I sit on the edge of the bed, my mind racing with so many thoughts I can’t focus on one. At some point, I hear the shower run, and I rummage through the box of my clothes for something to wear. There’s nothing I can sleep in, so I grab a random shirt from one of his boxes and slip it over me, then I sit back down, and I wait. I don’t know exactly what I’m waiting for. I recall him asking if I wanted to stay here but I haven’t decided, so I spend the next few minutes trying to make up my mind. Before I know it, he’s walking back into the room in nothing but his underwear, a towel in his hand, roughly drying his hair. He freezes when he sees me, and panic sets in. Is he so out of it that he doesn’t remember asking me to stay? I start to get up at the same time he says, “I’ll just grab a pillow.” But the only part of him that moves are his eyes—eyes trailing from my bare legs, pausing at my waist, and then at my breasts before settling on my face. His eyes are no longer sad, no longer tired, and I struggle to breathe through the tension filling the air.

I reach for my phone on his nightstand and type: I should go. But without bothering to read what I’ve said, he takes the phone from me and throws it on the bed. Now he’s close. Too close. His hand cups my jaw and tilts my head up, shifting my gaze from his abs to his eyes. “Please stay,” he whispers. “I can’t be alone.”

15

—Becca—

I wake up, my body covered in sweat and an unfamiliar weight on my chest. Next to me, Josh is lying on his stomach, snoring lightly with his arm over me. He asked me to stay last night, for him, and I couldn’t say no. So we lay in bed facing each other, the inches of space between may as well have been an entire country.

Within minutes he was asleep, and this time, I stayed up and watched him. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the tremble of his lips matching his steady breaths. Unruly strays of hair had fallen over his brow—strays I wanted to touch, wanted to slip between my fingers. His chest was toned, his shoulders wide. I ended up shoving my hands under the pillow so I could fight the ache, the urge, to feel him.

As slowly as possible, I reach for my phone on the nightstand and check the time. It’s 5:30 and still pitch black outside. With gentle hands, I remove his arm from my chest and free myself from beneath him. I get up, use the bathroom, then brush my teeth with my finger. When I return, Josh is sitting up, blankets bunched around him. He smiles sleepily. “What time is it?”

I get back into bed and show him my phone.

After a moan, he rubs his face and says, “Tommy will be up in an hour.” Then he gets up and repeats my process: bathroom, brushes teeth, crawls back in bed.

I type on my phone and show it to him. Did you sleep okay?

With a nod, he takes the phone from me and places it under his pillow. Then he lies on his side, one hand under his head, the other resting on my stomach, releasing an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies. “Does it hurt?” he asks, his voice low. “When you whisper?”

I nod and look away from him, focusing instead on the ceiling—pretending to be fascinated by cracked white paint, and not the forbidden memories and reminders of moments spent lying on my back, my vision blurred from the pleasure he provided. We whispered endless promises in this room, revelations of love and admissions of pain. “Like a boo-boo?” he asks, running a single finger over my throat. “You know what fixes boo-boos?” From the corner of my eye, I see him lean up on his elbow, his eyes charged with adoration. I try to hide my smile, honestly I do, but it’s impossible not to react to the way he’s looking at me, the way he’s making me feel. I freeze when he dips his head, his movements slow, giving me time to push him away. But I don’t. I can’t. My heart races while his hand moves back to my waist, his fingertips searing my skin. His lips—soft and sweet—make contact with my neck and he smiles against my throat. “Kisses make all boo-boos better.”

Oh jeez. Josh Warden, world—the boy I fell insanely in love with.

Loud banging on his door forces us apart and as far away from each other as possible, as if we’d been busted doing something we shouldn’t be doing. Maybe we were.

The banging sounds again, and Tommy cries from his bedroom. “Daddy!”

“Who the hell…?” Josh murmurs, standing at the side of his bed pulling on a pair of sweats.

“Daddy!”

“I’m coming, bud.” He leaves the room and goes into Tommy’s, his words soft and comforting. “It’s okay. Someone’s just at the door.”

I meet Josh in the hallway, carrying a petrified Tommy. The banging is louder now, the entire house shaking with the force of it. Josh hands me Tommy, who cries harder. Then he marches to the door, protectively moving us behind him before opening it. I run my hand through Tommy’s hair, kissing his tears, doing everything I can to calm him down. Then a familiar voice speaks, his tone turning my insides to stone. “Is my daughter here?”

I reveal myself from behind Josh, my gaze lowered as I place Tommy on the floor.

“I thought you weren’t getting in until tomorrow,” Josh says.

Dad doesn’t reply. He simply steps to the side waiting for me to join him. We make it to the second to last step before Tommy yells, “You a butt sniffer, mister!”

—Joshua—

The call connects on the third ring. “Shitstain,” Chloe says in greeting. In the background, Hunter shouts, “Why the fire truck are you always calling my wife?”

“Because you always give horrible relationship advice,” Chloe tells him.

“Have you boned her yet?” Hunter yells.

In my mind, Chloe’s eyes roll so high she sees stars. “You’re a Neanderthal,” she says to him. To me, she says, “How’s it going?”

“I’m failing.”

“I told you not to kiss her!”

I laugh under my breath and set Tommy up with his breakfast. “I didn’t kiss her.”

“Okay? So…”

“But I told her I wanted to.”

Silence passes a beat. “That’s… kind of hot, to be honest.”

“Yeah?”

“What else did you say?”

“I told her I spent the entire night watching her sleep, getting lost in the memories of her.”

“Swoon. And then what?”

“Then I got scared and pretended like I hadn’t said a thing.”

Chloe laughs. “And how did she react?”

“I don’t know. She sort of looked scared.”

“Well…” She huffs out a breath. “Sometimes, it’s good to be scared, you know? It means she’s feeling something. And if you didn’t make her cry, that something is probably a good thing.”

“Maybe. At least now I’ve kicked, and it’s her turn to push.”

She laughs knowingly. “I hate to break it to you, Warden, but you’re not the one who kicked. She did when she sent you that letter. Right now, you’re doing the pushing. Just do me a favor, okay?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t push too hard.”

Chloe hangs up before I get a chance to respond, so I dump my phone on the counter and look over at Tommy. “You didn’t hear a word I just said. Got it?”