Chapter One

Sam

What exactly was the protocol for leaving tampons in a guy’s bathroom? A guy’s freakishly neat bathroom, at that? Well, it was half mine now, so the pristine state wasn’t going to last for long.

I opened and shut the cabinet door a few times, but the pink box stuck out like…well, a bright freaking pink box. Maybe I should have gotten a different box to put them in? Are you seriously debating tampon placement? I let the door stay shut and backed away from the cabinet slowly, like I’d planted evidence or something.

My makeup bag rested on the left side of the sink, but my lotions and army of haircare products I’d need to tame my unruly curls in the southern humidity consumed more than my allotted counter space and one of the newly emptied drawers. Yeah, it practically screamed girl in here.

Screw it, I lived here now, too, and so did my tampons… for all of twelve hours. I walked down the hall to my room, careful to tiptoe past my new roommate’s door, and made it through mine, directly across from it. Just because I was up at six forty-five a.m. didn’t mean he needed to be, and a rude wake-up wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make.

“Time to get up!” Ember sang before she swung into my room, one hand behind her back. Best friend or not, she looked way too happy for this early, glowing from the Alabama sun and things I didn’t want to know about with her boyfriend, Josh. The boyfriend I now quasi-lived with, along with his best friend, Jagger, and the other guy, whose name I could never remember. Three boys. One girl. Well, there were awkward situations and there was me. Ember glanced around at the half-unpacked boxes. “Whoa. Did you sleep at all?”

“A few hours.” Barely at all. “You’re going to wake those guys if you’re not quiet.”

“Please. Grayson got home sometime last night and all three of them went running a half hour ago. Why do you think I’m already so perky?” Her smile gave far more information than I wanted.

Grayson. That’s right. “They left already? They must be part ninja, because I didn’t hear a thing. And as for you two, ugh. I swear. Insane.” And enviable.

She laughed in response and handed me the bag she’d kept behind her back. “Welcome to Alabama!”

“You live in Tennessee.”

“Hey, as a part-time Alabamian…or whatever, I’m allowed to say welcome. Now take your present.” She shook the silver gift bag.

I took it, tossing the crimson tissue paper onto a discarded pile of boxes, then holding up the maroon V-neck tee that spelled out troy across the chest. A smile erupted on my face. “It’s perfect, and I love it!” It had been so long since I’d felt happy that I almost didn’t recognize the emotion.

“New start. New school. New shirt.” She grinned and pulled me into a hug. “I know you don’t start summer classes for another few weeks, but it seemed like a good day to give that to you.”

I gave her a squeeze before I let go. “Thank you. Seriously. If it wasn’t for you telling me to apply to Troy, or for Jagger offering to let me live here, or Josh helping me pack all that furniture…”

“That’s what we’re here for. Oh! I almost forgot.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pajama pants pocket. “Wi- Fi password. I know you have a Skype date with your mom. You ready for coffee?”

“Hell, yes. Is that even a question?”

“Never,” she answered, already headed down the hallway.

The apple reflected in my dresser mirror as I red up my laptop. I connected to the Wi-Fi. “Flyboys. Of course,” I muttered with a laugh, and signed into Skype three minutes early.

She was already on.

The computer rang and I answered, Mom’s face coming into focus a few seconds later. She looked tired as she unzipped her multicam top and hung it over the back of her chair, leaving her in a tan T-shirt.

“Samantha, baby. How are you?” she asked with a wan smile. Her walls in Afghanistan were bare except for a framed picture of my high-school graduation.

“I’m good.” I propped my laptop against the dresser. “Halfway unpacked. How are you?”

“Long day here, but holding up just— What on earth are you wearing?”

I glanced down and back up at her. “Um…pajamas?”

I had outfits that made these boxers and tank top look downright prudish.

“You cannot wear pajamas like that now that you live with men. Go buy some proper pajamas.”

“Or I could skip right to a bundling bag or a chastity belt, Mom.”

She gave me the look. “Don’t get smart. I’m only suggesting that you show a little less skin and a little more common sense.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered in song.

“Samantha.”

I sighed. “I’ll go today, Mom, but your whole theory is hugely antiquated.”

“Just make me feel better, okay? I’m already not too keen on the boy roommates, or you shipping off to the middle of nowhere Alabama to go to college.”

“Well, this college said yes, unlike the other twenty I’ve applied to.” My fingers stroked across the silver lettering on my new shirt.

“And whose fault is that?” she barked.

My eyes snapped to hers. “You don’t think I know? I’m doing everything I can to make up for what happened. I got into a real college like you demanded, I’m on my own, and I’m looking for a job today. I can’t go back and change last year.” I would if I could. Regret was a nauseating constant in my life. “If I pull good grades, I might have a chance of getting back into Colorado for spring term.” If I can face them.

Her hands covered her face as she sighed. “I’m sorry. I hate you going through this when I’m not there.”

“I don’t need you to save me, Mom. I only need you to cut me a little slack.” An inch would be nice. Just once.

“Maybe I gave you too much slack to start with.”A knock sounded at her door. “Come in,” she answered, immediately straightening in her chair. I’d learned a long time ago that she was really two women, my mom and—

“Colonel Fitzgerald?” A nondescript head popped through her door.

Yup, her, Colonel Fitzgerald, my mother’s alter-ego.

“Captain, I’m talking to my daughter, can this wait?” Her tone implied so.

