Текст книги "Sweet"

Автор книги: Erin McCarthy

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

 Sweet
True Believers 2
by
Erin McCarthy

Chapter One

I couldn’t go home for the summer. I just couldn’t.

Going home would mean endless worried looks from my mother, and reminders about following curfew and the dangers of alcohol and premarital sex. My father would force me to volunteer—which was such an oxymoron—to teach Sunday school at his church and threaten to throw out all of my revealing clothes. Like shorts. Because wearing shorts in summer was so scandalous.

I couldn’t deal with it, a whole summer ruined with their good intentions and their high moral standards that only a saint could live up to. And I’m no saint.

So I lied and told them I was spending the summer in Appalachia building homes for the poor with a Christian mission group when I was actually staying in Cincinnati and working at a steakhouse. I know. That was kind of a shitty lie.

But it was the only one that would have worked, so I had gone with it and there was no turning back now. Maintaining my freedom was worth a little guilt that I wasn’t actually helping people in need, though I suppose I could argue I was at least fueling the economy by serving beef. So the only thing still unresolved was where I was going to stay for a week in the gap between when I had to leave my dorm and when I could take over a sublet on an apartment June first.

I had a plan. Turning the doorknob, I stepped inside and assessed the situation. My roommate Kylie, snuggled with her boyfriend, Nathan, who lived in the apartment. Tyler and my other roommate, Rory, also cuddling. The sap-factor in the living room was huge, with Kylie on Nathan’s lap, their fingers entwined, while Tyler did that weird thing he was constantly doing where he played with Rory’s hair and made me want to smack his hand away on her behalf. She always seemed okay with it though, go figure.

“Hey, Jessica!” Kylie said brightly. “Cute top.”

“Thanks.” I had put on the tight red tank absently, then had wondered if more cleavage would be better for what I had in mind, then had been disgusted with myself for even thinking such a thought. So then I had decided no cleavage was necessary to my self-respect and pulled a Union Jack shirt on over the tank. Appearance was such a process. “What are you guys up to?”

“I’m watching Inglourious Basterds,” came a voice from the kitchen. “Everyone else is engaged in foreplay.”

Ugh. Trying not to sigh, I turned and saw Riley Mann, Tyler’s older brother, popping the top of a beer can. He was not who I wanted to see.

“Jealous?” I asked him lightly, forcing a sardonic smile. Everything about Riley annoyed me, from his sarcasm to his inability to ever be serious, to the fact that he was hot as hell and so clearly knew it. I didn’t see him very often since he worked full-time in construction, which was perfectly fine with me. It was easier to breathe without his testosterone choking the room.

He shook his head. “No. Sex is not worth the headache of a relationship. And my hand doesn’t expect me to text it twenty times the next day.”

There was mental imagery I did not need, though I couldn’t argue with his opinion that relationships were a crapload of work. I made a face. “You’re always so charming. Is Bill here?”

“He’s studying in his room,” Nathan told me. “He has a physics final tomorrow. God, I’m so glad I’m done with my exams.”

I was done, too, which was why housing was becoming something of an issue. I only had two days until I had to vacate the dorms. “Okay, thanks.” I started down the hall to Bill’s room.

“You’re going in there?” Nathan called after me. “I’m warning you, he’s in a mood.”

“I’m sure it’s fine. I just want to say hi.” Bill had been crushing on me for six months, ever since his girlfriend from high school had dumped him for a basketball player at Ohio State. We had hooked up a few times, but I had been totally clear about not wanting to date. I was not in the market for a relationship at all.

Without knocking I went into Bill’s room. He was at his desk, and with the exception of the books and papers spread out in front of him, his room was neat as usual, bed made, no sign of finals stress. Until you got to his hair. Then the tension was evident in the floppy curls sticking out in various directions, looking like he hadn’t made nice with a hairbrush in days. His glasses were sliding down his nose when he looked up, and he was a very cute, modern interpretation of the absentminded genius.

“Hey,” he said, looking vacantly at me.

“Hey. How’s studying going?” I propped a hip on the corner of his desk and smiled.

“Not bad, but I still have a lot to go through. Did you need something, or did you just want to hang out? Because I can’t until tomorrow.”

“I wanted to know if I can stay here with you, in your room, for a few days.” Okay, so it was more like eight days, but who was counting?

“What?” He frowned. “What do you mean?” He tapped his pen on his lips and blinked up at me.

