“I’m not kiddin’!” Sofie replies, still fighting with herself, if her grin is anything to go by. “Y’all Burkes are gonna be the death of me, I swear.”

“Childproof . . . locks . . .” Aidan wheezes.

“She can open them!” she shrieks. “You taught her how!”

He shakes his head. “Kye,” he laughs. “Bastard lied to you and told you it was me.”

Sofie drops her head back. “I give up. Fuck all y’all,” she laughs. “Twins should be illegal.” Aidan laughs again, and she looks at me. “How do you deal with him?”

I shrug. “I don’t.”

She looks between us, and I glance up at Aidan. His laughter is so infectious, because I can feel it bubbling up inside me again, and I look down, covering my eyes. “Yeah,” Sofie drawls, amusement filling the word. “Makes sense.”

“What does?” Aidan asks.

“Everything,” she replies, just before the door closes.

I look back up and my gaze is immediately drawn to his. “Y’all are crazy.”

He holds his hands out, standing, his eyes still bright with laughter. “Welcome to the nuthouse.” He grabs the guitar off the floor. “Wanna learn how to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle’?”

Shaking my head, I laugh again. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as I do when I’m with him. “Uh, no. I’m good.”

“The drums?” He holds his sticks out.

“Really? Can you see me playing the drums?”

“I can see you playing on the drums.” He raises his eyebrows, his lips smirking suggestively.

“Dirty.”

“Fun.”

“Uncomfortable.”

“For you, maybe.” He snorts, grabbing my hands and tugging me up.

“We are not having sex on your drum kit.”

“Not today, baby.” He grins. He leads me behind it and perches me on the edge of the stool, then he sits behind me. My butt is snug against his crotch, and the temptation to wiggle and tease him is just too much. I don’t give in, though, because I don’t doubt for a second that he would try the sex-on-the-drums thing without batting an eyelid.

And, well, I don’t want his family to hear that.

“Here.” His voice is still playful, but it’s quieter. He rests his chin on my shoulder, and every time he exhales, his breath flutters along my jaw and onto my neck. The feeling is strangely intimate, and so is the way he puts the drumsticks into my hands and curls his fingers over mine. We’re connected from our heads, right through our arms and torsos, even down to our feet.

We’ve been in so many positions since this started—naked ones, kind-of-naked ones, definitely-not-naked ones—but this is my favorite.

Of all the ways Aidan Burke has touched me, this is the best, because it doesn’t matter how hard I deny it, this is the one that feels the most right.

“Drum roll,” he whispers. “Easy.” He moves our hands so the sticks connect sharply with the drum, executing the most perfect drum roll I’ve ever heard. “Chorus from the song Conner wrote Sofie.” Our arms criss and cross as we play out the few beats, and his leg brushes against mine as he works the pedals in front of my feet. “The one Tate wrote Ella.” We change to something decidedly more upbeat than the one before, and his hands are so warm against mine. “The one Kye wrote his imaginary girlfriend.” He pauses, sticks hovering in midair, and I laugh quietly. “And I don’t write songs,” he finishes with a breathy chuckle. “But if I did, I guess it’d sound like this.”

I expect silence.

I don’t get it.

What I get is the most incredible mixture of beats, blending together seamlessly, gentle and slow, then hard and fast. I slide my hands out from under his, but I don’t think he even notices. His whole body moves as his arms do, and I lean back into him, watching him play this made-up song I’ve never heard.

I’m completely lost in his music, nothing but the pure beat of the drums. I feel every bit of it, so much so that my body responds to each beat. When it’s slow, my breathing is deep and easy, but when he picks up the pace and it gets louder and harsher, my heart thumps wildly against my ribs. I close my eyes when my heart beats so crazily I can feel it right through my body.

The pace changes so quickly that I can’t keep up. Up, down, slow, fast, here, there, everywhere. Hell, my heart can’t keep up. It feels like the second it steadies, it’s forced into a rough beat once again. It’s erratic and uncontrollable, and my stomach twists itself into knots, but then Aidan pauses, and I hold my breath, because I know this isn’t over.

It’s like a wild ride for my emotions. When he finally brings the sticks back down on the drums, going against them almost angrily—only this time there are gentle beats between each angry pound—I exhale deeply, wrapping my arms around my body.

His song has brought out a whirlwind of emotions I’ve barely even scratched the surface of, and the simple act of hugging myself is holding them in.

Then, just like that, he stops.

“You stopped,” I whisper. Obviously.

His chest heaves, and he sets the sticks down softly on the drums. Still not replying, he gathers my hair and sweeps it around my neck and over one shoulder, and I turn my body around so my face is closer to his. He slides his hand around my side and down to my thigh, where he curves his fingers around my leg. He moves me to standing, then closes his legs and pulls me down on his lap, facing him. His grip on me is tight, and our bodies are flush against each other, and he tilts his face up to meet mine.

“Why did you stop there?”

He presses his face against the side of mine, his thumb brushing along my neck. “Every song is a story,” he murmurs, moving so his lips sweep the corner of my mouth. “And I guess this story isn’t finished yet.”

“What kind of story is it?”

“A love story, definitely.”

“With a happily ever after?”

Aidan’s hand moves across my cheek and into my hair, holding it back from my face. His momentary silence makes me open my eyes, and my lips part as our gazes come together. His eyes are . . . raw. Unguarded. They’re soft and hopeful and stripped bare, completely. Almost as if he’s pushed his heart up into them and is just giving me a slideshow of how he feels right in this moment.

“Well?” I ask, sliding my hand up his chest to rest on his shoulder. “Does it have a happily ever after?”

“I sure hope so,” he replies in a rough whisper that goes right through me.

When he kisses me, I know in my heart that the unfinished love story is ours.

And I can’t help but give in to the tiny part of me that’s hoping it’ll have a happily ever after, too.

Aidan

One thing is painfully clear: there’s no fucking way I can let Jessie go.

It’d have to be a blue damn moon before I could even comprehend thinking about the possibility. I have no idea when she became this to me, someone that I could imagine being with all the time, but all I know is that she did, and it’s just about fucking blindsided me.

She has just about blindsided me.

Did I ever expect to tear through the layers of her tough outer shell and see the soft, fun, playful girl beneath them? Did I ever expect to play the drums with her curled against me? No. Fuck no. I didn’t. When I told her ex that she was my girlfriend, I never for a single second expected that I would ever want her to actually be my girlfriend.

I never expected that I’d want her to want to be mine.

And I do. I want her to want to be mine. I want her, red hair and tattoos and all, to smile at me the way she does and mean it. I want her to want this bullshit falseness to be torn out from between us and to want something real.

I want that. I want the realness I feel every time she says my name or laughs at me. ’Cause, shit. That’s the best part of her. That laugh. And she laughs so easily. Unless she’s mad at me, there’s a smile on her face and a laugh on her lips.