A thunderous knock jolted me awake. I sat straight up and slapped my hand over my mouth to keep from losing the contents of my stomach all over the… Through squinted eyes, I tried to assess where I was, the entire room unfamiliar and cold. And messy. Tiny liquor bottles littered the carpet, along with clothes. The bra dangling off the dresser left me cognizant of the fact that the only thing covering me was a thin sheet.

I had not a stitch of clothing on.

The knock sounded again and reverberated through the room. It echoed in my head, causing everything to spin and tilt. I quickly closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my midsection, praying everything would stay put.

“Jelly, sweetheart…open up,” my mother called from the other side, her saccharine voice already grating on my fried nerves. “We check out in an hour, which means you need to get up and pack.”

I whined inwardly, realizing exactly where I was…and why.

“I got it, Mom. I’m getting up.” I prayed she couldn’t hear the hoarseness of my voice and know the reason for it. She’d be so disappointed in me, which was worse than almost anything else. I was the baby, the youngest of five children. If she found out I’d been up most of the night getting drunk—at the tender age of eighteen—she’d lose her mind. “I’ll be downstairs in forty-five minutes.”

I flung the covers off my bare body, the chill in the air cooling my overheated and damp skin. The instant I slid off the mattress and stood on both feet, the floor seemed to give out beneath me. My thighs ached, the kind of soreness you’d expect to experience after running a marathon. Only, I wasn’t a runner. Never had been and, more than likely, never would be. I’d walked a lot over the last few days, which could’ve explained the aches, but intuitively, I was certain that hadn’t been the cause, either. The deep red marks forming bruises on my thighs and hips were enough to explain my soreness.

Hello, Vegas.

Goodbye, hymen.

I closed my eyes and groaned. Fear, embarrassment, and regret shook my body, and I struggled to stand upright. But my brain hurt too much to even think about it, about who I’d given my virginity to. About why, how, when. Or if I’d given it willingly. I took a shaky breath and combed a hand through my tangled hair. I needed a distraction—anything. A very large glass of ice-cold Pepsi. And definitely a shower.

I didn’t quite make it to the bathroom when I heard the familiar clicks of a card sliding into the reader attached to the door. My stomach clenched when the lock disengaged. Panicked over my mother finding me buck-naked and severely hung over, I ran into the bathroom—which proved to be a horrible idea. The room instantly tilted, the floor curved beneath me, and a flood of sticky heat washed over my clammy body just as I made it to the sink and gripped the ledge of the vanity to hold myself upright.

Like a tidal wave, there was no stopping it. My stomach flipped, then flopped, and I threw myself to the tiled floor, not caring about the new set of bruises that would form on my knees from the harsh impact. Thankfully, the toilet lid was up; otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it in time. I hugged the porcelain and gave in to the rush of bile hurdling its way up my esophagus and into the bowl in front of me. Out of nowhere, someone knelt behind me and pulled my hair out of my face. Unfortunately, my stomach wouldn’t relent long enough for me to turn to see who it was, but based on the large, rough palms rubbing my bare back, I knew enough to assume it wasn’t my mother.

If I could’ve screamed, I would have.

But…this man had a key to my room.

By the time my gut finished wrenching itself like an overused washing machine, I was too drained and weak to turn around. I closed my eyes, rested my cheek in the crook of my arm, and said a silent prayer that this was just a horrible nightmare I’d soon wake up from. But I quickly learned that the likelihood of that wish coming true was about the same as willing my hymen to grow back.

While I sat as naked as a jailbird, on my knees, hugging a hotel toilet rim, my unknown hero dampened a washcloth and used it to cool me off. He wiped it along my brow, down the side of my overheated face, along the unnatural curve of my neck, and across my shoulder blades. Even though I currently resided in only my birthday suit, his gentleness was so soothing it almost put me to sleep. At least, it would have had he not opened his mouth and spoken.

“We need to get you cleaned up and downstairs before your mom comes back up here looking for you.” Even though he used hushed tones, attempting to keep his words soft and quiet, I knew exactly who it was. Nothing could disguise the voice I’d heard almost my entire life. The same voice I used to dream about.

The one belonging to my brother’s best friend.

The realization made me bolt upright, where I was met with his familiar bright stare. Then I remembered my lack of clothing and yelped. My arms instinctively crossed over my chest and my thighs clenched together in a vain attempt to hide my goods. Unfortunately, I got a very different reaction from him. One side of his mouth curled up, a light shade of red tinted his cheeks, and his eyelids grew heavy as his gaze lowered to my lap.

