“That was… nice,” I said, perhaps the biggest understatement this side of Watergate.

Sam raised his brow. “Nice? Despite that being an utterly and horrific description of the magnificence of my company… and yours too”—he winked—“you sound surprised. Did you not think I would offer titillating conversation? I read too, you know.”

I smiled. “Oh, the conversation was well titillating—though for everything I didn’t expect, fun being one of them, titillating was a given,” I teased, underplaying just exactly how titillating it was. I thanked the lord that I was in my work clothes, a thick camisole and light sweater that obscured how hard my nipples were trying to protrude from their confines.

And they weren’t doing so out of some fancy, expensive and sexy lace number. No, comfortable and practical cotton. I only needed them for support, not for exhibition.

Though I’d learned the lesson about my Bridget Jones underwear. The sucking-in mechanism was not without the mortification factor. Plus the damage to my internal organs. Pria and I had had a bonfire in my backyard on which we roasted them and Garth’s favorite tee shirt, which she despised and had snatched out of the laundry pile.

“So we’ve established my ability to titillate,” Sam said, bringing me back into the present, which, until now, had been worth totally and utterly living in. Now it was time to remember the past and think of the future—specifically what would happen in the future if I didn’t stop this right now.

Sam’s eyes darkened, the darkness of the night seeming to seep into them. “Well, in the conversational arena, anyway. We’ve haven’t even scratched the… other arenas.” His voice remained light, like it had all night, but it roughened, and the scent of sex sifted through the air. Or the promise of it. The memory of it.

Memory.

It was a slap in the emotional face.

I stiffened, and Sam, being as perceptive as he was, would’ve noticed had he not launched into the second part of his statement.

“But you didn’t expect to have fun with me? Me? Sam Kennedy, who legally got his middle name changed to Fun last year.”

“Really?” Curiosity salved my emotional burn. Most people said that and you automatically knew they were joking for dramatic effect. Sam didn’t just joke for dramatic effect. He lived his life for dramatic effect, so I wouldn’t put it past him to do such a thing.

He grinned. “No, I actually got it changed to Eagle, but the principle is the same. Any dude who changes his middle name to Eagle just because is obviously fun. Oh, and the guy who, every year, hosts the most kickass Cannes yacht party that pond has ever seen. So I think my fun credibility has been solidified.” He paused. “And my sex appeal, by People, GQ, and Rolling Stone, just in case you were wondering.” He winked.

I rolled my eyes. I may not have been immune to the Sam I’d had dinner with, who’d shouted at me for trying to go dutch on the bill and who looked at me in a way that melted the world away. But I was immune to Sam Kennedy, the rock star, the one everyone got to see and experience. The one who melted everyone else because they didn’t know him any better. Didn’t want to know him any better.

He frowned at my eye roll, then decided to continue his tirade because he was… well, Sam.

“My badass street cred is obviously way up there. Just standing next to Killian is like a testosterone shot. Not that I need that.” Another wink.

Another eye roll.

“But I don’t need that moody biker Ken doll. In case you hadn’t heard, I apprehended a murderer and—”

The slice he ripped out of his sentence was so abrupt it cut through the air.

The silence as his brain caught up with his mouth. He had been so busy being Sam that he tried to outrun emotional wounds that, by the looks of his tortured eyes, hadn’t healed.

Then again, it had only been just over a year since he and Wyatt stopped Lexie’s stalker from murdering her, despite having already shot her. And then they had to witness her dying. Actually dying in front of them while the paramedics worked on her.

They brought her back, obviously. But she’d flatlined twice. Once while she was in Killian’s arms, then again at the hospital.

That left a mark.

A big one. Especially when the band was something more than a bunch of pretty people who played good music and got paid a lot for it.

They were a family.

Each of them brought their fragmented families into the fold and, like a jigsaw puzzle, had created one that had stronger ties than blood.

Not that anyone but Wyatt and Lexie had a semblance of a family. I didn’t know much, but I knew Noah’s and Sam’s parents were worse than mine. A lot worse. Which was why what they had, what they created when they were teenagers, was so special.

I witnessed it in high school, and even from the outskirts, I felt the warmth of it. And that residual warmth, plus my books and my ability to propel myself out of my circumstances, gave me the tools, the strength to get through high school without freezing solid at the lack of warmth in my own family.

My outlier status was self-imposed. In the blink of eye, Lexie and everyone would have welcomed me in. Lexie tried.

She still did. Which was the reason for the invite to the infamous wedding.

But I couldn’t be in that family.

Not when I was in love with one of the key members.

Who would never love me back.

Who would never see me.

Even now, I couldn’t believe this was anything more than temporary. I wouldn’t. I knew better. Sam was a good guy, despite getting in his own way a lot of the time, but we were worlds away from each other. He’d realize that soon. I needed to remember that, no matter how permanent his touch, his glances, his presence felt, this was temporary.

