“No clue.” He shakes his head. “I can’t imagine she left him. I just try not to think about it too much. Doubt I’ll ever see her again.”

I take his hand, as a friend, as someone who cares. It’s all starting to make sense. One by one, all those dislocated parts of Jensen Mackey are fitting together like pieces of a puzzle.

“Why are we holding hands?” he chuckles. “God, don’t look at me like that—with those sad eyes. Don’t feel bad for me. Seriously. I don’t think I could ever fuck you again if I know you feel sorry for me.”

“It’s okay to be vulnerable.” I squeeze his hand.

He untwines our fingers, reaching over and grabbing me to pull me on top of him. I’m straddling him, his fingers tickling my inner thighs and tracing up to my under arms before trailing down to my stomach.

“Tickles? Really?” I can’t stop laughing, pushing his hands away until he finally stops.

“It was way too heavy in here for a second.” Our hands are matched up, our fingers interlaced. Smiles fade from our faces the second our eyes lock. Jensen sits up, though I’m still straddling him.

We lean in, meeting in the middle, our lips finding each other in the dim light of his bedroom. It’s not a carnal kiss. There’s nothing animalistic or passionate about it. There’s something sweeter behind it. His lips trace mine between slow, deep kisses, our tongues grazing. My stomach swirls, matching my heart flutter for flutter.

And then I pull away.

I have to.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

At the end of the day, he’s still my brother. Stepbrother. Whatever.

His mom and my dad are sealed for eternity.

And I’m under a microscope until I convince my father to give me another chance.

Nothing else matters.

“I should go.” I climb off Jensen, searching for my clothes, and redress as he shamelessly watches. “Oh, and burn that sketch, okay? I mean it. Destroy it. Not kidding.”

His smile fades as he reaches for his book, rips the sheet, and begins tearing it into millions of tiny pieces. I wait for him to sweep them all into his trashcan before leaving.

When I slip out into the hallway and tiptoe five steps down to my door, I hear a cough.

My heart stops.

“Waverly? What are you doing up?”

“Dad?”

I thought he was at Summer’s?

CHAPTER 25

JENSEN

“My dad almost caught me leaving your room last night.” Waverly stops me in the hallway in the morning between showers. A towel is wrapped around her wet body and her hair’s in a turban. She’s all fresh-faced, peppermint-y, and sexy as fuck.

“Shit. I thought he was at Summer’s?”

“He came back over here to get his antacids, or something. I don’t know. We’re good, though. I told him I was leaving Bellamy’s room, not yours.”

“Do you think he bought it?”

“He seemed half-asleep. I don’t know. He didn’t say anything.” She worries her lip. I want to believe for both of our sakes he doesn’t think twice about it.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll just have to be extra careful next time.” I realize I’m committing myself to her—at least physically—in a roundabout way. Sneaking around with her is kind of fun, though, and I have no intentions of stopping anytime soon. I warned her that night in the laundry room. I told her after she kissed me I wouldn’t be responsible for what happens. Waverly’s kiss, her body, her light and airy presence, is addicting, just as I suspected it would be.

She tugs her towel tight, fighting a smile. “So there’ll be a next time?”

“You’ll know when I’m done with you.” I glance both ways before reaching down and pinching a tight ass cheek through her towel. She yelps and I push past her to hit the shower.

***

When you want something badly enough, you find a way to make it happen. For weeks and weeks, well into the thick of summer, Waverly and I manage to sneak around. On nights when Mark stays with Summer or Kath, we meet up around eleven, click the lock on her door, and fuck each other senseless. Nights when Mark is down the hall is pure fucking torture.

Neither of us has put a label on whatever it is we’re doing. I’m not sure we even know what we’re doing, we just know that it feels good, and when we’re fucking like bunnies, we kind of forget about life’s bullshit for a while.

The last night of Camp Zion is a sort of prom-like, chaperoned celebration complete with a live band playing church songs and punch bowls filled with Country Time lemonade. There’s even a sheet cake with a group photo laser-printed onto the frosting. It doesn’t get much more G-rated than that, but still, Mark refuses to let his kids attend.

So we made plans of our own.

I rap on Waverly’s door at eleven o’clock that Saturday night. “You ready yet?”

Her door flings open a moment later. She’s in jeans and a hoodie, not exactly party material, but I don’t say anything because she’s still pretty damn fine. I press my finger against my lips and we tread lightly down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door. The second our shoes hit the grass we sprint for my truck like we’re being chased.

“Go, go, go!” She yanks her seatbelt across her chest the second we get inside, peering over her shoulder to make sure all three houses are still black.

They are.

I shift into neutral and push the truck to the end of the street, starting it up and peeling around the corner. By the time we’re halfway to Liberty’s place, Waverly tugs her sweatshirt off and tosses it aside, revealing a low-cut, lace trimmed tank top that hardly covers the top of her breasts.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I can’t stop staring. Fuck, I’ve seen her naked, but I’ve never seen her dress like this.

“What? You like?”

Months of fucking the shit out of her has evidently turned her into a saucy minx. “Yeah, I like. But I don’t like that other guys might like.”

“You’d get jealous? Over me?”

She’s surprised, and I’m surprised that she’s surprised. I thought it was obvious.

I’m falling for her.

“Cover up,” I say.

“No.”

I reach behind the seat of my truck and pull out a gray and blue flannel shirt. “Wear this.”

“No.” She says it harder this time, not budging. “I wore this for you.”

So there we have it. She’s dressing for me and I’m getting jealous over her. We’ve been in each other’s pants for months, unable to keep our hands off each other. She’s in my thoughts, motivating my actions, and invading the air I breathe.

I love every god damn minute of it, too.

We pull up to Liberty’s, cars parked up and down the street and filling the parking lot of her dad’s shop. I take her hand as we walk in, not because I’m trying to be romantic, but because I want every drunken jackass in that party to know from the second they see her, she’s off-limits. As long as I’m fucking her, she belongs to me.

And it’s true. She’s mine from now until the end of summer when we go our separate ways. It’ll be hard knowing she’ll be off to college, probably fucking the first jackass who gifts her a wicked smile because that’s what attention-starved girls do when they get out from under their parents’ thumbs. But I try not to think about that too much.

We show ourselves in, like everyone else seems to be doing, and bump into the plastered hostess.

“Heyyyyy!” It’s Liberty, swaying back and forth, with an armful of beer. “You get a beer! You get a beer! You get a beer!”

Music blasts from speakers behind her, nearly drowning out her voice. Kian’s behind her, smoking a joint. People stare at us with dead-eyed, glassy stares, and a few guys check out Waverly. I squeeze her hand tight and take a couple beers from Liberty’s arms.

“I can hardly hear myself think,” Waverly yells into my ear, “but I love it.”

She takes a swig of beer as we find a couple empty folding chairs in the kitchen. The apartment’s so tiny, though, we’ve barely escaped the noise. I find a stack of playing cards amongst the mess of stale, broken chips and crunched beer cans that line the counter.