thumbs pressing inward, dangerously close to territory that was strictly off-limits. Every soft curve of my body was now crushed intimately against the unyielding, rock-hard muscle of his torso.
The world seemed to completely stop spinning. In the dim glow of the bulbs, his chest heaved violently beneath mine, his breathing just as ragged as my own. I stared down into his darkened, fully dilated eyes, my parted lips hovering just a millimeter above his.
Then, in the thick, suffocating silence of the night air, I felt it—the unmistakable, rigid heat straining heavily beneath his denim jeans, pressing right into the sensitive, aching juncture of my thighs.