Tyler
I slept like crap last night. I felt bad after I took out my frustrations on Mira. I shouldn’t have gotten in her face like that. But fuck. Me and Mira living together? That’s messed-up.
There’s no question Mira is in danger. What I want to know is why. She owes money, so sayeth Lewis. I don’t get it. Mira has Lewis’s rich parents to help her out. It doesn’t make sense that she’d turn to a loan shark instead of his family.
I rub my eyes and blink at the ceiling. There’s gotta be a way to fix this. If I can fix it, I can get Mira out of Cali’s place and return my life to normal. My new normal isn’t exactly a peaceful existence—there’s none of that after Colorado—but it’s an escape. Cali’s home has become my safe house, and Mira’s presence has destroyed that.
Cali is right about my drinking, and I’ve been trying to ease up on it lately, but that went out the window last night. I didn’t drink as much as I have been, but I still downed four beers on the back patio before my mind calmed enough for me to drag my ass upstairs and crash.
Everything about Mira has me at peak anxiety, like I could punch a hole in the wall or kick down a door. The kind of pent-up agitation that needs an outlet.
Living with her is going to put me in an early grave. “Christ.”
“You say something, Tyler?” Mira’s lilting voice drifts up from below my loft.
Like I said, no peace.
“Nothing,” I grumble, and sit up, pinching the bridge of my nose.
I put up with my sister and Gen’s crap reality shows, the hogging of the bathroom, but living with Mira is—goddamn, how did I get here?
There was a time when my life was good; not great, but decent. Now…Now I don’t think good is on the horizon.
The scent of spice fills the air, like cinnamon and licorice. I swing my legs to the floor of the loft, my knees near my shoulders since the mattress is on the ground. I reach for a pair of jeans and my gaze lands on the rumpled T-shirt I wore yesterday. Normally, I don’t wear a shirt in the morning.
Fuck it. I’m not changing my ways. If I didn’t change for my fiancée, I’m not changing for Mira.
Cali’s right—I am an asshole. But I already knew that. It became apparent after everything went down in Colorado. I can never fix things with Anna. She’s lost to me forever. But I can get my life together and be a better person than I have been.
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, fighting a headache that’s building with every heartbeat, and glance around. It’s not much up here—a mattress on the floor with a couple of bookshelves built into the wall on either side, my clothes scattered about—but I’ve come to like this place. It’s cramped, and it reminds me I don’t need a lot to survive.
I pull on my jeans and climb down the ladder. I should start paying my sister rent. As a dealer at Blue, she pulled in sweet tips, but all that’s changed. Cali isn’t making as much as she used to, and she and Gen are barely living here anymore. I enjoy irritating them both, but I’m not that big a mooch. I’ll pitch in. I have money saved. A lot, actually. I just didn’t want to be alone. Makes me sound like a pussy, but I needed to return to my roots and regroup after Colorado. There’s something about Lake Tahoe. It’s my hometown, and maybe that’s it.
At the bottom of the ladder, I turn around to find Mira standing in the center of the living room, pulling her long, dark hair into a ponytail.
Her hands pause as she takes me in. She looks away, but not before her gaze trails my bare shoulders to the waistband of my jeans hanging low.
Movement down below has me fighting an adjustment. Fuck.
Maybe walking around without a shirt first thing in the morning isn’t such a great idea. Mira is still a beautiful woman, and that little eye linger sent the wrong signals to my body—which is primed for release this morning, thanks to the anxiety I’m bottling.
Mira brushes past me into the kitchen, dragging a chair with her. She climbs on the bottom rung that supports the legs, and opens one of the upper cabinets, the chair creaking and wobbling beneath her.
Great. She’s going to kill herself all on her own.
“What are you doing, Mira?” My voice comes out irritated. The view she’s flashing me in her pajama shorts is adding to my annoyance.
I drag my gaze from her smooth, shapely legs to the cuts on her arms, the bandages on her head and the tip of her ear. She’s injured, fragile. Only she’s not acting like an invalid. She’s moving around spryly for first thing in the morning. She seems normal, and the male parts of me, fully awake at this hour, agree. It doesn’t matter that I tell myself she’s off limits, the worst possible choice. My body has tuned out that voice.
Fucking biology. How can I possibly still have a physical attraction to this girl?
The black widow occasionally chews off her mate’s head. How’s that for postcoital thanks? Why the hell do we males put up with this? And yet, I’ll need to remind myself continually what Mira was like in high school, because my dick has a mind of its own.
Mira reaches for the top shelf, her shorts riding up higher. The curve of her ass is on full display, her long legs narrowing to delicate ankles. I look up, and she’s glaring at me. “You could help, you know.”
This living together is the worst physical and mental torture I could imagine. “With?”
She points to the top shelf. “I need that mug.”
