I'd kissed her for only a moment, though I could have easily gone on kissing her forever, in awe of how soft her lips were, how sweet her mouth tasted. 

It was the small noise she made in the back of her throat when my tongue found hers that made me remember myself. Remember where I was and what had just happened. 

And who she was. And whatever she had been through that made her voice catch in a quiet sob as she remembered it. 

I pulled back from her, alarmed at how I'd forgotten all of this so easily. Apologies sprang to my lips but died there when she quietly turned and opened the door. 

I watched her cross the driveway and head into her little house and only then did my shoulders slump. "Fuck!" I shouted, slamming the heel of my palm into the steering wheel. "You fucking asshole!"

For the rest of the day, my glum self-hatred rivaled Finn's in its intensity. After she got home from work, Claire started hanging around, getting in my eyeline and being super chipper. Her way of apologizing for being a nosy little gossip, I supposed, but I wasn't feeling charitable to anyone. Least of all myself. 

For fuck's sake, Rachel was off-limits. Wanting her this much was wrong. Only some douche-bag asshole would be thinking about a sheltered girl like her this way. And now that I knew she had the pure voice of an angel to go along with those innocent brown eyes and full, pretty lips? 

No way. Look but don't touch, that had to be the rule from now on. 

But even as I spent the day admonishing myself, her words kept running through my head. She wasn't scared of me. 

She was scared of how she felt about me. 

That makes two of us, angel. 

The next morning, Claire was still hovering, purposefully getting in my path as I stumbled and cursed my way to the coffee maker, still not awake even after a freezing shower. "Good morning!" she trumpeted.

"Too loud," Finn snarled from his position slumped over the kitchen table. 

"Don't we have some houses to look at today?" she asked me, ignoring our brother.

I let out a long exhale. "Fuck," I hissed. I was not in the mood to do anything other than beat myself up for how I'd crossed that line with Rachel, but Claire was right. "Yeah, Finn, you ready?"

"I'm not coming," he snarled. 

Claire and I looked at each other. Some of my worry about Rachel slid away as heavy meaning settled like a wet blanket over the both of us. "Aren't you interested in what kind of house you and Beau end up in?" Claire asked. I bristled. That was far too on the nose. One of the first signs of Finn's depression setting in was him losing interest in everything that used to be important to him. I knew why Claire was asking, but Finn wasn't dumb. He was going to hear the subtext.

I was right. My brother leaned back in his chair and glared at Claire. "Nope!" he said. He sounded cheerful enough, but I knew him too well. He was pissed. "Not interested at all. Beau can just go ahead and make the decision for me," he said, meeting my eye. "Like he always does."

I shifted and stood up straighter. "What the fuck did I do?" I asked. 

He turned away with a grunt. I rolled my eyes and shot my sister a knowing smirk. 

She didn't return it, only bounced once on her toes. "I'm coming with you again," she informed me.

I could hear something under her words, something she was trying to tell me, but I didn't know what it could be. Shrugging, I went over and grabbed my keys. "I'm driving this time," I told her. "There is nothing wrong with my car."

She whined about it all the way out into the driveway and right up until we were seated in the busted up old Crown Vic my dad had restored for Finn and me for our sixteenth birthday. I tuned out her complaints as she bitched about the lack of Bluetooth, thinking about the last person who'd been in that seat.

The more I told myself to stop thinking about Rachel, the more I thought about Rachel. The more I wanted to see her again, hear that clear, pure voice of hers and watch the corners of her mouth tip up in a sweet smile as she sang. The more I reminded myself that she was and should stay off limits, the more I wanted to hear that noise again, the one she'd made as her tongue sought mine. Because it almost sounded like she liked kissing me as much as I had liked kissing her. 

What would she do if I kissed her again? Would she tell me no? She had never told me no, it had all been the guilt-ridden voice inside my head.

Would she see me again? If I came over? But why would I come over? 

"You're quiet this morning," Claire said, interrupting the spiraling vortex of my thoughts. "Worried about Finn?"

I sat up a little straighter and tried to push Rachel from my head, but she refused to budge. "Yeah," I grunted. It wasn't exactly a lie, because I was worried about my brother. I just... hadn't been thinking about him right then.

"What are you thinking we should do?"

She caught me. "Actually, I was thinking about Rachel."

I could practically hear the record screech in Claire's head. "Ray-chul?" she sing-songed in the most annoying way possible. "Rachel the Chosen girl that you kissed?"

"Yes, thank you, I'm glad for you that your eyes work." I took my eyes off the road for a second to narrow my eyes at her, but that only made her cackle louder. "I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have done that."

Claire threw up her hands. "Jesus Christ Beau, I swear you like feeling guilty. Did she slap you?" When I didn't answer, she shoved me in the arm, making me swerve a little. "Hey!" I said as she shook me.

"Did she slap you?"

"No."

"Then you're fine. You and Finn, I swear, it's like mirror images. He doesn't feel bad about anything, you feel bad about everything. Oh, it's right up on the right." She pointed at the last second and the Crown Vic sent up a shower of dust when I yanked the wheel to the right, narrowly missing the nearly hidden drive. "Oh shit," Claire breathed reverently as we rolled to a stop.

I sat back heavily in my seat. "Yeah, you can say that again."

It was perfect. Set back against a stand of pines, the timber-framed house resembled a log cabin on steroids. A huge deck wrapped around the front, overlooking a sloping lawn that led down to a picturesque little pond. I stepped out to inhale the smell of pine tree warmed in the sun. Dragonflies hovered over the water and a single noisy frog was piping up quite a melodic little racket, but otherwise, the only sound was the slight rustle of the wind through the cattails that ringed the banks. There was no sound of passing traffic and no sign of any neighbors except the slight hint of wood smoke that spiced the air. 

It was exactly what Finn wanted. 

"This is it, yes, yes," Claire danced over to me and excitedly shoved her phone under my nose to show me the listing. "And it has enough bedrooms that like, you could have us over for dinner and to crash for once.”

"Us?" I teased, even as I took the phone from her and scrolled through the listing.

And then sighed.

I'd put this house down on our list for, well I wasn't exactly sure why I thought we needed to see it, other than catch a glimpse of what we could never have. "It's too expensive."

"Seriously?" She snatched her phone away and squinted at the screen. Then whistled. "Yeah okay, that's a lot, but you have it, right?"

"I have half of it."

"Okay, but isn't that all you need?"

"Do you really think Finn has his half?" It was impossible to keep the edge out of my voice when I asked that question. Claire knew all about how I'd covered him when the four King brothers gave a portion of our earnings to our parents so they could retire. After all, we owed the band's success to them running us to a million far-flung festivals and appearances when we were first starting out. "Maybe back when we were touring," I went on. "But you know it's gone now."

Claire fell silent - for once - and lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. "You know he's spiraling, right?"

"’Course I do."

"His demons are getting to him again."

"I can see that." The sarcasm, the bitterness. I knew what that meant.  "And there isn't much we can do except—"

"Head him off at the pass with a giant change," Claire interrupted me. "He's going to start picking fights again if he doesn't find something to distract him."

I looked back up at the house. "This would be a distraction."

"It would."

"But he needs money. Or hell, the both of us do."

"Yeah, too bad you are both completely unqualified for anything resembling a job." Claire loved getting in those little jabs. 

"We're qualified to play music." An idea was starting to snowball in my head. "Hey, come on. Let's go let him know we found the perfect fucking house and we're gonna drag him to a showing if it kills him." My sister was already nodding and getting back into the car when another idea piggybacked onto the first. "But can we make one stop beforehand?"