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, but it can’t.”

“Then I’ll be right there.”

My shoulders dropped a little bit.

She turned back to me with her I’m-sorry-Sam smile. “Samantha, I’m—”

“Sorry,” I completed with a forced smile. “I know, Mom. Duty calls. Same time tomorrow? Maybe you want to chat about my class options?”

“That should work, baby. I’m so proud of you for pulling yourself back up. I have to go.”

“Bye.” I waved and clicked the little red button that ended our conversation. She drove me nuts, but it had always been just the two of us. She’d put herself through hell raising me while climbing ranks in the military, always looking up to Marcelite Harris, the first African American Major General.

I had the distinct feeling she’d top her as the first Lieutenant General.

As long as I didn’t stand in her way.

My email dinged, updating from the last twenty-four hours I’d been offline. I passed over sale alerts and a couple personal items before I saw one with How Was Your Move as the subject line from Apoole@gmail.com. I clicked in curiosity and gasped.

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT STATE YOU MOVE TO. YOU’RE STILL A WHORE.

I deleted the email and slammed the screen to close the laptop, my pulse leaping. How far did I have to go to get away? You’d think after the last nineteen times this happened, I’d stop opening unknown emails. I’d even created a new email address, but then they started showing up in that one, too.

I brushed it off, or at least tried to. New day. New start. New School. Like Ember said. Would she feel the same way if she’d known what I’d done? I hadn’t even told my mother, just glazed it all over as bad grades and moved on. Some things were too ugly to let out into the light.

The hardwood oor was cool beneath my feet as I headed down the stairs to the kitchen. The morning looked nice and cool through the sliding glass door, but I’d already learned that there wasn’t much cool about southern Alabama in May. It was already hot, and about to get hotter.

There was no sign of coffee, or Ember, but there was a note: Looks like the guys are out of coffee, go gure. I’ll grab some and come right back. I hope you had a good convo with your mom.

As if on cue, my head started to pound, like it knew I’d denied it the caffeine it was sorely addicted to. I rubbed my temples and opened the cabinets slowly, taking stock of where everything was.

It was as neat as my bathroom had been before I moved in, everything in precise, spotless order. I couldn’t remember Josh or Jagger ever being this clean. I opened the second top cabinet after the sink and glimpsed the coffee cups, and two shelves higher, a box of K-cups.

“Sweet salvation,” I muttered, reaching on tiptoes but barely grazing the bottom of the shelf. Crap. I couldn’t reach it. I dragged a chair across the tile and braced the back against the cabinets. Why the hell did they go all the way to the ceiling? Who were they expecting to put away the dishes? Kobe Bryant?

Okay, this wasn’t too high. I could do this. One knee at a time, I kneeled up onto the granite and reached with my fingers but still couldn’t touch the coffee. I moved the drainer, where a few cups were drying, and gingerly stood up on the counter, grasping the center support of the cabinets so hard that the edges of the wood left imprints on my skin.

Keeping my death grip on the cabinet with one hand, I reached with the other until I had hold of the box. “Got it!” Ha! Take that, Kobe.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I jumped, but maintained my balance. Good girl. “Reaching for the coffee, what does it look like?”

He stood to the side of me, dripping sweat, his massive, bare arms crossed over his even bigger chest. Holy shit. What did this guy do? Bench cows before breakfast and then eat them? By the time my eyes dragged themselves up the cut lines of his shiny muscles to his face, I was lightheaded. Breathing might have helped.

His jaw was cut and as strong as the rest of him, and those lips…well, if they weren’t pursed together like he’d tasted something sour, I’m sure I would have been just as enthralled. His nose was as straight as the stick up his ass, but it was his eyes… They were narrowed in suspicion, and the slate gray color cut straight through me. I’d never seen eyes that color before, that hypnotizing, or that serious.

He waved his hand in front of his face and shook his head. Crap. He’d been talking while I was ogling. “I’m going to crush his skull, I swear. Look, I don’t know who you are, but I know you don’t belong here.”

“What?” I stepped back toward the dish drainer.

“Which one is it? Because they both have girlfriends. Great girls who don’t deserve the shit storm you just dumped on them, so which one is it?”

The veins in his huge neck stood out.

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” He was hot, but maybe a touch psycho?

“Jagger or Josh? Which one brought you home with them?”

My eyebrows puckered. “Both, I guess?” Something was way off.

“You’re sleeping with both of them?” His voice echoed off the tile and ricocheted through my heart.

My head snapped back like he’d struck me. “What the hell gave you that idea?” I hugged the coffee to my chest in case the word whore had been tattooed across my boobs or something.

“You’re barely dressed in my kitchen at seven in the morning.” My kitchen, the eyes…this had to be Grayson. Holy hell, couldn’t Josh have any ugly friends? My skin tingled where his eyes raked over my flesh, but he squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. “You could at least put on some clothes. People live here.”

Blood heated my face. Thank God my complexion didn’t show the blush easily. “Yeah. People like me!” My chest tightened.

“What—”

“Why do you jump to the conclusion that I’m sleeping with them? Because I’m a girl in your kitchen on a Sunday morning? Let me tell you something, I don’t care how hot you think you are—” I shook my finger and let go of the cabinet in the process, taking another step away from him. “You don’t get to make assumptions about me!”

“Hey, Grayson—” Jagger called out, and I turned to look as he walked into the kitchen.

