He blew out a breath of relief. “Like what?”

“Seriously? Outside of all the physical stuff girls like—your piercings, your looks, your rock-hard body”—I waited for his eyes to find mine before I continued—“you’re mad talented. And you’ve got a heart of gold.”

“You think?” He suddenly seemed shy, almost unsure of himself. This was the opposite of how he’d always acted around me. Lying next to me right now was the most vulnerable I’d ever heard him.

“Look how you took time out of your day just to hang with me at the hospital,” I said. “I looked forward to those hours with you.”

His eyes widened. “Yeah?”

“Of course I did,” I said, wondering where this timid guy had come from. “I mean, you’d hum me to sleep and play cards and just . . . listen to me.”

He was quiet next to me, so I continued. “Shit, I was such a wreck. I didn’t know what was going to happen in my life. But somehow having you there gave me hope.”

“What kind of hope?”

I grabbed for his hand, winding my fingers through his. “Hope that I’d be okay.”

Chapter Sixteen

Kai

“That’s because I knew you would be,” I said, marveling at the unexpected turn of this conversation. I used to whisper those exact words to her while she slept, but I was pretty sure she didn’t remember because she’d never brought it up.

But maybe this was her way of remembering, subconsciously.

“I felt like half of a person. Especially after Miles ditched me. I think my anger—at myself, at him, at the world—fueled me on.” She refrained from saying she was mad at me, but after her admission the other night, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been included in that list. She’d said I’d left her, too, when all I’d fucking wanted to do was stay. I’d thought I’d been giving her what she wanted, what she needed.

She took a deep breath. “By the time I got to college, I felt like I needed to prove something.”

“Prove what?” I sat up a bit to give her my full attention but made sure not to break her hold on my hand. It felt too good having our fingers knotted together.

“That I was whole. That I was a survivor.” She clenched her teeth. “That I could get over Miles.”

I tucked a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. “Did it work?”

“For a while.” She absently ran her finger over my thigh, not realizing her touch was making blood rush to a region I was desperately trying not to focus on at the moment. “I loved the idea that nobody knew who I was. My friends didn’t know that I had suffered a brain injury and almost died. Or that my boyfriend had left me during my recovery.”

“It was that way for me in Amsterdam, too. Like it was a fresh start,” I said, tracing a pattern on her palm with my thumb. “Almost no one knew what a fuckup I’d been.”

Her jaw fell open. “I never knew you felt that way. I mean, you got in trouble, sure. But you were always so damn cool about it—like junk just bounced off of you.”

“That’s because it always has.” I shrugged. “But I can’t be that person anymore. I need to figure out what matters to me. What the hell I’m doing with my life.”

I adjusted myself on the bed while she studied me. “My parents are disappointed in me. Thank God Dakota impresses them on a daily basis.”

“She’s pretty darn good at impressing people,” she said, thinking it over. It was probably one of the reasons she was afraid to let Dakota down. It was definitely hard measuring up against her. “I guess I always thought you’d do something with music.”

“So did I, but it’s not really working out so well for me,” I said. “And that sucks, because nothing ever interested me until I picked up my first instrument, that’s for sure.”

“Tell me how that felt.” Her eyes were tender, supportive.

“It felt like it was the one thing missing in my life,” I said, holding her gaze. “Very few things in life feel that way.”

She closed her eyes as if she was processing my words. Her eyelashes fanned across her cheeks and I wished I could bend down and kiss her right then. If only just to tell her how much I liked confiding in her.

“The problem is that I didn’t know how to channel it. Which direction to go. How to make money, even. So I got lazy, let stuff slide,” I said. “Sure, my parents are loaded, but I know they work their asses off. And here I was just cruising through life, hoping that something would keep me grounded.”

“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said, adjusting her fingers over mine so that they fit snugly together again. “You’ll figure it out. But do you think . . .”

She looked uncertain and I didn’t know what she was about to say until I saw her eyes dart quickly to my dresser and away.

“You’re going to ask me if pot smoking has gotten in the way? Seriously, Rach?”

“Don’t get all pissy with me, dickhead,” she said. “It’s a valid question. I thought we had a deal.”

“You told me to come see you if I had the urge to smoke a whole bowl of weed.” She rolled her eyes. “And I certainly have not. I’ve been cutting down . . . on my own. Just a puff here or there.”

“And it has nothing to do with a bunch of people who care about you getting on your case about it?”

“Probably.” If she kept harping on it, I was close to kicking her cute little ass out of my room. “Look, I get it, but things don’t change overnight.”

She nodded, remorse in her eyes.

“So how about you?” I asked. “You got stuff figured out yet?”

“Obviously not. I’ve been . . . hiding, haven’t I?” she said. “And after awhile hiding gets kind of . . . lonely.” She looked deeply into my eyes. It made me wonder if she could spot my overwhelming feelings for her inside of them.

“What are you lonely for?” I muttered.

“I don’t know. Maybe for home. Maybe the very thing I’ve been running from.”

Eyes weary, she laid her head down on my chest, and I shuddered out a breath. I ran my fingers through her hair, and she sighed. I loved having this time with her, regardless of the fact that I’d be picking up the pieces of my heart soon enough. As soon as she was done using me. And especially after she’d gone back to school.

I’d better have a strategy figured out by then. A plan to move on. Get over her.

Actually make money doing something I love.

“This whole time I told myself I was missing Miles,” she said, and her breath feathered across my skin. “I had this whole fantasy about our reunion. And here he is, in the same town as me. I saw him last night and the reality is so different.”

“What’s different?” I wanted to ask more about what he’d said and what they’d done, but I didn’t want to push her. I also probably didn’t want to know.