“I need a place to crash until I can get in the apartment I sublet. There’s no way I’m sleeping on that couch in the living room. It’s like chain mail. But I can sleep in your bed with you, right?” I smiled and used the tip of my finger to push his glasses up. “I promise I won’t kick you in my sleep like I did last time.”

For a second he didn’t say anything. Then he shook his head. “No.”

That was definitely not the answer I was expecting. “What? Why not? Okay, so I know I can’t promise to have control over my limbs when I’m sleeping, but you can always kick me back. I don’t mind.” He couldn’t be seriously telling me no. My heart rate started to increase, anxiety creeping up over the back of my neck.

“I don’t care if you kick me, it’s not that.” Bill sighed. “Look, Jess, we both know it’s no secret I like you, and you’ve been totally straight up with me about not returning the sentiment, and I appreciate that. Maybe it’s insane of me to say no, because sometimes I do manage to talk you into hooking up when you take pity on me, but I can’t share a bed with you every night for a week and not feel like shit about it. I just can’t.”

My jaw dropped, and I felt a hot flood of shame in my mouth, which made me angry. I hadn’t done anything to feel bad about, despite what my dad’s opinion about it would have been. “You make it sound so sketch. We’re friends. We’ve hooked up when we both felt like it, not because I was desperate and you were my only option or because I felt sorry for you. I’m not that nice of a person that I’ll blow you out of pity. I just like you as a friend and I think you’re cute. We have fun. Apparently, I was totally wrong in thinking you felt the same way.”

“I do feel the same way,” he insisted. “The problem is, I feel more than that, and I’m just not into torturing myself. I want you to be my ‘girlfriend.’” He made air quotes. “Pathetic, I know.”

The thought of being anyone’s girlfriend made me want to throw up in my mouth a little. There was no way I wanted to give a guy that much control over my emotions and my time. I had finally gotten away from that for the first time in my life.

“I’m sorry. It’s not pathetic, it’s just . . .”

“It’s you, not me.” He rolled his eyes. “I know. You can save the let-him-down-gently speech for another dude,. I get it.”

I had to admit, that was kind of a relief. “This is awkward,” I told him.

“Probably more for me than for you,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Look, you can stay on the couch in here.”

“Except now it will be weird.” It already was.

“No, it won’t. I won’t be needy or anything. I just need to have some self-preservation.”

“Okay, I understand.” I did. But it made it different. I couldn’t casually touch him anymore. I couldn’t flirt without feeling like I was leading him on, and I would have to be careful around him. I fought the urge to sigh. Why did everything have to be so complicated between guys and girls? Curse hormones. “Good luck on your final.”

“Thanks.” He gave me a smile, then he returned his attention to his book.

I left, feeling deflated and oddly sad knowing Bill and I couldn’t quite be friends in the same way we had been. But then again, maybe we’d never really been just friends, because I had always known he liked me. And why did that suddenly make me feel so guilty?

“That was fast,” Riley said the second I came into the living room, his feet up on the coffee table, expression bored. “I guess that’s why they call it a quickie.”

“Shut up,” I said, with more vehemence than I intended. I was feeling bad, and I couldn’t precisely figure out why Bill’s rejection had bothered me so much. I didn’t need Riley judging me.

“What’s wrong?” Rory asked, peeling herself off Tyler’s chest, where she was splayed like plastic wrap.

“I just don’t have anywhere to stay for the next week, that’s all.” I didn’t want to say in front of Riley that Bill had turned me down. It would be like handing him the material for a ten-minute stand-up routine at my expense. No, thanks.

“You can stay here,” Nathan said.

“Thanks, but I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“Why not?” Kylie asked.

I shot her a look, hoping she’d get the hint.

“Did you and the nerd have a fight?” Riley asked. “Is he not putting out enough for you?”

It really wasn’t fair that such a beautiful face was on such an asshole of a guy. Riley was a little shorter than Tyler, just as muscular, but whereas Tyler had a certain hardness to his face, Riley had been gifted with adorable dimples and large eyes. It was almost tragic he was such a jerk-off. I ignored him, but it wasn’t easy, because he seemed to take great pleasure in pissing me off. I really wanted to throw something at him. Like my fist. Right into his cocky face.

“You can stay at my house,” Tyler offered. “The boys and I are going to Rory’s dad’s for a week, remember, so you’d have a bed to sleep on.”