I squawked as my foot slipped in a puddle of water and I pitched forward. My knee slammed into the granite, and my balance shifted over the side of the counter…and into Grayson. He caught me without complaint, rolling me into his chest with one arm tucked securely under my knees and the other behind my back. We locked eyes, and something in me shifted from hot and angry to hot and…not so angry. No. Don’t you dare.

He arched one dark, perfect eyebrow.

“What?” I fired out of self-preservation. “I’m not going to say thank you, if that’s what you’re waiting for. Not when you all but called me a whore.”

“I did not use that word!” His mouth dropped open. Yep. I was right. Those lips were full, soft, and way too close to mine.

Jagger laughed. “Well, I’m glad you two are getting acquainted.”

“What are you talking about?” Grayson red back, his voice vibrating through my body.

“He’d like to know what the hell I’m doing in your house and which one of you I’m sleeping with,” I growled.

Jagger bit into an apple and swallowed, then let out an impossibly impish grin. “Sleeping with? Holy shit. No. Grayson, meet Sam, our new roommate.”

Thank God my feet were ready, because Grayson all but dropped me. “Sam is a guy,” he said slowly.

“I most certainly am not.”

He steadied me, his hands on my hips, and then nearly ran behind the breakfast table like he needed to fend me off with a chair. What. The. Hell.

“Obviously,” he replied, those silver eyes huge like I’d scared him.

“Why are you so surprised?” I blew an errant curl out of my eyes. Oh God. What if he didn’t want me here? Would Jagger let me stay?

“You never said Sam was a girl,” he accused Jagger.

Jagger chewed another bite. “Dude, Sam has always been a girl. You said you were cool with this.”

Grayson flipped out his phone and flicked through screens. “No. Let me read these. ‘Hey man, is it cool if our friend Sam takes the other bedroom? We’re old friends from Colorado, and Josh is cool with it.’”

I took my prized K-cups to the machine. If I was putting up with this bullshit, I was sure as hell going to need coffee. “Yep, I’m Sam, short for Samantha, a.k.a. the friend from Colorado.”

“And you’re a girl.”

I tilted my head and smirked. “Apparently.”

“You’re not sleeping with either of them.”

“Nope.”

“And I just…” He squeezed those amazing eyes shut and took a breath before opening them again. “Samantha, I’m incredibly sorry for what I implied.”

Oh, look, he can apolo—

“But if you could put some clothes on, that’d be great.”

So much for him removing the stick from his ass. He nodded his head, pursed those beautiful lips, and retreated toward the front door, muttering something about the gym.

“What the hell is his deal?”

Jagger’s grin was a step past shit-eating to downright comical. “No clue, but that’s the most worked up I’ve ever seen the guy, and I’ve lived with him for almost a year. Way to go, Sam.”

“That’s not a compliment.” I spooned sugar into my steaming cup of coffee. “I really need to pick up honey, and please tell me you have creamer.”

“Ember lives here every other weekend,” he replied, moving past me to the fridge, then handed me a bottle of Amaretto creamer.

“Thank God for little things.”

“Sweet and blonde,” he commented with a wink. “Just like I like my women. Oh, a letter came for you yesterday. I left it on the entry table. Make yourself at home, and welcome to Alabama, Sam.”

He patted me on the back and left me sipping my coffee as I headed toward the front door. Sure enough, a letter addressed to Samantha Fitzgerald from Troy University sat on the polished wood.

I balanced my cup as I opened the letter, hissing as the skin of my thumb split. I popped it into my mouth and set my coffee down, opening the letter with my empty hand. The sweetest pressure settled in my chest as I unfolded it. This was my fresh start. This was my hope.

“Dear Ms. Fitzgerald,” I started to read along. Then stopped.

No. No. NO.

How? They’d admitted me. They’d promised me a clean slate, that my grades from last semester wouldn’t matter. They would start me on academic probation and then let up when I did well this first semester.

“Sam?” Ember asked, balancing two cups of coffee as she stood in front of me. I hadn’t even registered her coming in. “Are you okay?”

Failure stung like a bitch. Oh wait, that was my thumb. “Shit.” I squeezed the skin, opening the paper cut, and almost laughed when I saw it wasn’t bleeding. Anything that hurt that badly should at least give you something to show for it.

Kind of like the last two and a half years I’d wasted in college.

My voice didn’t shake, or hold any tone. It was as numb as I was.“Upon further review of your transcript, we regret to inform you that we cannot accept you into Troy University.”

It doesn’t matter what state you move to. You’re still a whore.

Chapter Two

Sam

“Sam? Let me in.” Ember knocked for the hundredth time.

“Go away,” I answered, my head tucked between my knees as I leaned back against my bed. Breathe in. Breathe out. This will pass. It has to.

“That’s so not going to happen,” she called through my bedroom door. “Let me in.”

Let her in? To what? The absolute mess I’d made of my life? Another school rejection. Another chance…lost. God, what if it was my last chance? What if this was it? No college was going to accept me, not when my records came with that giant black mark. Every carefully constructed plan, dream… gone. Again.

And maybe I deserved it for what I’d done.
My stomach rolled and saliva pooled in my mouth.

I bolted to my feet and threw open the door, tripping past Ember as I raced to the bathroom. The bath mat cushioned my knees as I fell and curled over the toilet in time to bring up what little coffee I’d managed to drink.

Ember pulled a curl from my face as I dry-heaved, the pain nothing compared to the shredding my heart was taking.

