She flipped him her middle finger, gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek, and then bounced away when I gave her a reassuring nod.
“Why don’t you take one of our rooms upstairs while we rehearse? Your door is right across the hall from the basement. You won’t hear us as loud up there.”
I was about to decline his offer when I heard Milton beat on a snare drum. It was like a woodpecker stabbing my temple. “Okay. Which door is my brother’s?” I asked, following him upstairs.
“You might want to take mine or Lexie’s,” he said, opening the first door.
My eyes shot open when I saw a naked brunette spooning a hot-pink pillow.
Liam shut the door quietly and chuckled. “Okay, maybe not Lexie’s.” He walked down the hall to the two doors opposite of each other and held the right one open.
I looked across the hall. “Danny’s is fine,” I insisted.
He chuckled and leaned against his doorframe like he was sure I’d change my mind.
And he was right.
I was in his room for a nanosecond before bolting across the hall into Liam’s, tearing off my socks as quickly and carefully as I could. “I’m going to have to burn these.”
“What for?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, trying to erase the image of the used condoms decorating my brother’s bedroom floor from my memory. I’d spotted handcuffs, too, but I’d rather think they were a souvenir of a time he might’ve gotten arrested instead of thinking about what he actually used them for.
Liam rubbed the back of his neck as I awkwardly sat on the edge of his bed. “I’ve never had a girl in here before.”
I snorted. Loud.
Before I could retort with a witty comment, he took a step forward, carefully placing his leg between mine.
I sucked in a breath and pinched my face.
“It’s true.” He leaned down, and I couldn’t help but angle my body with his, making my elbows drop onto the mattress.
The smell of sandalwood and fresh laundry, like a cotton shirt straight out of the dryer, invaded my senses and distracted me from my pain.
“What are you doing?” I stumbled over the words, but my head was fuzzy from the migraine. It definitely wasn’t the fact that I could feel his breath on my forehead or the small fraction of his stomach lighting my arm on fire.
He stretched further but kept his eyes locked on mine, like he was testing how far he could push the boundaries we had set for each other long ago. The scary part was, we were both too stubborn to be the first to break. I didn’t know how far either one of us would go.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I had been holding, and the smallest grin broke the line of his lips.
Did that mean I’d won? Or lost?
He jerked his arm to the right, and the room went dark, the black blinds hiding almost every bit of sunlight. Only a sliver of light from the window above the bed lit up his path to the doorway.
“Sleep tight, Little Fox. And try not to puke on anything. Okay?”
My head burst again, and I fell back onto the mattress, ignoring him.
I caught a glimpse of his face in the darkness, and it twisted with something I didn’t recognize. Sympathy? Compassion?
He closed the door before I could decipher it.
I had no idea what time it was when I woke up, but it was dark outside, and there was a glass of water sitting on the nightstand. The ice cubes hadn’t melted yet. By some miracle, my migraine had vacated my brain, leaving behind the smallest of headaches.
After tossing back the water, I made my way downstairs and heard some vocals echoing from the basement.
My stomach scolded me loudly for not eating. I found my book bag and dug a blueberry muffin out of the paper sack. Sighing as I readied myself for a late-night cram session, I plopped myself onto the rug in my bedroom and scattered my notes.
