“Eli can suck my?—”
I cover his mouth with my hand, and his tongue licks my palm, so I yank it away.
“Silas! Gross.”
He chuckles. “But seriously, he’s a douche. Why are you dating that guy?”
“He’s smart. We have a lot in common. I don’t know.” I lift my shoulder. “He’s the first guy who didn’t want to date me to get invited to the football games or parties, so that was nice for a change.”
“You’ve been dating the wrong kind of guys.”
He studies my face, making me feel like I want to kiss him, but also wanting to get away from him before I follow through with it.
“I think it’s time for me to go to bed.” I sit up and stand, and my strap drop, and the front of my pajamaralls open low enough to expose my stomach.
When I look at Silas, his heated gaze is on my bare skin.
Eli doesn’t look at me like this. He’s the only person I’ve had sex with, so I don’t have a lot of experience to compare, but I feel like I’m either doing something wrong—although he’s very much the kind of guy who would tell me if I was doing something wrong—or he’s just not attracted to me. Nothing like the heat in Silas’s gaze is the way Eli looks at me, even when I’m naked.
He looks back up at my face, and our eyes connect. “I’ll get the lights. Good night, Brooke.”
I start to walk toward Charlie’s room and look over my shoulder. “Night, Silas.”
When I shut the door to the bedroom, I glance at the bed and see Charlie sleeping with her phone in her hand and my brother’s face filling the screen. He’s also sleeping. These two are crazy.
I can’t imagine Eli and me doing something like that. He wouldn’t want to disrupt his sleep pattern.
I tiptoe to the bathroom and close the door behind me softly so I don’t wake Charlie. I need to get the little makeup I have on off before I climb into bed, or I’ll look like a raccoon in the morning.
Once I’m done in the bathroom, I climb into bed, trying not to wake Charlie, but I must make some kind of noise because I hear my brother say, “Night, B.”
It makes me smile because I miss him, and I know he feels better when Charlie and I are together. He worries about us both since he’s gone.
“Night, Beck.”
I roll to my side and reach for my phone on the nightstand that I plugged in earlier when it died. Not a single message from Eli. With a sigh, I set it back down and try to fall back to sleep. But every time I close my eyes, I see Silas’s blue eyes staring at me.
SILAS
Did I know she was looking at me? I had a feeling she was, and I hoped she was. I was asleep, but when I felt her shift, I woke up completely. I’m a light sleeper, and then when her hand started moving up and down my arm, I had to decide if I wanted to pretend or let her know I was awake.
Brooke Linson. This girl has had me tied up for a while now. When I first met her, she was still in high school. Beautiful, but too young. Now, I can’t take my eyes off her. And every time she comes over to the house, I find reasons to be near her. Luckyfor me, she’s here more often than not, so I get to see her a lot, which isn’t helping my mad crush on her.
Yeah, she has a boyfriend, but I don’t really give a shit. I was serious about what I said to her on the couch. He’s a douche, and he definitely doesn’t deserve her. Not that I do either, but I’d do a damn good job of making her feel like a queen every day.
In the fall, right as we were getting deep into the season, I realized just how much I was attracted to her. She’s more than a pretty face. And she’s smart, which I find incredibly sexy.
It’s funny because her brother is the opposite of her. Beck has been a broody kind of guy for as long as I’ve known him. Almost like he was carrying something heavy he never learned how to set down.
But he’s a different guy with Charlie and Brooke.
Charlie is definitely the calm to his storm. And Brooke seems to keep him steady. He’s very protective of them both, but in a different way with his sister.
Over the past year of knowing Brooke, I’ve watched her in the small, unguarded moments. The way she listens. The way she grounds a room without trying. She carries a quiet strength that doesn’t ask to be noticed, and I don’t think she realizes how rare that is.
Maybe that’s why I did.
I don’t know where that strength comes from, only that it’s there—steady and sure. And somewhere along the way, without meaning to, I started falling for her in the spaces between conversations, in the moments I wasn’t supposed to be looking.