“Here,” she whispered, handing me a cup of water as I flushed the toilet.

I swished and spit, keeping my eyes on the cup.

“Is this why you’ve lost weight?” she asked as we sat on the bathroom floor, leaned back against the tub.

“I haven’t—” She cut me off with a glare. “It’s been hard lately,” I finished.

“You’ve been my closest friend since we were thirteen, Sam. I want to help.” She reached for my hand and squeezed my fingers.

The irony was almost funny. I hadn’t even told my best friend, and here she was, desperately trying to help me. But if she knew? No. Ember would never understand. She planned out every minute detail of her life and controlled every situation she found herself in. Ember was a fixer.

I was a wrecker, in more ways than one.

I slid another brick into the wall I’d been building between us and forced a smile. “Nothing you can do, Ember, really. I have to figure this out for myself.”

“What are you going to do? Do you want to come back to Nashville? You can stay with me until your mom comes home.”

Fuck my life, what was I going to tell Mom? My stomach turned over, and I breathed through the need to heave, reminding my body that it had just done that, thank you very much.

She’d lecture. She’d judge. She’d be disappointed. And if she really knew? She’d say, “I told you so.” And she’d be right.

To hell with that.

“No. I’m staying,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “I’m staying right here.” Are you convincing Ember or yourself?

“Okay?” She tilted her head to the side.

“I’ll get a job, work through the summer, and keep applying to schools.” And keep opening rejection letters.

“Okay.”

“There’s a ton of places I can apply to for a job down here, and maybe with a solid work reference, I’ll have a better chance at getting back into a good school.” The more I spoke, the faster my words came, like my brain was vomiting because my stomach couldn’t.

“Okay.” She nodded her head slowly.

“Right. That sounds like a plan. Work. Apply to schools. Get in. Get my life back.”

“Okay…”

“Will you stop saying okay?” I snapped. “It’s not okay. It’s shit, but it’s the best I can do, and it’s not like I didn’t do this to myself, right?” Staying here? Was I nuts? You will not go back to Mom with your tail between your legs.

Ember sighed. “People flun—” Her eyes widened. “Shit. I mean, people leave college all the time. It’s not the end of the world.”

I rolled my eyes. “Flunk. You can say it. I flunked out of college. Flunk-a-fucking-roo, there went two and a half years of my life down the toilet.” My head fell back, knocking the glass of the sliding shower door.

Silence stretched between us, more uncomfortable than the tile floor currently making my ass numb.

“You can talk to me about it, Sam. Holding it in isn’t doing you any good.”

The last tether holding me to my civility, my reason, snapped. “No, I can’t. Because you weren’t there. You left. You were my best friend, and you got into Boulder for Riley, and you left. And that was okay, because I was happy for you, and I wanted to stay in the Springs. But then you quit returning calls, and I know it wasn’t on purpose, you got… busy. You can’t tell me you didn’t feel that distance.”

She looked down at her hands. “I’m so sorry. I got caught up in Boulder. I didn’t mean for us to grow apart. It just happened.”

“I know. It happens to a lot of high-school friends, I just never thought it would happen to us. And then your dad died…” My words failed.

“And you took me in and put me back together, no questions asked.”

I shook my head. “That wasn’t what I meant…no. You are my best friend, and the closest thing I have to a sister. Hell, you were my sister that year I lived with you during Mom’s last deployment. Of course I was there for you when your world fell apart. I wasn’t going to let you go through that alone. When you’re around, we skip over what we’ve missed, and go back to being us, but you left again. You got into Vanderbilt, and I’m so proud of you, but you weren’t there, you didn’t see…” I took a deep breath. “Things happened. I did bad things.” My throat closed. “I made stupid choices, and this is all on me.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” She extended the olive branch.

“I’d rather shower.” I flashed the fake smile and burned her tree to the ground. “After all, a girl’s got to look her best to nail a job, right?”

Her gaze dropped to the floor as she stood. “Absolutely. I’ll jump online and see who’s looking.”

Ember, the xer. “No, girl. You never get to see Josh. Go spend time with him. I’ll be out in a little while.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

She squeezed my hand and left me to my shower. I held in the tears until I stood naked under the scalding hot spray. Then I let them loose, sobs racking my body as the water all but burned my skin.

It didn’t matter how long I scrubbed, I couldn’t get clean enough to get him off me or out of my life.

I gave myself those moments and let it all in, absorbing the shittiness of the situation and making peace with what I’d lost. “The only constant is change.” That’s what Mom always said, usually followed by, “Now embrace the suck. There’s work to do.”

But maybe the work could start tomorrow, because all I wanted to do today was forget.

Chapter Three

Grayson

Sam was a girl. Samantha.

Check that. Not a girl—a woman, and damn it, not only was she beautiful, but I noticed. Not noticed like Paisley or Ember, but in the way where my body woke up and paid attention.

She’d climbed up onto the counter, her incredible ass nearly peeking out of those tiny pajama shorts, all curves and skin that looked like warmed-over honey. Maybe it tasted— Oh, hell no!

The door slid home behind me as I got out of the shower. My hands gripped the counter and I took a good, long look in the mirror. “Get a grip. She’s your roommate.” Don’t lie. She’s a woman. A woman you’re attracted to.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been attracted to another girl who wasn’t Grace, but it was the first time I’d had to physically restrain myself from doing something about it. Avoid her. I could do that. Hell, I’d made it to lunchtime without seeing her, so this couldn’t be too hard.