There was a thought, though it was an intimidating one. “Is it safe?” I asked, before I thought about how rude that actually sounded. Tyler and Riley lived with their two younger brothers in a lower income neighborhood in a house the bank was in the process of foreclosing on since their mother had died. Riley had lived in a basement before that, but once his mom overdosed, he had moved back in. I’d never been there, but I was picturing a drug infested neighborhood with drive-by shootings and prostitutes on every corner. My parents lived in a minimansion in a small town, so I didn’t exactly have street cred. My experience with poverty was limited to movies and episodes of Cops on my laptop. It was like a bear walking through the desert. I had no previous exposure.

“I mean, won’t the neighbors think I’m breaking and entering?” I added, as a very lame cover to my initial question.

“Princess, I don’t think anyone is going to think you’ve broken into our shithole and are squatting,” Riley said, rolling his eyes. “If anything, they’ll just think you’ve come over to score drugs.”

“Rory stays with me all the time,” Tyler added. “No one will even notice. People keep to themselves in our neighborhood.”

“I never feel unsafe there,” Rory said. “But then again, I’m never sleeping there alone. Tyler is always with me.”

“I’ve never lived alone,” I said. Even for a week, the thought had a certain appeal. No one’s opinion but my own. No rules. No guilt. No feeling bad that I could never live up to anyone’s expectations. It sounded awesome and scary. I wanted to try it, just to see what it would be like. “That sounds great, Ty. Thanks for offering.”

“Have both of you forgotten something?” Riley asked, picking up his beer.

“What?” I said, wary. I just knew I wasn’t going to like whatever he was going to say.

“I’m not going to Rory’s dad’s to swim for a week like a kid at summer camp. I’ll be here, working. Living in my house.”

Oh, God. I couldn’t help it. I made a face.

The corner of Riley’s mouth turned up. “That’s exactly how I feel about it, princess.”

“I think it will be good for you guys,” Kylie said, an eternal optimist. Or suffering from massive delusions. “You can become better friends this way.”

“Maybe we don’t want to become friends,” Riley told her. “Maybe we like not liking each other.”

I almost laughed. There was a certain truth to that. I basically felt like I’d seen all I needed to see to know I didn’t need to see more. But if I said that Kylie’s head would explode. She was a very honest and kind person, and she didn’t always get my point of view. Or anything involving math.

“How much will you even see each other? You both work and it has three bedrooms,” Tyler said. “It seems stupid to sleep on a floor somewhere when there’s plenty of room at the house.”

“It’s up to Riley,” I said, because that only seemed fair. It was his house. “Maybe he wants some alone time with all of you gone.”

I didn’t mean that to sound quite as weird as it did.

He laughed. “Does that come right after Me Time and Circle Time?” He stood up and moved further into my space than was strictly appropriate.

It was a game of chicken, and I lost by instantly backing up. Damn it. He smirked in triumph.

“I’ll be fine. I can handle it if you can.”

I was playing right into him and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Of course I can handle it. What’s there to handle?”

He stared at me, his eyebrows raised, a challenge in his deep brown eyes. The stubble on his chin was visible, and I could smell the subtle scent of soap and a splash of cologne. He looked and smelled very, very masculine, and I was suddenly aware of my body in a way that made me seriously annoyed.

“Bring some beer.”

“I’m not twenty-one.” Not that it had ever stopped me from drinking, but I wasn’t going to give Riley anything I didn’t have to. I did not want to feel like I owed him. It was Tyler who had made the offer of a place to crash, so if anyone deserved thanks, it was him, not his arrogant brother.

For a second, Riley’s eyes roamed over my chest, like he could gauge my age by my boobs. Such a tool.

But then he just said, “You can borrow my ID.”

And I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Because we’re practically twins.”

He nodded. “Though I am slightly better looking.”

I snorted. “I have better hair.”

“I can drink more whiskey than you.”

“I’m smarter.”

“I’m stronger. We should mud wrestle so I can prove it.”

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t throw a scathing response back at him, or worse, laugh. He didn’t deserve the attention, or knowing he’d gotten under my skin, which was what he wanted.

But for a split second I wondered if I should sleep on the couch after all. Because Riley seemed to be the one person who could get an emotional response out of me, even if it was just anger.

And emotions were dangerous.

They led to being trapped, like my mother, in the pretty prison of my father’s house.

I was never going to let that happen.

“I call dibs on the bathroom first in the mornings,” I told Riley.

Then to let him know that he did not intimidate me, and that I was always in control, I turned and walked away.

