He slides his hand down, settling on my chest, his wide palm pressing against the tops of my breasts, his fingers gently tracing my collarbone. My breath hitches in my throat, leaving me in shuddery little whispers I can’t control.

“You want this. I can feel your heart racing.” His lips are on my neck, his breath a hot gust on my skin. “You come to me every night always wanting to help me. Never asking for anything. Why, Jen?”

“You’re my friend.” A shaky exhale leaves me. “I don’t like to see you hurting.”

Colin remains quiet, nuzzling me with his nose, inhaling deep, as if he’s trying to inhale me. I’ve gone completely rigid, stunned by the way he’s acting. I like it, I can’t lie, but he’s also scaring me.

I don’t want to get my hopes up.

“Is that all there is? That I’m just your friend and you don’t want to see me hurting?” He sounds incredulous, as well he should. After what I said to him last night, how I told him I wanted him?

Yeah. He knows I’m full of crap.

“I . . . I don’t know.” God, no way can I admit how I feel again only for him to throw my words back in my face.

Again.

He moves so quickly I gasp, shocked to find him hovering above me, his face close to mine, his hand moving to cup the side of my neck. His eyes are practically glowing as they rove over me. “What the fuck are we doing?”

His bold question shocks me further. I have no idea how to answer, and I close my eyes when he presses his forehead to mine. I can’t look at him. Everything I’m feeling at this very moment is too . . . much.

Colin Wilder is the epitome of too much.

He shifts closer so that our lips practically touch. “I have no idea,” I whisper, my lips moving over his as I speak. His mouth is on mine and then he’s kissing me. Soft, heady kisses that make me dizzy, my lips parting with every brush of his, a whimper escaping me when he draws my lower lip in between his and sucks.

He feels so good, tastes even better, and he shifts against me, his erection brushing the very center of me. We’re perfectly aligned; he could shove aside my panties and be inside me within seconds.

I want it. I want him so bad my entire body is wound tight, feeling like at any given moment I could shatter into a million tiny pieces.

A ringing sounds in the distance and I open my eyes to find Colin staring into them, his gaze full of questions. No way do I want to stop this. We’ve only just begun. He can answer his phone later.

But then I realize the ringing is coming from my cell phone in my room. We can hear it through that thin wall we share. Disappointment crashes over me at the same exact time I see it shade Colin’s beautiful eyes.

Damn it! I have Colin sprawled on top of me naked and my fucking phone is ringing. And it’s the special ring tone that I assigned to none other than my mother, who never, ever calls me. Especially in the middle of the night.

At least in a long time. All of a sudden, I’m filled with a weird sense of déjà vu that leaves me uneasy.

“I—I have to get that.” I shove at his broad mountain of a chest but he doesn’t so much as budge. “It’s my mom.”

He leaps off me as if I burned him with the word and I scramble off the bed, running for my room, but I’m too late. I’ve missed her call. Immediately I dial her number, my heart racing, my head pounding, worry gnawing at my stomach.

“There you are,” Mom answers, her voice slurred.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” I grip my phone tight, dread consuming me. I don’t want to know what’s wrong. Maybe something happened to Dad. There’s really no one else in our family to worry about anymore. And we’ve only just started talking again, my mom and I, though it hasn’t been easy. After I ran away without a word and then Colin found me, I had a difficult time talking to them. I felt too guilty for leaving.

I still remember the night I left. I’d planned my getaway for weeks. Saved up a little money, sold off a few things. I told absolutely no one I was going, though I really didn’t have any friends around who would have cared.

The evening had been cold and my parents stayed up for what felt like forever. Drinking and arguing and crying—yet again—over Danny. I’d put my hands over my ears as I lay on top of my bed. Closed my eyes as tight as I could to drown out their sorrow.

Escaping hadn’t been easy, but it had been the right thing for me at the time. I avoided their calls, my mom’s texts, until I changed my cell number. I gave them no way to find me, though somehow, they eventually did. I think one of Danny’s high school friends saw me at the club.

How embarrassing!

They’re still wrapped up in their mourning for Danny, not that they care what I have to say about it. There are so many things I could tell them. Terrible, horrible things, but I know they wouldn’t hear me. Oh, they’d pretend they were listening, but my words wouldn’t sink in. Besides, my parents don’t really talk. My dad works too much. My mom . . . I don’t know what she’s doing, but I have my suspicions. She’s drinking too much. Drowning her sorrows.

I don’t know how to help her. I don’t want to. It’s incredibly selfish of me to think that way, but I can’t help it.

“Belinda Lambert called me,” she said. “You remember Parker Lambert, right? He was right in between you and Danny, graduated high school the year after your brother did.”

Frowning, I try to place him but I can’t. Sometimes all those kids I went to school with morph into one big blur. And I went to school with pretty much all of them from kindergarten through senior year of high school. Funny how they’re all just a mass of faces now, not a one of them really standing apart. “Why are you calling me in the middle of the night to gossip about local boys?”

She lets loose an irritated sound. I wonder if she’s drunk. It’s not quite two a.m. Has she been at a bar? I sort of can’t imagine it, but then again, I can. She’s done this before. And besides, weirder things have happened these last few years. “I ran into his mom at the Buckhorn. Parker died in Afghanistan, ju—just like your brother.”

Oh God. She’s definitely drunk, considering she was at the Buckhorn, the bar where all the locals hang out in Shingletown, where I grew up. “When . . . when did it happen?”

“A few days ago. Belinda’s devastated. Just devastated.” She hiccups and sobs at the same time and I settle on the edge of the bed, hanging my head as I listen to her go on. Crying over Danny, crying for Parker.

Crying for herself.

She used to call me like this a lot, right after Danny died. I’d worked late-night shifts at one of the diners in the next town over, a real tourist trap where I kept busy, worked plenty of hours, and made great tips. She would call me on my thirty-minute-plus drive home, a little drunk from the wine she consumed too much of at dinner and crying. Always crying over the loss of Danny and how unfair life was.

I’m sick of it. Yes, I miss my brother, but it’s been almost two years. Why can’t everyone just . . . move on? He would be furious to see everyone act like this, especially Colin. I left home for this very reason, and here I am all over again. Surrounded by sadness and despair. I need a change of scenery. I need to find myself without the dark cloak of my brother’s untimely death hanging over me.

As I finally hang up with my mom and crawl into bed without going back to Colin, I realize now more than ever that I need my freedom.

The healing butterfly tattoo on my neck is becoming more and more representative of my life as every day passes.

Colin

We’ve gone back to the way we were, Jen and I. Those few days after she gave her notice and confessed that she wanted me and I basically refused her, those two nights in my bed . . . all of that’s forgotten. We’re back to her working, me working, and the two of us living together but never really talking.