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Until Mikayla.

I could still feel her fingers curled into my shirt. Still taste the red wine and chocolate on her lips. Still see the way she'd looked at me afterward, like maybe she'd forgotten we were pretending, too.

That look had nearly killed me.

The kiss itself had finished the job.

By four-thirty, I'd showered. By five, I'd made coffee. By five-fifteen, I'd checked my phone enough times to qualify as a stalker.

Nothing.

She'd said we'd talk in the morning.

Apparently, we had very different definitions of morning.

I tried making breakfast. Managed three bites of eggs before giving up. Then I paced my house like a man awaiting a jury verdict.

Which was ridiculous.

I was Damon Lockhart. I didn't wait around for women to call. I didn't obsess over kisses. And I sure as hell didn't lose sleep wondering whether a woman was thinking about me.

Yet there I was.

Pathetic.

And annoyingly happy about it.

My house wasn't helping.

I'd built the place five years ago with my family. Exposed beams, reclaimed wood floors, and a massive fireplace. Every inch held a memory. Dad's terrible jokes. Mom showing up with enough food to feed a construction crew twice our size. Dylan accidentally sandblasting a hole through the living room wall.

Dean, who was more than just a numbers-crunching CFO, he also had his general contractor license and had helped me bring the whole thing to life.

It was more than a house.

It was my sanctuary. The one place I didn't have to be Damon Lockhart, charming bastard extraordinaire. I could just be Damon.

Which was why I'd never brought a woman home.

Not one.

Some had taken that personally. To them, it was a challenge. An Everest. They wanted to be the first to cross the finish line and claim the prize, as if being let into my private space was the ultimate sign of trust or devotion.

More than once, I’d been accused of hiding something. What, like a secret family? An altar to the exes? No, it was simpler and sadder than that. I just wanted to keep something for myself.

I’d always imagined I’d bring a wife home, someday. Not a girlfriend, not a fling. Someone permanent, someone who could walk into this house and see the past and the future all at once.

Until last night, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might want to break my own rules for the right person. That maybe, just maybe, Mikayla was the kind of woman you rewrote your whole history for.

And wasn't that a terrifying little development?

One kiss and I was mentally handing over a house key.

Usually, the walls themselves seemed to recognize my moods—embracing me when I needed comfort, offering silence and space when I needed to sort my head out. But today, every molecule of air inside my house felt charged and off, like someone had rerouted all my wiring while I slept.

It was like waking up on Christmas, only ratcheted up to a pitch I hadn’t felt since I was five, and my parents let me sleep in a brand-new sleeping bag on the living room floor so I could be closer to the tree.

I was always the first one awake on Christmas morning, running into my parents’ room, desperate for the day to start. That’s how I felt now, except the presents under the metaphorical tree were all wrapped up in Mikayla Parsons. The anticipation was so thick I could’ve cut it with a knife.