Chapter Two

I should have taken Nathan up on his offer for a ride. Instead I had decided that in further pursuit of independence I was going to learn how to use public transportation. What I didn’t understand was that the city bus was nothing like the charter bus we took to church camp growing up. When you were a member of the New Hope congregation, you didn’t sacrifice comfort in the pursuit of your relationship with God. My dad was fond of saying that even Jesus wore sandals rather than going barefoot. I didn’t really think it was exactly the same thing to have shoes versus a six-thousand-square-foot house with a closet full of designer clothes, but when I had suggested this at the age of thirteen I had lost the use of my cell phone for a month.

Since you’re so quick to point out others’ alleged hypocrisy, he had said. Let me eliminate yours for you.

Of course, in the end, all he had done was make me the ultimate hypocrite. I paid lip service to his church and its many rules and nothing more.

Eventually, when he figured out the truth—which he would, because it was becoming harder and harder to fake who I was—he would dismiss me from his life. I knew it as surely as I knew he had a flask of vodka hidden in his nightstand drawer. So when the inevitable happened, I needed to be ready. I needed to have seen the real world, or at least a bigger slice of it than the narrow viewpoint I’d been raised in.

So the bus.

Yeah, not such a brilliant idea when you’re dragging two very large hot-pink suitcases with you and you’ve never ridden public transportation in your whole life.

A crusty old man drooled as he mumbled and gestured to me repeatedly. I slunk down in my seat, suitcases wedged against the window next to me because I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, and I totally didn’t want to understand. Two teenage boys with their jeans down around their thighs kept shoving each other and laughing as they made blow-job gestures in my direction. I ignored them. If I knew them, I would have told them off, but I figured it was possible they had guns in those insanely outdated and slouchy pants, or at the very least they wouldn’t hesitate to harass me. The bus smelled disgusting, and the air-conditioning blasting only served to float the odor around. As I compulsively checked my phone for the bus route map, I kept checking the street signs every time we turned, afraid I was going to miss my stop.

I had texted Riley to let him know I was showing up around six, and he had responded with, “Yippee.” The feeling was mutual.

By my estimates, it was only a thirty-minute bus ride to the nearest intersection to Tyler and Riley’s house. The bus chart had arrival as 6:03, and I kept glancing at the time, wishing I hadn’t worn flip-flops and shorts. I felt like bus crud was rubbing on me from the seat and floor. My heels and calves felt vulnerable.

“Hey, blond girl,” one of the teenage boys said, moving from the back of the bus to drop down in the seat behind me.

That was probably me he was referring to.

Glancing at him, I said, “Hey,” and went back to my phone. I didn’t want to have a conversation with him, but I knew if I totally ignored him he would be calling me a stuck-up bitch. Sometimes there really wasn’t a way to win as a girl.

“Where you goin’? This don’t look like your neighborhood.”

“I’m moving in with my boyfriend,” I told him, flatly. Let him think I had a big old gangbanging, drug-dealing badass of a boyfriend.

His eyebrows shot up, and he looked like he didn’t believe me. He was about fifteen, and he was more attitude than anything else, since he probably weighed less than me. I could see his ribs through his basketball jersey. “Your boyfriend lives here?”

I didn’t answer because I realized the bus driver wasn’t slowing down, and the street that was supposed to be my stop was just a few feet ahead. “Isn’t he going to stop here?” I said, freaking out, starting to sit up and slip my purse over my head like a cross-body bag. It was too short to do that, and it cut into my armpit, but I needed both hands for the luggage. And maybe to tackle the driver if he didn’t stop, because my little social experiment was over. I didn’t want to be on this bus anymore. My armpits were sweating even though it was freezing from the air-conditioning because I was a little stressed, I had to admit.

The kid looked at me like I was a complete moron. “If you want to get off, you have to pull.” He reached over and yanked on a laundry line–type cord above the windows and I immediately heard a ding.

“Oh.” Duh. Guess the driver wasn’t psychic. “Thanks.” The bus started to slow down, so I started to tug my bags into the aisle, regretting the “Stop following me. Follow Jesus.” sticker Kylie had bought for me as a joke and slapped on the front of my suitcase.

For some reason, I expected the kid to offer to help, since he was so clearly interested in flirting with me. But he actually slipped around my bag like it was a nothing more than an obstacle, even as it fell sideways into the opposite seat. His friend followed him. The bus stopped, and I stumbled forward as I managed to haul both bags down the aisle, yelling, “I’m getting off at this stop!” to the bus driver in case he didn’t glance back.