And the pain of that, the need for emotional survival, trumped my need for emotional warmth.

The chill from Sam was palpable as I extracted myself from my own head in order to do the same for him.

“Sam,” I said softly.

My voice, perhaps the absolute softness of it, counteracting the harshness of his thoughts, jerked him out of his stupor.

His eyes, just a little too bright, focused back on me and not the ghosts of the past. “Anyway, that’s history,” he said cheerfully. “So, these amazing qualities profoundly exist in the man before you and you didn’t think you were going to have fun?” he asked in disgust.

I regarded him, considered pressing him on the Lexie subject, inviting him to talk about it. Despite his bravado, Sam had demons. Large ones. It was usually the people who smiled the widest, laughed the hardest who had the biggest reasons to break down. He needed someone to break him down so he wouldn’t implode.

But then those memories reminded me.

Someone.

That someone wasn’t me.

Despite this strange behavior of late, the sentiment stayed true.

“It was not all of your qualities, including incredible modesty, that made me question the funness of the evening, but rather the prospect of being a goldfish inside of a bowl. The bowl being our table. And everyone being the people tapping against the glass. I know it’s second nature to you by now, Sam, but I’m not used to being looked at. People don’t look at me. And that’s fine. Nice. I don’t do well in the spotlight. I’m not made for it, nor do I desire it. You are born to it. Whether or not you had found a drum set and a stage, you would’ve found it. Me? No. So I was dubious, among other reasons”—I gave him, and the elephant in the room, a pointed look—“about being suddenly visible when I’ve always been comfortable in my invisibility.”

He was silent for a moment. Most likely looking for another smart quip.

He leaned forward, grasping my neck lightly. Not like before when he’d yanked me over for a brutal kiss. No, this was tender, for the contact rather than a larger purpose.

“No, babe. You’ve got that wrong. So wrong. It’s not that people don’t notice you. They notice you.” His eyes scanned over me. Even as the disappearing light made it harder for me to see them, the fire down my body showed me their journey. “People notice me because I’m Sam Kennedy. The drummer of that band who once got in a fist fight with Ozzy Osborne in front of a Bed, Bath and Beyond.” He paused and grinned, but it was full of melancholy. “And sure, if I wasn’t that Sam, I’d like to think my devilish good looks and je ne sais quoi would get me looked at just for that. Just me. But life isn’t about what-ifs and could’ve-beens. It’s what is. So I am Sam Kennedy. I do play the drums. I have my stage and my spotlight, and that’s why they look. And it’s because of our society and the way it’s structured around the spotlight that they make sure they’re seen looking. Not because of who I am specifically, but who I am to them. What looking at me, talking to me, taking photos of me eating my burger will do for them. And their path and outlook on life. Or their status in this fucked-up social totem pole.”

He paused, the bitter expression and words to match not seeming right on his face but at the same time they did. Because they were honest. It wasn’t the script about living for the fans and loving the fans and living an excellent life. It was the truth that I suspected he hadn’t shared with anyone. Even himself. Especially himself.

He regarded me watching him. “It’s a shitty thing to say about the masses who legitimately keep me in the lifestyle to which I’m accustomed and should have been born to, but they’re leeches. All of them. They look to take something from me. And sometimes that’s not bad. Hell, sometimes it’s the only fuckin’ thing that keeps me sane when those twatrockets with cameras are chasing me about the place, getting all my wrong angles. It’s the knowledge of a kid who used to live in Amber and had a shitty home life and was searching for an identity. Something to take from life. The meaning of it. The point. Whatever the fuck you’re meant to get from blood.” Again, the darkness from outside seeped into his eyes, that time not fueling his dark desire but feeding the demons. Not the ones who’d made an appearance earlier. Those were young, toddlers really. These were old, ancient in the scheme of Sam’s life span, and much deeper, much more ingrained in him.

“So I took. And I took from Cobain, Hendrix, Vicious, the list goes on. And fuck if that isn’t the reason I’m here today.” His hand, which was still lightly at my neck, tightened. “And I mean here, Gina, right here. In this car, with you, in the middle of some fucking travesty of a town in a fucking travesty of a state. But the whole twisted and wonderful journey, the ride that had been fast and relentless and fucking great, it’s slowed down. And I’m happy as fuck about that.”

His words were like poetry plucked from some book, some hero’s monologue about fate and everything in his life happening to take him to his girl. It filled me with a pleasant warmth. But it didn’t sink into my bones. Because nothing took me to him. There was no journey that put me here with him. I was already there. I had already been there. I was always there. And that was the bitter, rotten, twisted pill that tainted his words.

He furrowed his brows, and at first I thought he’d read it in my eyes, all of those tumultuous emotions.