Then I looked down.

Boom. I’d gone back to living with four sisters. Sam’s rainbow of girl stuff took over half my sink. Shit. Our sink. Okay, maybe avoid wasn’t really going to work as a strategy. But I wasn’t fifteen, and hell, I’d been with Grace then anyway. It wasn’t like I actually liked this girl, I could get over an annoying chemical attraction.

I’d have to treat her like she was one of my sisters. Yeah. A sister. I could do that. But none of my sisters looked like that.

The door swung open. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she squeaked, her arms full of bottles. How much more bathroom stuff did she have? Her eyes sparked, impossibly green, wait, hazel, nope, definitely green, as she skimmed over my body, and given the way her lips parted, she liked what she saw.

My jaw clenched as I ripped my eyes off the line where her short bathrobe met her thighs. This towel was about to—Sister. Think sister. “Knocking is something we should probably make a habit of.”

She blinked rapidly, her eyes rimmed red—why hadn’t I noticed that before?—and backed out of the bathroom. “You’re right. So right.” She shut the door behind her, and I heard a thud in the general area her head would have been.

Damn. I hoped I wasn’t the one to put the tears in her eyes. We were off to a fan-fucking-tastic start.

I didn’t need to shave on a Sunday, so I could get dressed and get out of here…except that I hadn’t brought a change of clothes in with me. I let out a huge breath and counted the ceiling tiles until my body was under control. Looked like Samantha wasn’t the only one who needed to adjust.

The hallway was mercifully empty, and I made it to my room without seeing her, or having to justify that I was now the one who needed to put clothes on.

Clothes, Powerade, and a ham sandwich later, I settled in at the kitchen table with my Apache Helicopter 5&9 flashcards, mentally quizzing myself over fuel pressure limitations.

“You know we don’t even start the Apache course until next month, right?” Jagger asked, reaching for a drink from the fridge.

“I heard there’s a test on the first day, and if you fail, you’re out.” I flipped the next card over.

“I’ll say again—a month.”

“Yeah, well, not all of us have a photographic memory to depend on. Some of us actually have to work for it.”

He slapped his hand across his chest. “You wound me. Besides, last time I checked, you were the one who graduated top of our class during Primary.”

“I wasn’t distracted by a girl.” Shit. I closed my eyes and tried to rewind time thirty seconds. My foot lived in my damn mouth today. The problem with always being honest was it bordered on insulting. I was working on it. I counted to three and looked up to see him waiting with a smirk. “Not that Paisley isn’t worth it.”

He laughed. “I’d have failed flight school if it meant keeping Paisley. Come to think about it, you’d better study your ass off. I’m taking you down.” He drew out the last word like a movie villain.

I flipped another card. “Challenge accepted.” I’d take him down in the air. Jagger might beat me academically, but I could outfly a fucking bird. It was a good thing my instincts and reflexes were rock solid, because I had to fight tooth and nail to keep academics up, which was fine with me. Things that came easy were seldom worth it.

Besides, if the army found out why it was so hard for me…well, they wouldn’t let me so much as finger the throttle on an Apache.

The cards flipped by along with the minute hand, then the hour hand. The door opened and shut a few times, but I kept my eyes locked on the cards until the house was empty and my cell phone rang out with Pat Greene. My scheduled four-hour study session was over.

I silenced the alarm, closed up the cards, and slipped them back into the little box I kept in the cabinet above the coffee mugs. My eyes trailed upward to the extra boxes of coffee, and my chest tightened in a heartbeat of panic, envisioning Samantha slipping on the counter. I quickly switched my study box with the coffee, bringing it to her level. Another adjustment.

My phone rang. I checked the caller ID, and my stomach dropped.

“Miranda?” I answered.

“Hey, Gray.” Her soft Outer Banks drawl pulled me into North Carolina like she’d physically tugged.

“Everything okay?”

“Absolutely. I wanted to call you with the baby news. We’re having a girl!”

“That’s great, Miranda. Your family must be thrilled.” Grace would be over the moon for a niece.

“Everyone is pretty excited. Are you going to stop in when you’re home for your birthday?”

I opened my mouth but wouldn’t lie, and didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. An awkward silence fell between us.

“Gray, we still think of you as family.”

I tried to swallow past the knot in my throat. “I know. Same here.” I also knew I didn’t deserve it.

“We’re hoping to bank her cord blood, for the stem cells.”

I scrubbed the surface of the counter, taking out a stain like I could do the same with the last five years. “Yeah, I’ve heard that’s a thing now.”

Call waiting beeped, and my shoulders softened. “Hey, Miranda, that’s Mom. I have to go. Congrats on the girl, and I’ll catch you later, okay?”

“I’ll give Grace your best.”

“Tell her I’ll see her soon.” Two weeks.

I clicked over, hitting “speaker,” and rested the phone on the counter as I took ingredients out for dinner.

“Well, I thought you might stand me up,” Mom answered, her accent drawing out the final word.

“I’m three minutes late, Mom. That’s hardly being stood up. Besides, when have I ever stood you up to cook Sunday dinner?”

“Never. That’s why you’re my favorite son.”

That almost made me smile. “I’m your only son.”

“Well, that secures your position in my heart.”

“Is that Gray?” Mia asked in the background.

“It is,” Mom answered.