He glared at me in his large rearview mirror, obviously impatient with how long it was taking for me to exit.

“Thanks,” I said, breathless, basically falling down the stairs in an avalanche of hair and luggage. Once on the curb, I readjusted so I could pull each bag with one hand and tried to ignore the fact that the two teenagers were just standing there on the corner, looking in no particular hurry to go anywhere, belts barely holding up their pants, arms already sporting a couple of tattoos. It was hot on the sidewalk, the air a humid mix of gas fumes from the bus and a chicken restaurant. The back of my neck got damp as I started walking.

Immediately, I knew the boys were following me. So I paused and pulled out my phone, confirming the direction I was going in. Then I took a gamble and called Riley, propping the phone on my shoulder so I could keep walking. I didn’t think he would answer, because I didn’t know any guy who answered his phone, but I was starting to get weirded out. The neighborhood was what I had expected, and while it didn’t seem anything other than a little tired and lower income, I felt very obvious as an outsider. There were empty shops, a dingy restaurant, a tattoo parlor, a Check ’n Go kiosk, and potholes the size of a Volkswagen Beetle in the road. On the side street I turned down, the houses were close together, small, some of them run down. If anyone had grass, it was burned out, brown and dusty, or it was a breeding ground for pricker weeds. Some were as high as my knees as I trudged down the sidewalk, my purse bumping my breast with each step.

Riley actually answered. “Hello.”

“Hey! It’s Jessica. Um, I’m almost at your house. I, uh, took the bus, and I’m on your street and well . . .”

I could practically hear his eyebrows shooting up in disbelief. “You took the bus?”

“Yeah. And I think these dudes are following me,” I murmured in as low of a voice as possible.

“What? Shit.” There was rustling. “Keep walking. I’ll come get you.”

“’K.” I dropped the phone on the sidewalk when I tried to end the call with my finger still hooked around the suitcase handle. Bending down to retrieve it, I looked back at the guys.

One had a baseball hat on sideways, and now that they were off the bus they had both stripped off their T-shirts in the heat. One was tanned, the other glowing so starkly white, utterly hairless, and blinking against the sun, he looked like a baby mole. Now that I knew Riley was just a minute or two away, I felt more irritated than scared.

“Why didn’t your man pick you up?” the one with the hat asked.

I stood up, spotting a car coming up the street. “He is.” Relieved, I saw it was Riley as he pulled up and put the car in park.

Leaving it running, he opened the door and got out. He wasn’t wearing a shirt either, and I shook my head to try to get my sweaty hair out of my eyes, wishing I could fully appreciate his chest. But I was more concerned with getting in the car and away from Beavis and Butt-Head. I was already dragging my bag off the curb when Riley stepped up, barely giving me a nod before grabbing the other one.

“Wassup,” he said casually to the guys, but I could see his shoulders were stiff as he rolled the suitcase behind him and made a point of turning his back on them. They didn’t look like any particular threat to Riley, given he was twice their width, and I felt better.

“Your bitch is fine,” the scrawny one said.

Gee. Now my life was complete. They thought I was attractive. I rolled my eyes as I opened the back door of Riley’s car and shoved my suitcase in.

“Thanks,” was all Riley said. I realized he was gesturing with his left hand for me to go around and get in the car, so I did. He loaded my other bag in the backseat.

Then he stood and spoke to them in a very casual, friendly tone. “If you ever see her walking in the neighborhood again, you cross to the other side of the street, do you understand me? You don’t look at her, you don’t talk to her. Stay at least fifteen feet away from her, or I will fuck your shit up, no questions asked.”

“Hey, we don’t want no trouble,” one of them said, holding up his hands and looking alarmed.

I almost felt bad for them. Almost. But the truth was, their intention had been to harass me, and that was bullshit. A woman should be able to walk on the sidewalk without taking crap.

“Good.” Climbing back in, Riley turned the car around in the nearest driveway, while I yanked my purse off and stuck my right arm out the window to air out.

Lifting my hair off my neck, I twisted it into a knot and tucked it through so it would stay up for at least the drive to the house. “Holy shit, it’s hot out here. Thanks for picking me up.”

“Why the hell were you riding the bus?” Riley glanced over at me, and he was shaking his head in disbelief, amused. “Do you know who rides the bus?”

