My lifeline of the moment—redoing mundane work that doesn’t actually need to be done.
Anything to avoid watching too closely because it’s what I love about them, and the very thing about them that keeps me from having her.
Chapter Five
Sierra
My thighsstill vibrate from my close encounter of the Morgan kind.
Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Literally.
My lips sting, my head’s foggy, and the imprint of Everett’s goddamn limited-edition ego stick is still scorched into my thigh like some horny souvenir.
But sure.
I can totally survive this impromptu family reunion at the ass-crack of dawn, running on no sleep, too much bourbon, and one half-functioning brain cell—because delusions, or whatever.
Everett Morgan just kissed me.
In the window seat.
Mywindow seat.
The same Everett Morgan who hasn't touched me in eleven years.
The one who never failed to make me feel like I wasthe only person in any room. Those molten brown eyes found me first, and stayed with me always.
And the first time he touches me, he brands me with one more memory for my sacred spot and ruins it spectacularly all in one shot.
My brain is doing that thing where it short-circuits and replays the same three seconds on a loop while the rest of my body just... vibrates.
I haven’t stopped tasting him.
Smokey and intense.
Aged to complete domination since my last sip.
The forbidden love letter wrapped in a warning label keeping me from letting anyone else all the way in.
After all, what’s the point when I already know what the real thing feels like?
God. I'm pathetic. I’m every unresolved feeling I’ve ever had parading around in hiking boots.
And I had done the thing dammit.Thething. The one I thought would save us all by killing this endlessly thrumming connection.
I dated someone else. Someone safe.
Justin.
Bland, beige, perfectly-nice-but-utterly-forgettable Justin.
For a month… the longestyearof my life.
I smiled. I went through all the motions, checking off relationship milestones like the most tedious twelve days of Christmas of what he-who-could-never-be-my-true-love gave to me to prove to Everett I’d moved on.
That we wereimpossible.
That Everett Morgan was just a chapter, not the whole damn book.