“I kind of went off my point there a little,” he said with a grin. “Not that I mind. But back to looking. More precisely people looking at you and you having the fucked-up thought that somehow people weren’t looking at you. That they didn’t notice. Trust me, babe, they’ve noticed. But you don’t see it because they’re not taking shit from you, sucking it out. They’re reveling.”

I blinked at his words, trying to keep my hands inside the emotional roller coaster he was in control of.

He leaned forward so his breath was hot on my neck. “And, babe, it’s not gone over my excellently styled head that I was one of those fuckers still taking from others, trying to build up who I was instead of looking at you and seeing what I see now,” he murmured.

I swam the depths of his eyes, tasted his words for a long moment. Listed every specific detail of the moment for preservation, for later. For whenever this blew up in my face and these moments would be all I’d have left. And I’d be self-deprecating and visit them. Seldom, perhaps, but I would.

And because I was self-deprecating, I asked the next question.

“And what do you see now?” My voice was less than a whisper.

He stared at me. Actually at me. Saw me.

And I realized maybe I was blind to him seeing me all along. That I was just another one in the masses, taking from him what I thought I saw. What I wanted to see. What I needed.

“Everything,” he said simply, his voice so rough I was surprised it didn’t graze the very air it caressed.

And then he kissed me. Not brutal and needful. Not taking. Slow. Patient. Tender. Giving. Giving me the moment that I hadn’t even realized I needed. You know, that moment every girl, no matter how much she denies it, has when she gets kissed.

Really kissed.

Like in those Nicholas Sparks movies, or in any romance ever written. Kissed like no one really got kissed in real life. Like the man attached to your lips couldn’t breathe without you.

Something created to give us humans something to dream about, to think of fondly, that something so perfect and right and simple existed somewhere. Not anywhere in the real world, but somewhere.

But it did exist.

Right here outside my ordinary house in my ordinary town in Sam’s bright red Ferrari.

And then it didn’t. Moments only existed for short times. That was the very definition of a moment.

And the cold air was a sharp taste of another moment.

One that lasted significantly longer.

Called reality.

Sam went back to his side of the car, clutching the steering wheel tightly. His entire body tight, juxtaposing the softness of seconds ago.

“I need to go,” he gritted out.

“Okay,” I whispered, trying to hide the hurt in my voice. The confusion. I was now off the emotional roller coaster and was experiencing emotional whiplash. “Well, thanks for letting me pay for half of dinner, after a strong discussion. And for a… nice evening,” I said, trying to bulk up my tragic tone with an equally tragic joke.

It hurt.

The rejection.

Second time around.

Third, if you counted high school.

But you couldn’t really count that considering he didn’t even know I existed, let alone that he was rejecting me.

He must have noticed it, the way my own body tried to curl in on itself, because his head snapped to me and he grabbed my hand before I could move it to open the door.

“I have to go,” he repeated. “Because if I don’t I’ll do what every one of my instincts—two blue ones in particular—is screaming at me to do. Which is to take you into your adorable but ridiculous fucking house and fuck you against your front door first. Then drag your half-naked, flushed body into your bedroom and do depraved and fucking exquisite things to that equally fucking exquisite body. I’d do it on those cat sheets you had swinging on your washing line two days ago. And that’s all night, babe. And the next morning, I’d wake you with my mouth, and then we’d be going sheet shopping because I wouldn’t want an animal, flannel or otherwise, having to witness that again. And I will be doing it again,” he promised.

My breathing quickened the second he started speaking, my entire body flushed at the images in my mind. I could feel them. His words. Right there.

“But not yet,” he murmured, voice firm, as if he was trying to convince himself more than me. “Because I don’t want to fuck it up like I did before. Because I know I did fuck it up before. More majorly than when U2 got stuck in that lemon. And I don’t want to repeat the mistakes of that night after the wedding. That morning.” He eyed me. “The mistake was not me sliding inside you, tasting you or talking till the sun went back down again, just in case you got my meaning wrong. My mistake was not seeing you. And then seeing too much. Not of you, that’s never going to happen. Of myself. And because I was a fucking coward, or because I wasn’t used to seeing, I was a prick. And I want your forgiveness. I want to earn it. I know you haven’t given it.” He glanced up at me. “But you wouldn’t punish me like some other chick by torching my car, or selling the story of my crooked dick, or killing me on the way to dinner.” He grinned. “Because you’re nice. Kind. And most importantly, you’re not like any other chick. None other. You’re an original.”

His eyes twinkled with something that looked like a memory. That made me lose my breath a little with the thought that he might remember that day in high school. The day I’d fallen in love with him, that maybe might have meant something to him too. But before I could grasp that twinkle, that hope within a hope, he continued.