“Janelle, it’s not like I didn’t see it all last night.” Holden’s voice softened, and a light humor lilted his hushed words. With his bottom lip tucked between his teeth, as if he had to bite back his words, his eyes found mine again. “It’s a little late to be shy now, don’t you think?”

I was speechless. Utterly speechless. My mouth opened and closed, repeatedly, yet nothing came out. This situation wasn’t something I could easily comprehend. Him…me…together…last night… It didn’t take a genius to fill in the events that had occurred between us—a fantasy come true, except I had no memory of the dream. I eventually closed it for good, worried something other than words would make an appearance, and I wasn’t about to chance that happening in front of him…again. Although, it’s not like it would’ve made this situation any worse. Things were about as bad as they could get.

Crawling into a hole sounded amazing at the moment.

Suddenly, in my lack of response, his eyes snapped up, and his expression changed drastically. The curl in the corner of his mouth fell away, leaving his lips in a flat line while his jaw flexed with a tic. No longer did the illusion of humor dance in his greenish-grey irises. Now, they appeared darker, narrowed, locked on me. The creases across his forehead deepened, lowering his brows and casting a shadow across his eyes. I couldn’t tell if the change had been caused by worry, fear, or anger.

At least, not until he slowly asked, “How drunk were you last night?”

I swallowed thickly and prepared myself to answer. “On a scale of tipsy to shitfaced, where exactly would completely wasted fall?”

“I’d say completely wasted would be about neck and neck with shitfaced.”

I nodded and closed my eyes while a sigh slipped through my barely parted lips. “Okay…then I was about thirteen notches past that.”

“Shit, Janelle.” He couldn’t hide the frustration in his deep, gruff tone. “What all do you remember? And please tell me you remember something.”

Oh, how I wanted to give Holden a tiny sliver of peace. I wished more than anything I could recall one iota of the night in question—for his benefit and mine—but unfortunately, I couldn’t. At all. For some reason, when I tried to think back on the day as a whole, everything seemed fuzzy, including my brother’s entire wedding, even though I hadn’t started drinking until much later. Knowing I needed to say something, I took a chance and said the only thing I could bet was a sure thing.

“We had sex. I remember that.” Such a lie, but I didn’t care. The pained look on his face made me want to give him reassurance. I would’ve spun the most elaborate tale just to ease his worry if I knew he wouldn’t have had a clue how false it was. “Well, I don’t remember all of it, but I do remember you taking my virginity.” I tried to make my voice sound clear and confident, when in reality, I wanted to be deleted from this scene as swiftly as possible. My brother would kill me if he found out. After he killed Holden, of course. I was young…I still had so much life left to live.

“Oh, thank God,” he breathed out and hung his head. “Your reaction just now had me worried you didn’t remember that part. I would’ve hated myself if that were true. I mean, someone forgetting they had sex with me is bad enough…because I’m not forgettable.” His sexy yet cocky grin made my head spin—worse than it already was. “But if you couldn’t remember losing your virginity, I would be the biggest piece of shit on Earth. I’d never forgive myself for that.”

That settled it—there was no way I could ever confess to him that I’d lied.

“Come on, we have to get you up and showered before your mom comes back to the room. If she sees this place, she’ll never let you leave for college.” He stood up and grabbed a few towels from the rack above the toilet. After he set them on the vanity, he started the water and then headed out of the bathroom.

I took the opportunity to pull my body off the floor and quickly jump behind the curtain. The water raining from the showerhead hadn’t quite warmed up, and I screamed at the stabbing sensation of freezing needles hitting my body. As if hopping into a frigid shower while severely hung over wasn’t bad enough, I almost died of a heart attack when a pair of arms wound around my waist from behind, and a snicker escaped the perfect set of lips closing in on my shoulder. Had I not been so thankful for his body heat, I would’ve shoved him away and wrapped my body in the curtain to hide myself from him.

“What are you doing, Holden?” My voice came out high and off key, a perfect representation of the confusion and shock twisting in my gut. An inner battle raged between my yearnings and the dire reality of this situation. “Matthew will kill you. You do know that, right? He’s your best friend—and my brother. If he finds you in here—in my shower—he’ll chop you up into tiny pieces, and no one will ever find your body. I highly suggest you leave now before someone catches you in my room.”

To my surprise, he took a half-step back. “I was here all night, Janelle. If someone was going to catch us, they would’ve done so by now. Matt and Christine probably won’t get out of bed the entire day. And I was in the hall when your mom knocked on the door. She headed downstairs to have breakfast with the rest of your family. No one’s up here to catch us. So come on. We need to wash up, because if we aren’t downstairs when everyone else is ready to check out, someone will come up here, and that’s when the shit will hit the fan.”