“I see myself a bit more through his eyes now,” she said. “I was just this girl who fell for this popular jock and didn’t know how to act or what to do with that. As it turns out, he didn’t really know how to act either. “

“It was like you lost a bit of yourself,” I said, going for honesty.

“I know I did. And I’ve repeated the same mistake the past three years,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, sometimes a girl needs sex. But I went to ridiculous lengths not to get to know anyone. To not let anyone get close.”

Something else was on the tip of her tongue. I could hear it in her voice. Something she wasn’t telling me. Something she was ashamed of. But I wasn’t going to press her about it. I had plenty of things to be ashamed of.

“I’ve never let anyone get close, either,” I said. Nobody except you. “The difference for me is that nobody has ever given me a reason to let them in.”

“Ever?” She looked up at me through lowered eyelashes.

I hesitated. “Ev . . . ever. Does that make me sound so shallow?”

“No,” she said, suddenly throwing her arms around my chest in a hug. “It just makes you sound honest.”

My hand came up and curled around her shoulder. My face went to her neck, and I breathed her in.

“I’ve always loved talking to you, Kai,” she said, running her hands up and down my back. “Always.”

“Is that what we’re doing here?” My lips met her ear. “Just talking?”

“I . . . don’t know,” she said, letting out a long sigh. “I’m not sure I really want to examine this. Not right now.”

My fingers gripped her waist, and I felt her tremble in my arms. “Sounds cool to me.”

Her hands traveled across my shoulders to grasp my hair. “The truth is . . . I liked what we did the other night.”

“Yeah?” I said, my lips coming dangerously close to her mouth. “What did you like?”

“The way you”—she looked from my lips to my eyes—“helped me forget.”

“It’s a hard habit to break, huh?” I said, and she stiffened in my grasp. Shit. I didn’t want to break this spell we were under. I didn’t want her to question her decision to come to my room. Even if it was to erase Miles from her mind. “That’s not how I meant it. It’s okay. I want you here.”

She visibly relaxed as her fingers resumed grazing my biceps. I loved the feeling of her hands on me. I closed my eyes and savored the way her fingers traced over my arms, across my shoulders, and then down my chest.

When she hooked a finger into the loop of my nipple ring, my eyes flew open.

“What do these feel like?” she asked, her eyes innocently roving over my pecs. Then she tugged at the hoop, and I groaned.

“Obviously pretty damn good,” I said, trying to get a handle on my breathing. “Rachel, I’m warning you.”

“What do you mean?” she said, her gaze not so innocent any longer. “What’ll happen if I keep doing this?”

Before I could respond, she bent her head and encircled my nipple with her tongue.

My dick immediately sprang to action. “Fuck, Rachel.”

“Do you like that?” Her voice was coy and sexy as hell. Now her lips closed over my hardened nipple. She slid the the tip of her tongue through the ring and sucked. All the pleasure receptors in my brain immediately went on high alert.

I grasped the back of her head as she moved to the other side, her mouth like a suction cup.

“Two can play this game.” Without any warning, I tugged her mouth up to mine and drove my tongue past her lips, deep and forceful. She grabbed my shoulders and whimpered against me.

If I couldn’t bury myself inside her tonight, I’d fuck her with my tongue instead.

Chapter Seventeen

Kai

She tasted like the salt and butter from our popcorn earlier in the night, and I wanted to feast on her tongue and skin. I angled her head to gain better access to her mouth and then licked and nibbled her lips.

She dragged her fingers up my arms to my neck, and I could feel the pressure of her nails digging in. Her tongue and mouth were just as hungry and the noises coming from her throat were arousing the hell out of me. We were devouring each other and barely coming up for air.

Extracting my fingers from her hair, I grazed the bare patch of her back between her shorts and tank. Her skin was soft and smooth, and I wanted to nibble it with my teeth, soothe it with my tongue. I wanted to brand her and make her mine.

The palm of my hand slid to her stomach and inched up her torso to the area between her breasts. I could feel her heart crashing against my fingertips as she panted from the contact.

My lips skimmed her jaw and then down her neck to her collarbone. I kissed the skin above the scoop of her tank before closing my lips around one of her nipples and sucking it straight through the fabric.

“Oh God . . . Kai.” Her nails dug into my shoulders, and my dick strained against my zipper. I wanted to strip off her top and finally lay my eyes on her tits. I’d fantasized about that exact moment too many times to count.

I thumbed the ends of her shirt. “Take this off. Now.”

She only hesitated a split second before sitting up and lifting her top over her head. I kept my eyes pinned to hers before finally allowing my gaze to slide down to her nearly-bare chest. She wore a black lacy bra that was a contrast to her creamy, pale skin. The smooth flesh on her stomach was sexy, and I could see the edges of her hipbones jutting above her cotton pajama shorts.

I took my time drinking her in, and I saw her shiver beneath my scrutiny. She was so turned on her nipples looked like hard pebbles through the ebony material. And all my brain could muster was that I was the one responsible for that desire in her eyes, as the blood rushed straight to my crotch. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been harder than in that moment—when the girl I ached for was finally noticing me in the same way.

And I wanted nothing more than to lose myself in her like she wanted to get lost in me. But some logical part of my brain knew that we shouldn’t take it to the next level. That she might regret it if we did. And besides, if I was going to bury myself inside Rachel, the girl of my fucking dreams, I wanted it to be under different circumstances.

I wanted to see something beyond lust in her eyes. I wanted her to really see me for who I was. I needed her to want every single piece of me, beyond the physical. But I’d take every encounter as it came, knowing each one might be the last.

I sat up and hooked my fingers beneath the satin strap of her bra, tugging it down partway. “Take it off, Rachel.”