Page 86 of When the Smoke Clears

She unfastened my pants just as I unzipped her dress. Since we’d already established the quickest way out of our clothes, it didn’t take long. My head swam from the beer and the insane amount of lust that had reached a boiling point. But never did I think the young woman sliding her hand down the front of my briefs (the second-year med student) was seventeen. I dismissed her nerves as nothing more than a long week of anticipation finally coming to fruition.

Everleigh didn’t slow things down or stop me when I lowered to my knees in the entry. Nope. She smacked one hand against the wall to steady herself as her other hand claimed a fistful of my hair.

I replayed every single moment of that night, of the entire week, and not once did I think, “Oh, yeah. That should have told me she was seventeen.”

However, I had the Oh shit, is she a virgin? moment after I put on a condom, then kissed her as I pushed inside of her.

“Go slow,” she whispered in a shaky voice.

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you a—”

She reached for my lips and kissed me as her hips lifted off the bed, forcing me inside of her another inch.

That was it. A tiny moment of doubt. But then she moaned and clawed at my back, kissing me. There were lots of “Oh, gods” and “yeses.” She never told me to slow down or stop.

I dissected that night a million times, looking for something that I had missed.

I wasn’t a spend-the-night kind of guy, but with Everleigh, I no longer knew what kind of guy I was supposed to be.

“Don’t go,” she mumbled, face down on the pillow after I slid out of bed to dispose of the condom.

I grinned. “I won’t.”

When I returned and crawled back into bed, she climbed on top of me, limp like a weighted blanket. I had no objection to sleeping with her breasts pressed to my chest and her legs positioned just so. My dick was inches from finding its new favorite spot.

A few hours later, she stirred, and I reached for another condom on the nightstand.

“Tell me you’ll visit me,” she said, as we moved together.

“I’ll visit you,” I said, not recognizing my voice before I kissed her. God . . . I loved kissing her. Everleigh seemed perfectly suited for me in every way. And I wasn’t that guy because I was a player by nature, or so I thought. I blamed the sex. She couldn’t ask me serious questions while I was inside of her, while my mouth reached for her breast, while her legs wrapped around my waist.

The next morning, I woke to an empty bed. I should go. My thoughts didn’t provoke action because I heard the shower turn off. The door was cracked, and I felt fairly certain she would wrap herself in a towel and return to bed. I lifted my head to see if there was another condom on the nightstand. That’s when her phone chimed from the bathroom.

“Morning, Mom,” she said.

“Hey, sweets. How was the wedding?” She had her mom on speaker. It wasn’t loud, but I could hear if I held still.

“Fun. No hiccups. Victoria looked stunning. Tyler was handsome. The flowers. The food. It was all great.”

“Did you dance with any handsome groomsmen?”

I grinned, rolling onto my side, head propped up on my hand.

“I may have,” Everleigh said.

“Well, I can’t wait to hear all about it. Now, let’s get to the important stuff. What are we going to do to celebrate your birthday next month?”

“I have classes. So probably not much.”

“No way. I’ve already booked my flight. I refuse to miss my baby’s eighteenth birthday.”

What. The. Fuck!

I didn’t even think before jumping out of bed at a five-alarm fire speed, gathering my clothes strewn from the entry to the bedroom, not caring if I had everything. Pants, shirt, and shoes were sufficient. The cops would gather the rest before they came to arrest me and throw me in jail for statutory rape.

“Will?” Everleigh poked her head around the corner as I shoved my feet into my shiny rental shoes, sans socks.

My white dress shirt barely covered both shoulders, and my pants were zipped but not buttoned.