“Hey, Mia,” I said as I started to trim the chicken. “Dustin Marley asked me to prom!” she squeaked.

“Dustin Marley is like five years old, and so are you, for that matter,” I answered, wondering if I’d need to bury the body of a teenage boy in a couple weeks when I went home. Eighteen-year-old girls shouldn’t be going to prom. Ever.

“Oh, whatever. I’m off to go dress shopping with Parker. I miss you, Gray!”

“Tell Parker nothing above the knee,” I replied. “She may be twenty-one, but you’re not.”

Mom burst into laughter. “He’s right. Your sister has horrid taste, Mia. Text me a picture before you so much as think of buying a dress.”

“Yes, Mama,” she sang as her voice faded.

“She’s eighteen.” I sighed, filleting the chicken.

“Tell me about it.Your father’s been fending the boys off for years, and you know she’s his baby. He’s been polishing the shotgun since she told him. I’m mixing bread crumbs, where are you at?”

“Finishing the last fillet. I didn’t get them thin enough last time.”

“Take your time, no one likes dry chicken. I was thinking maybe we’d try coq au vin next week?”

I washed my hands, thinking over the dish. “That takes a little longer, but I think it’s doable. Or maybe we could make brownies?”

“You’re not getting that recipe out of me, Grayson Masters.”

“It was worth the try.” Those brownies were epic.

“Keep trying. Maybe when you’re in for your birthday we could make them for a party—”

“No,” I snapped, and she sucked in her breath. Shit. “I’m sorry, Mom, but you know how I feel about that.”

Oil sizzled in the background. She’d started browning her breaded fillets. I turned up the heat on the stove, not far behind.

“I know, Grayson. I just thought it’s been five years, maybe something had changed.”

“It hasn’t,” I answered, careful to keep my tone soft. The sounds of frying chicken popped between us. “Well, in that case, I’ll ll you in on the gossip.”

She launched into the latest news, or what she qualified as news. In Nags Head, North Carolina, everything in the off-season counted as news, but it was slimmer pickings once the tourists arrived. I listened, rapt, 814 miles away while she worked in a kitchen that would t in half of this one but served just as many people.

“How are things down South?”

I placed the browned fillets in the baking dish and spooned marinara over them, finishing up dinner while I filled Mom in on the random duties I was assigned to right now, but was careful to leave out anything flight-school related.

“Did you hear that Miranda is having a girl?” she asked. My hand froze momentarily.

“She called.”

“Tess sure has her heart set on those stem cells.”

“She’s Grace’s mom, of course she’s going to hope. I also know there’s not one clinical trial that she’ll qualify for.”
I pictured the soft narrowing of her eyes, knowing that she’d pushed me into territory she couldn’t follow. She changed subjects.

“So when will we get you for more than a weekend?”

“I think over the Fourth of July, but don’t hold me to it.”

Do not mention my birthday.

“You should bring a couple of your friends home with you,” she suggested as I covered the dish.

“I’ll think about it.” And I would. For about thirty seconds.

“Walker!” Jagger yelled, flinging the front door open with a phone to his ear.

“He’s not here,” I answered. “Hey, Mom, I have to go.” Hot air from the oven blasted my face as I slid the baking dish in and set the timer for an hour.“Same time next week?”

“Coq au vin,” she answered, and an ache hit my chest when I pictured her smile.

“It’s a date.”

“Fuck!” Jagger answered, hanging up his phone after I did the same. Good thing—Mom wouldn’t let him in the front door with that mouth. “Were you talking to him?”

“No, my mom.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Huh. I figured you hatched out of a rock or something.”

“Very funny.” It wasn’t his fault. I let them in as far as they needed for their sakes, not mine, and no further. “What do you need Walker for?”

“He’s not answering his phone.” He tried one more time, nodding his head absentmindedly to the beat of Josh’s ring- back.

“Still not there. Can you drive a stick shift?”

I arched an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

“Yeah, well, I need you to drive Sam’s car home.” He glanced over my shoulder at the timer on the oven. “We have more than enough time before your precious cuisine burns.”

“Where is Sam’s car, and why can’t she drive it?”

He sighed. “Oscars.” He named the local flight-school bar. “And she passed driving standard two hours ago.”

Chapter Four

Sam

I felt alive. And drunk.

Whatever, it was awesome, and a hell of a lot better than crying into my pillow over stuff I couldn’t change. No matter what I did, my life was now defined by one stupid mistake.

A mistake that had felt like the first rational decision I’d ever made—and burned me worse than half the stupid shit I’d ever pulled.

“Can I buy you a shot?” a half-attractive guy asked, coming into my field of blurred vision and checking out my girls. There was a way hotter guy behind him, but he wasn’t looking my way, and truthfully, I wasn’t interested in anything but drinking.

“Yes!” I gave him my hundred-mega-watt grin, pushing every dark thought far enough back that I could drown it with alcohol. “Tequila?”

The bartender lifted her eyebrow at me, and I mirrored the expression. What? Ember had left for Nashville a couple hours ago after not even having a single drink with me, and I didn’t need another babysitter. The bartender shook her head and slid the shot across the bar with salt and lime. I slammed it back, savoring the burn and anticipating the numb that would quickly follow.

I was so sick of feeling. Hoping. Trying.

“So what’s your story? You a local? Because I haven’t seen anything nearly as hot as you are around here.”

