“Fine,” she says too sweetly.
Willa is good through and through, but she never could help herself when I pointed it out. She always felt the need to prove she wasn’t intimidated by me. Which is exactly what she does as she grabs the hem of her dress and strips it off in one sweep. Until she’s standing in my room in a bra, underwear, and a torn pair of fishnets.
I spend most of my time at the strip club. But Willa unceremoniously pulling off her clothes is the single hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I’m the one who sounds on edge now.
“Sleeping.” She feigns innocence, hooking her thumbs into the fishnets and pulling them down next. “You don’t mind, right? We’readultsand all?”
She’s fucking baiting me as she tosses the fishnets to the side. Then she grabs her bag and pulls out a T-shirt. Turning her back to me, she sheds her bra, and all that covers her is the tiny strip of her thong. With her back still to me, I only get the slight hint of the curve of her breast from the side, and I’m aching.
My fingers grip the blanket.
She shrugs a T-shirt over her head, then glances back at me, smiling wider when she sees me holding onto the bed for dear life.
“I’m guessing that’s the bathroom?” She juts a thumb to the door at her left, but I can’t form words, so all I do is nod. “I suppose I could have changed in there.”
Willa smirks, grabbing her bag to finish getting ready in the bathroom. But even when the door clicks shut, I still can’t breathe.
This was a bad idea.
5
Willa
At some point inthe middle of the night, the bed warmed. Even with a pillow between us, I felt Dean climb in. He had disappeared before I left the bathroom, locking the door to his bedroom behind him. Part of me expected him to stay gone all night.
I don’t know where he went or what he did, and I don’t want to think about it. But by the time he returned, I was too sleepy for questions, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.
It was the deepest sleep I’ve had in years. While he’s Chaos to everyone else, to me, he still feels like home.
As I should have expected, he was gone again by the time morning rolled around. It was almost as if he hadn’t been here at all. If it weren’t for his rumpled pillow, I might have thought I imagined his warmth in the middle of the night.
I stare up at the ceiling, tracing a small crack from the center to the wall. I don’t know if Dean is avoiding me by waking up this early or if this is normal for him, but it’s for the best. Especially after I made the mistake of stripping down to my underwear for him last night in an attempt to push his buttons.
Something about his calling me out for being a good girl pushes me to my breaking point every time.
Except, we aren’t kids anymore. And what I did last night didn’t feel innocent like the small ways we teased each other when we were younger.
Why am I even bothering trying to tease a man who clearly hates me?
I chose his brother. There’s no forgiving that, and there’s no going back.
Pulling the blanket over my head, I bury myself in darkness, like that can help me hide from this reality I’ve created. The sheets are fresh, smelling of floral detergent. But there’s an undercurrent of oak.
Of Dean.
He’s inescapable. An enigma.
He’s an ex-felon. A merciless biker. And yet, he washed his bed for me. He straightened up his room.
Then there are his walls, lined with photos of his travels. A jar of shells sits on his dresser beside a picture of his mom in a small frame. Beneath the hard exterior is still the guy who once told me he was going to travel to every state and stick his feet in every ocean.
It’s confusing.
My phone buzzes across the room, and I grumble. Maybe if I bury myself a little deeper, I can avoid the world today. I can pretend this moment is something different. I can imagine I’m in Dean’s bed for a different reason.
Closing my eyes, I try to picture it, but I can’t. All I see is Kincaid and the decision that damned us both.
