“I’m sure you can. Where are you parked?” Bold as you please, as if she’d never spoken.

“Around the corner. On Ash.”

“Why you parking back there?” He held his arm out and she took it automatically. Once she’d done it, it would have been silly to let go. “It’s dark back there.”

“It was daylight when I parked. This is Petal. Main was packed.”

“You have a cell phone. Next time, text me and I’ll come get you.”

It was dark but quiet, and the moon overhead was beginning to rise. “I’ll do no such thing. And there won’t be any next time, Nathan.”

He took her keys and unlocked the door for her. “Just keep telling yourself that if it gets you through the day. But we both know that’s a bald-faced lie.” He stepped closer and her back hit the car.

She was looking for some stern words when he leaned that last distance between them and brushed his lips across hers.

All her stern internal reminders swept away when he pressed his body against hers and she found her fingers in his shirt, holding him to her. His hands slid up her sides, coming to rest at her back, just above her ass.

Her mouth opened on a sigh, and he swallowed the sound, his tongue slipping between her lips like a thief and then he owned her as if they’d never been apart.

She gave in and ran her fingers through his hair as he slid his tongue along hers. He tasted of tea and pie and man. She was lost in the sweet sensation of that kiss until he sucked on her tongue and her ni**les hardened to the point of pain, throbbing in time with her clit.

Up the block, someone shut a door, and it was enough to reclaim her senses and put her hand on his chest to push him back a bit.

He broke the kiss and stared at her lips for long moments, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe.

“I want more of that mouth,” he murmured, bending to kiss the side of her jaw.

“I have to go home. I promised Chris I’d watch a movie with him.” Her voice was rusty. She licked her lips and he groaned again, putting some distance between them.

“Go on then. I’ll see you soon, Lily. We’re going to be friends once more, if I can’t have friends and then some.”

He’d have to be satisfied with that, she told herself as she drove home, because that’s all she had to give.

Chapter Six

Lily heard whispered talking and sat up in bed, listening hard.

Quickly, under cover of darkness she got some shoes on and pulled a robe over her pajamas.

It was Chris, on his phone.

She crept closer, not wanting to intrude, but damn it all, the boy had lied to her so often she wanted to be sure it wasn’t something she should worry about. And it was after midnight anyway.

“I can’t.” He paused. “No. Dude, she will totally hunt me down. No, not my mom. She’s so doped up half the time she wouldn’t even notice. Lily, my sister. Yes, yes the one who jumped the fence.”

Lily cringed at his words about their mother. Pamela had her good days, but she struggled through some bad ones too. It wasn’t right that Chris saw it enough to know what was happening.

“Are you f**king kidding me? No way. She’d hunt me down!”

One of her brows rose of its own accord as she listened to Chris arguing and wondered what it was over. Also, the F word? No. She wasn’t going to get worked up over a shit or damn here and there, but nuh uh no way.

“I gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow. No, I have to go. The school calls Lily and she’ll find me.”

What he didn’t know was that she’d hooked him into her family phone network and could locate him that way. A friend in Macon kept track of her teenage daughter that way. If he cut school again she’d totally not only track him down, but drag him back to school by the scruff of his neck and not feel a damn bit bad.

He stood there under the moon until she made some noise and got his attention. “Why don’t you come up?” She pointed to her door, and he was about to argue but didn’t. “You want some hot chocolate? I got the kind with mini marshmallows.”

He nodded as he sat.

She fiddled around with the stove and got the milk heating before she turned her attention to him again. “Something you want to talk to me about?”

“What? Me? No.”

“Like say, why you’re outside at twelve thirty on a school night?”

“I needed some air. I didn’t leave the yard.”

“You’re not in trouble.” She brought out two mugs and got the cocoa ready for the hot milk. “I just thought you might want to share. I’m not entirely bad, you know. I might be able to help with whatever’s got you so wound up you need air so long after your bedtime.”

“I’m fine.”

She poured the milk and stirred, hoping she wasn’t messing the whole thing up.

Once she’d settled in at the table with him, she took a sip and forged ahead. “Mom’s sometimes a little influenced by her medication.”

He rolled his eyes. “She’s stoned. I’m not an idiot. I know what it looks like.”

Lily couldn’t argue. “And that makes you feel, what?”

“What are you a shrink now?”

“Nope. Just a girl whose mom is hurting like hell because her husband left her. A girl who sees her mother take too many pills just to make it through the day.”

He cut his gaze to her as he sipped the hot chocolate. “I suppose you’re going to say it’s okay for her to do it because she’s an adult.”