“I’m not going to lie and say I’m not the Christopher Columbus of that certain brand of chicks. I was a stupid kid who liked to spend time with empty heads because they helped keep my own head empty. But you’re not that. I’m in uncharted territory here, so I’m being careful. ’Cause last time I wasn’t, I hurt you. And for as long as I live, I’m not gonna put that fuckin’ look on your face again. Ever. And even if this shit doesn’t work out, for whatever reason—life’s always a good one—I’ll still be here to kick the ever-loving shit out of whatever idiot guy gives you that look after me. Not that I’m planning on there being an after me.”

There it was. He just said it. Like that. Laid out his forever. And if I hadn’t misheard, his forever intentions.

After one technical date.

And despite the thoughts I’d had minutes ago about how temporal this all was, a part of me, a very large part, believed him.

“You can’t say things like that,” I choked out.

“Who says?”

I blinked. “I don’t know, the laws of nature?” I grasped at straws. “You can’t know that yet. It’s too soon. Much too soon. We haven’t even…. We’re not even….” I trailed off, not really knowing where to take that.

“Too soon? Babe, I’ve known you since you wore overalls and literally walked down the corridors of school with that beautiful face tucked in a book. Just because it took me longer to figure out that face buried in that book was my face, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there all along. It’s like backdate dating. I already know it’s all mine, but I’m putting in the work because I want to. Because I need to.”

Despite the utter beauty of the sentiment and the words, the stubborn, independent and scarred woman inside of me bristled. “Already know it’s yours?” I repeated, my voice holding hints of warning.

He grinned. “Yeah, babe. And you know it too. You’ve known it longer than I have.” He winked. “Though that’s because we both know you’re smarter than me. Much smarter.”

I pursed my lips. “If I was smart, I wouldn’t be sitting in this car right now.”

He grinned, but there was something behind it, beneath it that told me he was entertaining the memory of that horrible morning after. Somehow, I saw the guilt and pain he carried around from that. Like I could read it in his tight and fictitious smile.

Which, of course, was ridiculous. But I saw it all the same.

The back of his hand trailed along the top of my cheekbone. The touch was barely even a touch, a whisper of his skin against mine. Despite that, I felt it everywhere.

“Whatever it is, smarts or stupid, fate or luck, I’m glad you’re sitting in this car right now. That I get to earn back the right to be in your bed, in your life, in your everywhere.” His eyes darkened. “Don’t earn much these days, babe. Silver platters are so common they’re like chipped Tupperware at this point. I know for a fact that what I’m working toward with you is going to be the most precious thing a man has ever possessed.”

I blinked again at words that should not have been uttered at the end of a first date, yet made the air sweeter and lighter but heavier at the same time.

His touch was no longer gentle as he grasped my chin between his fingers.

“Now get in the house before I remember that I’m not the good guy I’m pretending to be,” he growled.

And it was a growl that went right down to the base of my spine and then traveled between my legs.

I nodded, unbuckling my belt on autopilot, clutching the door and opening it an inch, the muggy night air rushing in, a welcoming escape that I both craved and dreaded.

Before I had the chance to properly move, to catch my breath in the solitude of my home, Sam clutched my wrist, yanking me backward so our eyes met.

“I’m telling you that I’m only pretending to be the good guy for the sake of honesty. I’m also telling you so you can prepare for when I’m not good. For when I get bad.”

In theory, the sentence should’ve sounded ridiculous. And because Sam was saying it, it should’ve made me laugh. He was the perpetual joker, after all.

But there was no joke in his eyes. I could see it. The darkness the joker hid. The unhinged part that even Jared Leto in full getup couldn’t replicate.

He squeezed my arm. “You get it, Thumbelina? Need you to get it now. To brace. Keep your hands inside the ride at all times, ’cause once I get going, there’s no stopping me. And you won’t want me to stop. Ever.”

I just gaped at him. Like an idiot. I was probably even drooling. I couldn’t exactly tell. My whole body felt numb. Apart from the place where he was holding me. All of my nerve endings were singing. Screaming. In a good way. In the best way.

“Babe? You get me?”

I nodded. Cleared my throat. “Yeah, I get you,” I whispered.

He grinned wickedly. “Great. ’Cause I know you’re not pretending to be good. You are good. Which means you’re going to be the best at being bad.”

And on that, after completely and utterly soaking my panties, his mouth inches away from mine, he leaned back and let me go.

It looked easy, effortless, the motion. But the way he held his body, the way he clasped his hands into fists the second he stopped touching me, told me different.

Told me he was exercising great willpower.

And that made it that much hotter.

I opened the door fully, unable to deal with all my emotions without spontaneously combusting.

“So, I’ll, um, see you,” I stammered lamely. Like the big dork I was.

To all of that, I said, “I’ll see you.”

Dork.

He grinned wickedly again. “Oh, babe, you’ll see me,” he promised. “And I’ll see you. I see you.”