Hunter leaned over and breached my personal space while driving. “What’s that you’re doing with your left hand right now?”

I froze. I was picking imaginary damn lint off of my jeans. Having no response to being caught lying, I simply scowled at him.

He gloated a smile in my direction.

After a few minutes, he sighed. “Let me take you to dinner tonight.”

I ignored him. “Did you take the garter I caught from Anna and Derek’s wedding? I couldn’t find it when I left my hotel room.”

“Nope. Didn’t see it.”

“Damn. I really wanted to keep it.”

Hunter changed the subject back. He really had a one-track mind. “So…what do you say? Let me take you to dinner tonight.”

“No.”

“You’ll let the poor bastard you don’t even like kissing take you to dinner, but you won’t let me take you out?”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“I’m attracted to you. You’re attracted to me. I don’t get it.”

I decided to be honest and not filter my response. “When I was twelve years old, I came home from school early. We had a half-day for parent-teacher conferences. My mom kept a calendar on the refrigerator with all our schedules and activities. With four girls, there was scribble on most days. But that particular day, Mom had forgotten to write that we had a shortened day. Both my parents worked, and I was a latch-key kid, so I walked home from school and let myself in. There was noise coming from my mom’s room, so I figured she’d left the TV on like she sometimes did. I went to turn it off and walked in on my father having sex with one of my mom’s good friends.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

“My father begged me not to tell my mother, swearing it was the one and only time. He said if I told her she’d be heartbroken, and I’d break up the family.”

“That’s shitty. He should have manned up and told her himself, not put that on you.”

“Yeah. I know that now.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Not for a few weeks. One night the woman was over, and I saw the way my Dad was looking at her. I couldn’t let my mom be humiliated like that. I knew it wasn’t a one-time mistake he’d made, even though I was twelve. When I finally told her, he admitted it and said he was in love with her friend. Dad moved out, and Mom went into a state of depression that lasted a really long time.”

“Sometimes doing the right thing sucks.”

I forced a smile. “Yeah.” I stared out the window, watching the trees pass for a while. “My husband didn’t cheat on me, but he also didn’t tell me the life we were leading was funded by money he’d stolen from unsuspecting clients, or that he’d been running a scam for years. Nor did he mention that the penthouse we lived in was on the verge of foreclosure or that he’d run up a fortune in debt on credit cards under my name. I had to move two weeks after his arrest, my bank account was overdrawn, and my credit was complete crap because he’d been having the credit card bills sent to his office and wasn’t paying any of them. Even borrowing money from my mom, I couldn’t get an apartment on my own because of my bad credit. Lucky for me, my wonderful husband’s best friend was very supportive and was nice enough to help me find a place to live. In exchange for that kindness, he thought I should have sex with him.”

“The men in your life have been shit. I get it.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I have definite trust issues. But it’s more than that. I didn’t go away to college like I would’ve liked to because I didn’t want to leave my mom alone. She never asked me to do that. In fact, she pushed me as hard as she could to go away. When I married Garrett, he wanted a stay-at-home wife even though I was just getting my therapy career started. So I left my job because of him. I’m just at a point in my life where I need to focus on me. I love my job. Izzy needs my attention. I can’t get involved with anyone, even if I’m attracted to him.”

Hunter nodded, and I could see from his profile he was disappointed. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“Why go out with Marcus then?”

“You won’t judge me if I’m honest?”

“Never.”

“Because he’s a really nice guy, and although I don’t want to be attached to anyone, I also don’t want to be celibate. I’m not worried about getting lost in him. Does that make sense?”

We arrived at the school for Izzy’s game. Hunter put the car in park and turned to face me. “It makes a lot of sense. All of it. Although, I live three-thousand miles away, and I’m definitely not looking for a relationship either. Just like you have your baggage, I have mine. I’m only in town for two months. We could agree to be not-celibate together—just sex and fun, with an expiration date. It would keep you from fucking some guy you’re not attracted to, and we could get lost in each other in the bedroom only.” He held my gaze. “Think about it. Sex, not love.”

Chapter 14

Hunter

12 years ago

I had no real interest in the party. Not even in the cute little redhead who used her elbows to squeeze her enormous rack together every time she batted her eyelashes at me while we spoke. But Jayce asked me to stick around, at least until the girl he wanted me to meet showed.

My big brother wasn’t a love ’em and leave ’em type of guy. I could count on one hand the number of girlfriends he’d had, even though attracting them was never an issue. Jayce was just the serious type. A lot of that came from the weight he’d carried on his shoulders the last few years before Mom died. He’d refused to live on campus, even though he’d snagged a full ride, including room and board. After she passed, he still wanted to stay home to make sure I had a place to come back to for holiday breaks from school. Our uncle pretty much had to force him to live on campus and try to enjoy himself.

“You want another beer?” Jayce yelled to me from the other side of the kitchen. People were playing beer pong between where the two of us stood.

I shook my can from side to side. Since I’d been nursing it, I still had half left. “I’m good. Thanks.”

He grinned. “Lightweight.”

Jayce made his way back over and leaned against the kitchen sink next to me. He followed the plastic ball bouncing in front of him as he spoke. “Have you talked to Derek lately?”

“Yeah. He’s building a robot or some shit that they do over there in genius land. I’m hoping it’s an anatomically correct female robot he can hump because he never seems to do anything other than study.”

My brother tilted his beer at me. “It’ll all pay off one day. Derek’s gonna be loaded, with a hot wife who thinks his geek ass walks on water. You’ll see.”

I laughed. “We’ll see.”

“How are your classes going?”

Always the big brother. “Good. You?”

“Easy. Nothing left but electives, so I’m spending most of my time tutoring underclassmen for cash.”

Jayce had met the girl he liked through his tutoring job.

“Cash? Are you still charging Pearl, too? You should be taking a different kind of payment by now,” I joked and chugged the rest of my beer. “By the way, who named a girl Pearl twenty years ago? Every time you say her name, I picture you dogging some blue-haired old lady like Mrs. Whitton who lived across the street.”

My brother shook his head and chuckled. “You’re a sick fuck. Mrs. Whitton was eighty-five with a cane. But Pearl is actually her middle name. Probably was her grandmother’s or something. It’s just what everyone calls her.”

One of my brother’s roommates yelled from the yard. “Delucia, come out here. We need someone smart to settle something.”

Jayce tapped his beer can to mine. “Ain’t hard to be the smart one in this crowd. I’ll be back.”

After beer sloshed on my shoes twice from players bumping into the beer pong table, I decided to get some fresh air. Since the backyard was packed, I went out the front, figuring I’d check my phone to see if Summer had left her party yet. Walking out onto the porch, I stopped digging for my phone when I saw two girls strolling across the lawn.

Summer.