“Fine. I’ll wash up, but you need to leave. Now. Go take a shower in your own room.” It wasn’t that I wanted him gone, because I didn’t. Nothing made me feel safer, more taken care of than having him near. But I needed to think, I needed to clear the fog weighing down every sluggish thought, and I couldn’t do that with him here.

With a smirk, he shook his head and cast his eyes in a sweeping motion toward my feet—I did not miss the way his attention grazed my backside on the way down, though. Then he pulled me back into him again, flush against his firm, hot, intoxicating chest. If I concentrated enough, I probably could’ve felt his heartbeat. But I couldn’t, because my focus was broken by the very hard, very large body part pressed against my lower back.

Holden apparently thought something was humorous, because his deep, airy chuckle fanned against my neck, covering me from head to toe with his heat. “I’ve already checked out. I did that while you were sleeping. And while I was at it, I grabbed us coffee, which we can drink when we get out of the shower.”

The thought of bitter coffee hitting my stomach made me shudder. “That doesn’t sound appealing. Like…at all. In fact, I think my gut may revolt again very soon at the mere thought of it.”

“Way to kill a man’s ego.”

My heart sank, and with it, I let my head fall back onto his chest below his shoulder, not even thinking about the position we were in. “That’s not what I meant. I just loathe coffee. You’ve known me for how long, yet you bought me a coffee instead of a Pepsi?”

His chuckle shook my entire body, which normally would’ve filled me with mirth, except the headache from hell prevented me from enjoying the soothing vibrations. “Well, considering I’ve never woken up with you before, I guess I didn’t assume you’d drink it first thing in the morning.”

He settled his hands on my bare hips and held me against him. In that instant, I froze, completely stunned and at a loss for what to do. I may have dreamt that he’d touch me this exact way, prayed that we’d somehow found ourselves in a position parallel to this, but that didn’t mean I knew what to do when—if—it ever happened.

“I’ve been thinking of this ever since waking up this morning.” His husky words licked the spot below my ear as his lips grazed the sensitive flesh.

His touch was so warm, so comforting, everything I’d ever wanted, but I couldn’t bring myself to break free from the nervous disposition that kept me in a perpetual state of frozen fear. Once I was finally able to force myself to move, it wasn’t the way either of us had wanted. My shoulders curled in and my head fell forward, my back hunching in what seemed to be an attempt to move away from him—even though that was the last thing I wanted.

“You okay?” His voice was different than the last time he spoke—not harsher in an angry way, but more of fear or concern. “Janelle?”

His hands fell away from my hips, and even though I could still feel him behind me, I knew by the sudden drift of cool air along my spine that he had shifted away from me.

Part of me wanted to grab his arms and put them back around me. Another part of me longed to explore what had poked me in the back. But the saner part of me knew there was only one way to deal with the situation at hand.

Holden took a step back and blinked several times, as if he’d gotten water in his eyes, even though his face remained completely dry. I couldn’t help but feel as though I were missing something. As if this had been part of a conversation I was involved in, yet I couldn’t remember any of it. I wasn’t sure how to continue, realizing either way would more than likely cause some sort of damage to one of us.

Understanding relaxed his features, and he closed his eyes with a slow, inconspicuous nod.

“Holden—”

“You don’t remember anything from last night, do you?”

My chest tightened, and my heart skipped a beat. “I already told you—”

“Just be honest with me. You don’t need to lie to spare my feelings.” Gone was the smug, carefree, sexy guy I’d known since I was a kid, and in his place stood a man on the verge of an intense emotion I was too scared to name. Either anger, hinted at by his fisted hands and taut mouth, or immense regret, given away by his soft, dark, almost pleading eyes.

But I couldn’t lie anymore—no matter how much I wanted to.

He was right. I didn’t remember a damn thing.

He must’ve read the truth on my face, because rather than giving me a chance to answer, he nodded, sucked air through his teeth, and then shoved the shower curtain aside. As he stepped out, he mumbled something beneath his breath, but I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t move, unable to do anything other than stare at the swaying curtain with a sense of loss settling into my chest. The weight of regret hung heavily over my shoulders until my body caved, falling to the shower floor on my already sore knees.

Holden York had been the man of my dreams since I was six years old. For the last twelve years, he was my brother’s best friend and a constant around the house. Everyone used to joke that he was the sixth Brewer kid and that my parents ought to just adopt him with as often as he was there. Needless to say, I’d been in love with him since kindergarten, despite him being four years older than me. By the seventh grade, I could sign Janelle York better than Janelle Brewer. And when I blew out the candles on my thirteenth birthday cake, my wish was to one day marry Holden, because I’d believed the number thirteen held some sort of magical powers.