“Teenage boys and old men who smell like pee?”

“Exactly.” He gave me a small laugh. “Welcome to paradise, Jessica.”

“It wasn’t awful,” I told him, which was true. It had been more unnerving than really horrific. Especially now that I was in his car and in zero danger, the bus didn’t seem that bad at all in hindsight. In fact, I felt a little triumphant that I had managed it on my own. Well, almost my own. I suppose without Riley it might have had a more irritating outcome, but I didn’t think those guys were actually dangerous. Then again, Kylie always told me I downplayed trouble, and I suppose that was true. After all, I was moving into Riley’s house in a sketchy neighborhood when I was supposed to be off building new houses for the financially needy. That was borrowing trouble with my parents, no doubt, if they ever found out.

Though as we pulled into Riley’s drive, I thought probably the Mann boys qualified for the title of financially needy themselves. It was, to be totally honest, a shithole, a house that no one had cared about in a long time. Exactly what I was expecting, but as the bungalow sagged in the heat, it was undeniable.

“You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that,” he said.

“Are you complimenting me?” And why did that stupidly please me? That wasn’t exactly a glowing report. But then again, I did pride myself on being strong, so that he thought it couldn’t help but make me happy.

“If I am, don’t worry, it’s backhanded,” he assured me as he parked the car. “Now why do you look like you packed to study in Europe for a year? I thought you’re here for only a week.”

How to explain without lying? I only wanted to keep some of the information from him, not be totally dishonest. But I didn’t want him to know I was lying to my parents. “This is all my stuff from my dorm room. Well, a lot of it. Kylie took some of it home for me, but I couldn’t ask her to drag all of it. It wouldn’t fit in Mark’s car.”

“Who is Mark?”

That was what he pulled out of that paragraph? Yay. That was an easy question to answer. “He’s a guy Kylie and I went to high school with who has a car on campus. He usually gives us a ride if our parents don’t pick us up.” Then I was immediately sorry I’d mentioned parents. I didn’t want Riley to ask me about mine.

But he seemed to lose interest in the conversation in general, stepping out of the car, giving me a great view of his perfect ass in jeans that fit the way they should on a guy, not too loose, not too tight. They were riding just slightly past his hips, his back muscles clearly outlined as he twisted. Head thunk. What was I doing? I was supposed to ignore his hotness. It was a mental pact I’d made with myself over the last two days as I had packed up my room. It was the only way I could justify staying with Riley, to swear totally and on my favorite pair of Guess jeans that I would not pay attention to anything about him other than to note how annoying he was.

I opened the back door to grab the second suitcase, but he was already dragging it across the seat.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem.” He studied the sticker on it and fought a smile. “So were your little friends on the bus with you?”

“Yes. I think they were following me.”

“Oh, most definitely. You stick out like a pink thumb.”

“Ha ha. You don’t think they were dangerous, do you?” Unless I was mistaken as to how to conceal a weapon, I hadn’t seen anything on those two. Then again, their jeans had been like garbage bags, so what did I know?

“Not to me. To you? Maybe. You were smart to call me.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I reached for a suitcase to roll it up the driveway, but he waved me off and got both.

“Your sarcasm is annoying,” he told me.

“Why? Because it reminds you of yourself?” I tossed at him, walking over the gravel and up the crumbling steps behind him. For a second, I almost questioned their structural soundness, but then I realized that would be rude.

“That’s entirely possible,” he admitted.

The door wasn’t locked. He shoved it open and swept his arm out for me to enter. “Mi shitty casa es su shitty casa.”

“You need a doormat with that on it,” I told him, brushing by him, determined not to look at his chest, or his eyes, both of which were way more dangerous to my health than the dudes on the bus. My arm touched his pec despite my best efforts, and his skin was warm.

“If we had a doormat it would get stolen,” he said.

I stepped into the stifling heat of the living room. There was no air-conditioning. Craptastic. It smelled like old cigarettes and boy. Sometimes I could tolerate boy but the cigarettes I couldn’t. Wrinkling my nose, I moved forward, peering into a small kitchen while trying to look like I wasn’t checking it out.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked.

I glanced back to see him watching me carefully, my suitcases standing at attention on either side of him.

No, I wasn’t sure.

“Rory doesn’t mind it here, but Rory is in love with Tyler. For some bizarre reason, people are willing to put up with a lot of shit when they’re in love. I know this place is a dump, so there is still time for you to bail.”