When Everly called to tell me she was moving out of her parents’ house, I jumped up and down for the very first time since my accident.

Then I came over to help her start packing.

She met me at the back door with a grin and a finger to her lips. “My parents are sleeping,” she whispered.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “It’s the middle of the day.”

“I know,” she hissed. “That’s why I need to move out.”

I stepped in and closed the door quietly behind me, then kissed her hello. “How’d they take the news?” I asked.

She lifted her mouth into a wry smile. “I think my mother wanted to ground me, then realized that wouldn’t exactly work. Then the two of them called my sister to try to get her on their side.”

“How did that go?” I wondered. Everly’s sister was still a mystery to me.

Her smile widened. “Abby cheered for me and then told them living in this house was like being a plant with no sunlight. They started fighting and I went upstairs and got a bunch of packing done in the meantime.”

I kissed her. “You’re spectacular.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Stop being so spectacular and I’ll stop.”

She grinned and gestured for me to head up to her room. This was the first time I’d ever been in the Fosters’ house, even after all these years of being neighbors. It was big enough, but there was an air of closeness that hung in each room, like the walls were pressing me down with invisible hands on my shoulders. I had the strangest urge to sit.

Instead, I bounded up the stairs.

“Stop,” Everly ordered when we got to the top.

I knew what she was going to say, so I took another five steps and added a little hop at the end as I turned to see my girl staring at me, open-mouthed. “You’re walking so well!”

“I know.”

“Doesn’t it hurt still?”

“Nah, baby. I’m on this new prescription that has me feeling better than I have in a long time.”

Her suspicious eyebrows first zoomed upward and then back down again as her eyes narrowed. “You have a new prescription?”

“You wrote it for me,” I told her, pulling her to me and inhaling the scent of her shampoo. “Take two of these and call me in the morning.”

She squealed as I cupped each of her breasts in turn and then swatted me away as she glanced out the door of her bedroom. “I can’t believe you’d do that with my parents in the next room.”

“We do things with my parents in the next room,” I pointed out. 

She rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide the delighted smirk on her face. “Well, I don’t care how good your new prescription has you feeling. Sit down. Your nurse’s orders.”

I sighed and sat down at the edge of her tiny bed. “And how, exactly, am I supposed to be helping you move out if you won’t let me pack anything?”

“I told you I didn’t need help. You came over anyway. It’s not like I’m taking a whole lot with me.”

“You need help carrying boxes.” I glanced down at my phone. “That’s why Beau should be here in a few minutes.”

“Beau’s coming? Why?”

I shifted on the bed, trying to find a way to sit comfortably on the tiny mattress. From the looks of things, she hadn’t gotten a new bed since she was in kindergarten. “Well,” I said. “I told him you needed help and he said he’d come by.”

She colored and blinked back to her tiny, child-sized bookshelf. The blue of her eyes got intensely turquoise. “Baby?” I asked her, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

She abruptly shook her head and dashed her hands hastily against her cheeks. Then she smiled. “Nothing,” she said brightly. “Just, you know. Moving out.”

“It’s gotta be weird,” I agreed. “Hell, I’m still in my childhood bedroom, too.”

She gave me an exasperated look. “Yeah, but you’ve lived other places. Me, I’m like—” She trailed off again, a faraway look in her eyes. 

I thought I recognized it. It was far from standing at the edge of a bridge waiting for your turn to bungee jump, but it was the same idea. It’s fucking hard to force yourself to make that leap into the unknown. “Come over here,” I told her, patting the bed. 

She set down the box and came over, a pile of books still clutched in her hand. “I’m proud of you, you know,” I told her.

“Really? Why?”

“Because you’re taking the first steps.”

“You should see the house. It’s a total dump.”

“You’ll make it a home, I’m positive.” I grinned. “And you’ll have me around to mess it back up again.”

She gave me a shy smile. “You’re gonna come over a lot?”

“Baby, you’re gonna need to keep a bat by the door to shoo me away,” I promised, pulling her in to me.

Even as I did, I felt my heart sink. I was promising something that could never happen. As soon as I was fully healed, my producer wanted me on a plane, ready to shoot the second season of King of Pain. The viral video of my near-death experience had made the buzz around the new season almost deafening, and Kit was rabid to start filming the second I left Crown Creek. 