I took in his crew cut, arrogant grin, and West Point ring on his left hand. “Nope, Lieutenant, I’m a transplant, and entirely out of your league. But thank you for the shot.” Crap. I think that came out more slurred than intended.

“Is there anyone we can call for you?” the hot one asked, tearing his eyes off the football game playing on the big screen.

“Do I look like a baby who needs a sitter?” I spat back, my head feeling blissfully detached from my body.

“Hell no,” the mediocre one answered. “Not with those curves.”

The hot one glared at the mediocre one. “You look like you might need a ride home.”

“Well, I don’t. Thank you.” Home. Like I even had one of those. No, just a collection of different houses Mom moved us to at duty stations. But I did have Jagger’s house. Shit. Did I bring my house key? I hadn’t attached it to my key ring. Jagger was going to be pissed if I lost it on the first day.

“Bateman?” Hot one asked.

Shit, I’d spoken aloud.

“You know him?”

A strange smile flirted across his face. “You could definitely say that.” He nodded to the bartender and then stepped outside.

Another shot and a cut-off warning later, the jukebox cranked, and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” raced through my veins. Dancing. Yes, dancing would be awesome. My fingers dug into the bar as I hoisted myself onto the barstool.

“Holy shit.” The guy muttered. I was past caring that my miniskirt probably didn’t cover my ass at this angle. “Need a hand?” He reached up and helped me step onto the bar.

The bartender rolled her eyes, and I almost missed the nod she exchanged with the hot one as he walked back in, but it was there. Whatever.

I moved my body to the beat, letting it rule my movements and leaving everything else behind for a song, then two. My top drifted above my waistline as I raised my arms.

“Okay, Coyote Ugly, it’s time to get down.” Jagger’s voice made me giggle, and I looked down to see his half- amused face.

“What? It’s not like I haven’t seen you drunk on the bar a few times.”

“Which is why I’m not giving you shit, Sam.” He shook his head. “But I can’t say the same for Grayson.”

I stiffened like he’d tossed cold water over me. Grayson stood a few feet away, his thumbs tucked into his pockets and his face unreadable. I refused to be embarrassed…right?

“Let’s go,” Grayson snapped.

A sly smile spread across my face. “If you want me to go, come up here and get me.” There was no chance an uptight jerkface like him was going to do that. A muscle in his jaw ticked a second before he climbed up onto the barstool and then consumed the bar. He was huge. “Will this thing even support you?”

“Now.”

I moved back, but before I could take a step, he pulled me up against him and into his arms. “We’re not repeating this morning.” He jumped off the bar with me in his arms, barely jarring me as he landed on his feet.

“How King Kong of you.”

“I wasn’t the one climbing up there in the first place.” His grip tightened on me as he strode out the door into the evening air. “Thanks for calling us, Carter,” he tossed to the hot one. Well, next to Grayson, he was a pale second.

I bet everyone was a pale second against Grayson.

Jagger walked out behind us, my purse in hand, which he handed to Grayson. “What? Like I can’t handle my own purse?” I giggled.

“You’re not getting near your keys,” Grayson growled.

“I never said I was driving,” I argued, trying to wiggle against his iron grip.

He glared down at me, his lips impossibly close. His mouth opened like he wanted to say something, but thought better of it and snapped it shut. He unlocked my car, still carrying me, and then dumped me into my front passenger seat.

“She’s not usually like this,” Jagger said as Grayson shut my door. “You got her?”

I opened it back up in time to hear Grayson say, “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d want her puking in the truck.”

“Amen.”

“Stop talking like I’m not right here.”

“Trust me, we’re well aware that you’re here, princess,” Grayson snapped, promptly shutting the door in my face again.

He slid behind my wheel, cursing my height while the seat took precious seconds to move back to accommodate him.

“Maybe my car doesn’t like you, either,” I slurred.

His eyes cut toward me, and he shook his head but snapped his mouth shut as he turned the key.

“So stern.” I gave my best uptight-guy impression but blew it when I descended into snickering.

“God help me,” he muttered, putting my little Cabriolet into first gear and taking us out of the parking lot.

I let my head loll back against the seat and watched the muscle in his jaw tick. Everything about him, from his eyes to the cut of his jawline, was so severe. “You’re not going to give me crap?”

“Not my job to judge,” he replied, his eyes never wavering from the road.

“Not my circus, not my monkeys, that’s what my mom says,” I said louder than I intended, my finger poking him in the shoulder. Crud, when had my hand gotten over there? I pulled it back to my lap. If I sat perfectly still, maybe he wouldn’t realize how truly drunk I was.

“Something like that.” His dismissal, that at tone, scraped me like no amount of lecturing could have.

“Anyone ever told you it’s not good manners to be rude to your new roommate?”

He parked in the driveway behind Jagger’s Defender and glared over at me. “Anyone ever told you it’s not good manners to be dancing drunk on a bar on a Sunday afternoon?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his shoulders dropped and he closed his eyes. “Crap, Samantha, I didn’t mean—”

I forced my door open and stumbled out, barely catching myself on the frame. “So much for not judging,” I red back, slamming the door and entering the toddler-esque phase of drunkenness. I scowled away his offered arm and made it into the house, nearly tripping on the doorstep.

“Don’t!” I snapped when Grayson reached for me. “I’m not helpless.”

I’m pretty sure his sigh was heard in Florida as he dropped my purse on the entry table. Wait, he had my purse? I gripped the back of the couch and took deep breaths as my head buzzed.

