And now here I am, living next door to him and trying to ignore pretty much everything that comes up between us.

My scar. The ghost of Charity’s memory.

The magnetic heat that just magically appears whenever we’re near each other…

Yeah. Lots of ignoring going on.

I wrap a towel around my body and step into the hallway just as Levi steps out of his room. Our eyes meet, and at first it’s really uncomfortable.

Like, Oh crap. I was hoping to avoid you until the end of time.

And then it’s normal.

Like, Hello, old friend whom I grew up with and trust with my life.

And then it’s dangerous.

Like, Can I help you out of your towel and slip you into something more comfortable? Like my bed, perhaps?

The tension in the hallway is hot and foreboding as his gaze strays from my face to every other part of my tiny-toweled body. And I’m checking him out in all his white-T-shirt-worn-jeans hotness, and my thoughts are going no place pure.

I feel the heat in my cheeks as I stare at the way his shirt pulls tight across his chest and molds to his muscles and, just when my body’s getting too hot for a towel, his eyes snap to mine.

It’s uncomfortable again. He goes back into his room and shuts the door behind him.

I stand confused for a second, barefoot and damp in the hallway, trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with us. It’s like we can’t get our chemistry right. It’s either rude and mean, or sad and heavy, or hot and naughty.

Where’s the happy medium?

God damn.

Pixie needs to start wearing a muumuu wherever she goes. I can’t do this seeing-her-half-naked-all-the-time shit. With her long legs and flushed skin and her warm, wet body…

God damn.

I shake my head like that’s going to clear up all the guilt and lust I have warring inside me and exit my bedroom for the second time this morning. I have work to do. I have stuff to fix.

Douche bag Daren is loitering at the bottom of the stairs, making my morning just fucking perfect as I head to the front desk.

“ ’Sup, Andrews?” he says.

’Sup?

He’s a white boy in a polo shirt. ’Sup is he’s a poser.

I don’t respond.

“Is Sarah upstairs?” He scratches his neck.

“She’s busy.” Apparently, I just spew shit sometimes.

“With what?”

Not with me, that’s for sure. Though I could certainly keep her busy and—god damn, Pixie in her towel!

I sigh. “What do you want, Ackwood?”

He narrows his eyes. “Are you two… like… together?”

And now my head is swimming with all the possibilities of “together,” and most of them—hell, all of them—involve no clothes and tangled body parts.

“Why?”

He shrugs, all confident and douchey. “You seem pretty possessive of her; that’s all.”

“Whatever, man,” I say and move past him.

Pixie’s not mine. I don’t care.

I’m not sure where Daren goes after that because I force myself not to turn around. But damn if I don’t want to track him down and put a leash on him.

“Morning.” Ellen smiles at me from behind the front desk.

Haley’s nowhere to be found, so I assume she’s late.

“Morning. I called the alarm company this morning. Here’s the estimate,” I say, handing her a price sheet. “They can come out as early as next week to do the install. You just need to call them back to set up a time.”

“Perfect.” She smiles. “Your To Do list is on my desk. You’re awesome, Levi.”

I purse my lips and nod before heading to her office. I’m not awesome. I’m a loser who calls Pixie names.

But for some reason, Ellen doesn’t hate me.

When my parents split, I didn’t take their separation well. I knew they blamed me for Charity’s death. Hell, I blamed me. But after they left town, things just went even more downhill.

I no longer cared about my grades or school in general. Football wasn’t a problem for me because I got to step onto the field and do my job—and do it well—and step off the field without incident. It was the only thing I didn’t hate about my existence.

But at one of our last games of the season this past winter, I absently looked up in the stands for Pixie and Charity, temporarily forgetting how drastically different my life had become. I searched the stands for my personal cheerleading section, and when reality hit and I realized that I would never see Charity—or Pixie—cheering me on ever again, I just choked.

I couldn’t play. I didn’t want to play.

Not then. Not ever.

I was failing my classes. I was failing as quarterback. I was spiraling down a winding staircase of guilt and grief. And then I got the academic probation notice from Dean Maxwell.

Needless to say, I had no desire to try at anything in life, let alone my studies, so I lost my football scholarship and, therefore, lost my room in the dorms. The day I packed up my things and drove away from ASU in my truck, I was a homeless college dropout without a job or a future.

I was halfway to Copper Springs when I realized I didn’t have a home to go back to. Why I didn’t call one of my buddies to see if I could crash at his place, I’m not sure. Shame maybe? I probably didn’t want to explain how my parents bailed on me because, you know, I killed my sister.

When the Willow Inn showed up on the side of the road, I impulsively decided to stay there for the night and formulate a plan for my future in the morning.

Ellen was at the front desk when I walked inside. I forgot that Pixie’s aunt owned the inn. She knew who I was and she knew I’d almost killed her niece, so she was surely going to kick me out.

“Hey, Levi,” she said pleasantly as she looked at my duffle bag. “Need a room?”

I stared at her warily and nodded.

She smiled and started typing stuff into the computer before grabbing a key.

“How many nights?” She made it sound like I was just an average guest, but I knew twenty-year-old unemployed football players weren’t her typical guests.

“Uh, just one,” I said.

She glanced up, looked at my bag again, and said, “We’re having a two-for-one special right now. Buy one night, get the second free. Want to stay two nights?”

“Uh, sure.” I shifted uncomfortably.

“Follow me.” She led me up to a room, left me in peace, and I dropped on the comfy bed, trying to figure out what the hell my next step was going to be.

The next afternoon, Ellen knocked on my door. “You used to work in construction, right?”

“Yeah.” It had been one of the many summer jobs I’d taken to save up for my truck.

She sighed dramatically. “You don’t by any chance think you could help me fix the downstairs banister, do you?”

I paused, because I didn’t know shit about fixing banisters.

“I’ll give you another night for free for your trouble?” she offered.

“Uh… I don’t really know much about stair rails—”

“Oh, you can do it.” She waved a hand. “You’re smart and strong. I have total confidence in you.”

“I guess I could try—”

“Perfect.”

And that was the beginning.

Ellen kept finding things for me to fix around the inn and kept offering me another free night’s stay for my work. Three weeks went by before I realized I’d been roped into a job that came with room and board.

I tried to bail, but the woman was convincing and, by that point, I was actually starting to like fixing things around the old place. It made me feel… well… not useless.