Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

I glance around the room, back to the propped open window, and try to make sense of this. Before I can make heads or tails of this situation, she rustles against the sheets. I freeze. Don’t move a damn muscle. Just stand in place and stare at her like some kind of demented asshole.

The blankets are batted away. Her eyes struggle to open as I watch her.

“Oh, shit,” she whispers. Her voice is throaty and full of a sleepy grittiness. “What are you doing here?”

“Me?”

She sits up, grimacing. “You need a better mattress on this thing.”

I slow blink. Twice. “Am I missing something here?”

Her shoulders rise and fall as she fiddles with the hair knotted on the top of her head. It’s falling every which way from the thing she had it up in. Pieces are hanging all around her face and when she blows a lock dangling across her nose, I almost laugh.

“You apparently broke in my apartment, made yourself at home, and now you’re bitching about my mattress?”

“Accurate. You still didn’t tell me why you’re here.”

I throw my hands up and turn away from her. This attitude of hers is infuriating and not because I want to scream at her, but because I want to hold her down and kiss her until she stops talking.

“Peck said you didn’t … whoops,” she says. “Um …”

I whirl around. “Peck?” My brows lift to the ceiling. “Peck had something to do with this?”

“Yeahhh … Kind of?”

“That motherfucker said—”

“Just stop.” She tosses the blankets off her legs but doesn’t get off the bed. “You would’ve let me stay here if I needed a place to stay.”

“So?”

“So what’s it matter if Peck may or may not have helped me get in here last night?”

I take a step toward her but stop myself before I lose the fight with my body and end up on top of her before I realize it. “It matters because I explicitly told him to tell me if he knew …”

The look she gives me stops me from saying anything more.

“Well, I explicitly told him not to tell you,” she says.

It’s not the way her breasts fill out the tight little T-shirt she’s wearing or how the pants fit the curves of her hips that has me all worked up. It’s not even the way her lips form a little bud, still swollen from sleeping on her stomach like she always does.

It’s the fire in her eyes. The challenge she’s tossing my way. The fierce way she doesn’t give two shits about what I say or do. She’s going to do what she wants either way, and that pricks at something deep inside my soul that I’ve never been able to pinpoint. Or stop.

Damn her.

“You know what?” I say, narrowing my eyes. “It’s time we get something straight.”

“I agree.”

Much to my surprise, a reaction I try desperately to hide, she leaps off the bed. Tugging her shirt down over the top of her pants, she props a hand on her hip. Her eyes narrow, still puffy from sleep.

“You got something you want to say?” I ask.

“Oh. Are we going to pretend like you’re suddenly going to start listening to me?”

“I was going to, but you’re running out of time. Better talk quick.”

“You’re such an asshole, Machlan.”

I scratch my chin. “I know. That’s why I find it so interesting that you keep coming around.”

She rolls her eyes and goes back to trying to tame her gorgeous, wild hair again. “It’s a coincidence.”

I yank a chair away from the table and twirl it around. Sitting in it backward with arms draped over the back, I look at her. “There are no coincidences, sweetheart.”

The last word gets her. Her eyes light up. If I were closer, I’d guarantee you can see the jade flecks.

“Especially if you consider you walked into Crave knowing there was an excellent chance I’d be there since it’s my bar, then broke into my apartment.”

“You own the only bar in town, and I’ve stayed in this apartment more times than I can count—”

“What’s that have to do with anything?” I fire back.

Her chest rises and falls with the force of her breathing. “The fact of the matter is that you weren’t supposed to be here.” Her arms cross over her chest, her nose tipped up in some hoity-toity gesture.

Fuck that.

I go out of my way to stay out of her life. I kill myself every morning and night when I walk by her robe that hangs on the hook on the back of my bathroom door. It’s the worst kind of torture to know I could drive to Vigo and see her and probably hold her if I tried hard enough.

But I don’t do that. I don’t do any of it. Even though I think about it every day, I let her live her life without me. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s the result of the choices we made, and I have to step aside. I might be an asshole, but I’m not evil.