Yet here I sat, hung over in a shower in Vegas after an eventful night with Holden. I’d kicked him out of the bathroom, dripping wet, completely bare—and impressively hard. I couldn’t explain why I’d turned him away, because it didn’t make much sense to me. Up until about a year and a half ago, I had no interest in anyone other than Holden. He was the only guy I’d ever had eyes for. But that had all changed when Justin Moose waltzed into my third-period class junior year with his faded jeans and unkempt hair. Suddenly, I’d forgotten all about Holden and my obsession-slash-love for him. My whole world revolved around Justin.

A few months before senior prom, I’d decided it was time to give Justin, who I’d been dating for a year, my virginity. And there was no more cliché time than prom night. I’d planned the entire thing and kept it as a surprise. He’d hinted a couple of times about getting a hotel room, and each time, I told him no—not because I didn’t want one, but because I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. Then, two weeks before prom, before the most important night of my life, Justin did something I never expected. He broke up with me. I was devastated, and even more so when my friends had started to tell me it was because I wouldn’t put out. Apparently, the entire time I’d spent planning our first time together—my first time, period—he’d tried to do the same thing, and when he assumed it wouldn’t happen, he lost interest. He lost interest in sleeping with me, taking me to prom, and dating me.

I was heartbroken.

And the one person who was there for me was Holden.

Even though I had four siblings, three of which were sisters, I was closest to Matthew, with only a few years separating us in age. The girls were much older than us. So, after Justin had finished slaughtering my heart and spitting on it, I found myself at my brother’s apartment, the same apartment he shared with Holden. As it turned out, Matthew wasn’t home—he was actually on a date with Christine, the woman he just married yesterday. I ended up spending the evening on the couch, crying to Holden while watching all the Marvel Comics movies in order of production. But certain words he said to me that night came back to haunt me, words meant to comfort me…

“Janelle, you’re worth waiting for, and any man trying to rush it is a fool.”

“You almost done?” His voice came from the other side of the curtain. His gruff tone startled me out of my daydream and reminded me of where I was. It made me question what really took place last night, and why.

“Holden?” I called out, hoping he hadn’t left the room. When I saw his shadow pause, and then hover by the door, I asked, “How much did you have to drink last night?”

Static filled the air while I waited for his answer. Then, in his gravelly baritone, he said, “Quite a bit. Why?”

“Just wondering.” I turned off the water, not at all caring that I’d done nothing but sit beneath the spray instead of washing any part of me. Suddenly, a towel appeared through the opening of the curtain, which I took and wrapped around my shivering body. When I stepped out of the shower, I found Holden leaning against the sink, staring at me as if I’d been in the middle of a sentence and he waited for me to finish. With a shrug, I asked, “How much do you remember?”

“Every single fucking thing.” His response was immediate, and he didn’t break eye contact, not even to blink. “Had I been sober, I may not have made the same choices, but there isn’t a single moment of the entire night I don’t remember…in vivid detail.”

“Holden…”

“I know.” He straightened his posture and moved toward the door. With his back to me, his hand on the frame, he peered over his shoulder and locked his gaze on mine. “We talked about this last night, before anything happened. You’re leaving for college, and I just started my job. What happened between us doesn’t change any of that.” The way he said it made it sound like he expected me to give him excuses why we’d never work, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’d rather make something up as a reason why we would work instead of saying we couldn’t.

I had the hardest time reading between the lines. I heard the words, listened to his dismissive tone, and witnessed his expression, but something seemed off. However, I had no idea what it was. My head was too foggy and my stomach too weak to allow me to put more thought into it. Rather than argue or question him, I nodded, suddenly desperate to finish getting ready so I could head down to check out.

When I returned to the room, I was surprised to find it all cleaned up. Not a single liquor bottle remained on the floor, and all my clothes were folded neatly inside my suitcase. Holden had even set out an outfit for me to wear on the plane back home. Holding the towel against my chest, I glanced around, almost hoping he hadn’t left. But he had. I was all alone, just as I’d asked for. Yet for some reason, it created an ache in my chest, and the more the silence grew, the more I realized he wasn’t coming back.

Later at the airport, the ache expanded when I found out he’d switched flights and wouldn’t be heading back with us.

It nearly swallowed me whole when he didn’t show at Matthew and Christine’s housewarming party a few weeks later.

And when he came up with yet another excuse as to why he couldn’t attend my going-away party, the ache had turned into a massive black hole, right in the center of my chest where my heart used to beat. I’d missed the opportunity to decipher his reaction that day in Vegas, seconds before he walked out of my life forever. And over the years, it meant less and less to me. Eventually, I became a careless, heartless, walking train wreck.

I had no one but myself to blame.

Although every chance I could, I totally blamed Holden.