“Here.” Jagger forced a bottle of water into my hand.

“I’m fine,” I argued.

“Sam, I said I wouldn’t give you shit, but fine isn’t exactly drunk at five p.m. on a Sunday unless it’s the Superbowl. What is going on?”

I swallowed past my numb tongue and glanced over to where Grayson stood, his arms across his chest again like a damn statue. As if on cue, the oven began to beep, and he walked past me into the kitchen. “Wow, this house smells amazing.” I wanted to lick the air now that I noticed.

“Grayson cooks. Focus, Sam.”

“Knock, knock,” Paisley drawled as she came in through the front door. “You ready to head out to dinner?”

“Hey, Little Bird.” Jagger smiled, which lit up his face like a freaking Christmas tree. Paisley wrapped her arms around his waist, and he kissed her. Love radiated from them. That was all I had wanted. Love. A chance to belong to someone—my someone. She’d had heart surgery two months ago, her scars were still pink, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Jagger popped the question soon.

“You guys are so cute I may vomit.” The room turned slightly. “Or maybe that’s the tequila.”

“I’m not letting this go, Sam. What’s going on with you?” Jagger reached over and opened the bottle of water I still clutched in my hand, and I took two long pulls.

“I got kicked out of college.”

“Right, which is why you’re here…”

I rolled my eyes at him. A year ago, I’d never have guessed that Jagger Bateman would have his life more together than me. “Not just Colorado. I got kicked out of Troy.”

“But you haven’t even had a class yet.” He dug a little deeper.

I laughed, the sound as hollow and empty as I felt. “Yeah. How special am I?”

“They can’t do that.”

“They withdrew their acceptance, Jagger. It’s done.” I looked up at the ceiling fan like it was going to spin me away into my dream life, or at least away from here. “What am I going to do?” My eyes burned.

“Oh, Sam,” Paisley whispered.

“I moved down here—completely inconvenienced you and Josh and…” I motioned to the kitchen, where Grayson watched my meltdown quietly. “…him. Took this last chance, hundreds of miles away from home. Hell, not that I have a home, right? She’s gone so damn much, and it’s not like we stay in one place long enough to mark up a height chart on a freaking doorframe or anything. What the hell am I doing here? I have no job, no school, no family, and no direction.” My fingers bit into the plastic, distorting the bottle as a tear slipped down my cheek. “What am I going to do?”

The question hung in the air, devouring any other thought that could come to mind as seconds ticked on the wall clock.

“You’re going to eat,” Grayson answered from the kitchen, the sound of clattering dishes breaking the silence as he put plates on the large, bar-height, square table. “We all are.”

“Uh, we have this family thing to—” Jagger started, glancing down at Paisley.

“This family thing is happening now,” Grayson finished.

“What did I miss?” Josh asked, toweling off his hair as he walked into the living room and glanced from Grayson to Jagger.

“We’re eating dinner. Now,” Grayson ordered. “Sunday night. Family dinner. No excuse.”

Josh’s eyebrows hit the ceiling. “Uh. Okay? Since when do we—”

“Since now.”

We shuffled into the kitchen, and Grayson heaped my plate with chicken and pasta, then sat me down at the table next to him. Once everyone was seated, I reached for my fork and nearly knocked over my water. Grayson caught my glass and moved it far enough from my plate that it wouldn’t happen again. “Thanks,” I muttered, then concentrated on cutting my chicken. My knife slipped twice before Grayson sighed.

He stole my plate and cut my dinner into bite-size pieces, sliding it back without a word. I side-eyed him, but his face gave no indication of what he was thinking.

Conversation struck up between the guys, punctuated by a laugh or answer from Paisley, like everything was normal. They didn’t give me a chance to feel embarrassed, either by my outburst or my drunkenness, just drew me in as I relaxed and sobered up. Wow. That chicken was good. Okay, maybe still a little drunk.

“I’m sorry for everything,” I said to Grayson as he cleared my plate after dinner, the other three having left. “I’m not normally so…”

“Drunk?” he supplied, keeping his wide back to me as he loaded my plate in the dishwasher.

My cheeks burned. “Yeah. I know I’m a giant inconvenience. Hell of a first impression, right?” He stilled, took a few breaths, and I stood as he turned toward me. His face was unreadable, which I was beginning to think might be the status quo. “I’m going to head to bed and hope today was all a nightmare. Thank you, seriously.”

“Samantha,” he called as I was passing the half wall that divided the kitchen from the living room.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not an inconvenience. Maybe a pain in the ass, but you’re not an inconvenience. And if there’s something I’ve learned from living here, it’s that Josh and Jagger make you family. We’re a dysfunctional one, but family nonetheless, and now you are, too.”

His eyes locked on to mine, and I forgot to breathe. Intensity poured off him, holding me captive, and I was torn between longing to get closer to whatever fire fueled him, and my sense of self-preservation warning me from the burn. Not that it mattered what I was thinking. He was talking about family, and my mind was skipping to things most definitely not PG, and way inappropriate. Do not make an ass out of yourself any more than you already have. He dropped his gaze, breaking the moment, and I sucked in a breath.

There was definitely more to him than I initially thought.

“Get to bed, so you can get up early and pull your shit together, Sam. We all make mistakes, but I’m not pulling you off another bar.”

Never mind. He was still an ass.