I brushed my hand up to cup it around Everly’s arm and gave it a guilty squeeze. Her suggestive smile made it pretty clear that she had no idea the thoughts that were going through my head, but I was pretty sure I could tell the ones that were running through hers. “When is Beau supposed to get here?”

I laughed, shaking free the cobwebs of guilt. We still had time. And right now, this girl was amazing. “You little devil, you,” I whispered, glancing in the direction of her parents’ room. 

She wiggled in my arms, doing this cute little shimmy. “Can I tell you something? You’re the first boy I’ve ever had in my room.”

A hot rush of desire made my cock press painfully against my jeans. I shifted, ready to pull her to me, and as I did the books went tumbling from her arms. Instinct made me jerk back—gotta protect those ribs—and as I did, I caught sight of a familiar face. 

“Is that—” I reached for the notebook that was half hidden under the book pile. 

“Give me that!” she said, trying to snatch it from my hand. But I was too quick. Loopy, girlish handwriting covered the front, and there—grinning up at me with his cheesy smile—was my brother’s face. 

“Mrs. Jonah King?” I read, turning the notebook this way and that. “Is that what that says?”

“Shut up,” she hissed, her face beet red.

I glanced up at her with my eyes wide and opened it, leafing through the carefully cut-and-pasted pages. My brother standing. My brother sitting. My brother there in the front during a photoshoot I remembered as being particularly annoying. I flicked through the pages with an increasing sense of befuddlement. “What is this?” 

She opened her mouth, then closed it, her cheeks flushing an even deeper red. “I was...a fan.”

“Of…Jonah?” I leafed through page by page. “Is that…?”

She reached out and covered the picture with her hand. “Gabe!” she warned.

“You’re in a wedding dress.” I looked down at the partially obscured collage and nudged her fingers to the side. “This is actually pretty nicely done. I bet if you ran it through Photoshop, it would really look like you were marrying my brother.”

“Gabe, stop.”

As much as I wanted to, I was on a roll. The old jealousy of my brother and his status as our bandleader swelled up inside of me, demanding to know if my girl still liked him better than she liked me. It was wrong and irrational, and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself from needling her. “Did you cut his picture out of People magazine?” I glanced up at her. “You did know we lived next door to you, right? You could have asked for a picture. Or, hell, you could have just taken one from the other side of the creek.” 

“Gabe.” She looked like she didn’t know whether to cry or murder me.

I licked my lips. Getting upset was stupid. But still. “This is freaking hilarious. I’m sorry.”

She relaxed a little. “You’re not pissed?”

“I mean…you had shitty taste in King Brothers,” I said, more stung than I wanted to admit. “But it’s just weird to see, considering we’re—”

“There’s nothing weird about a teenaged girl having a crush,” she interrupted, snatching the notebook away. 

As she did, a piece of white paper slid free from where it had been tucked into the pages. I turned it over and laughed way too loudly. “You made wedding invitations, too?”

“Gabe!” she hissed and snatched it away. I was pettily gratified that she crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into her waste paper basket. 

“You did a really nice job with the lettering, by the way.”

“Stop.”

“I love all the curlicues. Nice touch.”

She clapped her hands over her face. “I was a kid.”

“I remember now,” I mused. “The way you used to peek over at him.”

She looked up at me, stricken. “You’re mad.”

“I’m really not, I swear. It’s just...weird,” I repeated.

“I had a crush on him. Had,” she said, the corner of her mouth turning up. She set the notebook down and brushed her hand down the side of my face. “I like to think that these days I have better taste in King Brothers.”

I licked my lips, all my hurt pride melting away as she stroked her thumb over my lips. “Speaking of taste,” I said, nipping at her thumb. “I have this strange urge to find out if you taste any different in this bed compared to mine.” I pulled her to me and nipped at her lip, giving her that slight edge of pain I knew she liked with her pleasure. She responded by climbing onto my lap and pulling my face to hers. 

I loved the way she wavered between hesitation and going for it. It was the same as asking Rachel to be her housemate and finding a little house where they could live all within the same week. She bided her time, watchful and waiting, and then, when she was sure of something, she made her move. 

And I loved how sure she was of me. 

I let her cup my face and kiss me until I could feel her hips start rocking against my lap. Then I pulled out my magic trick and lifted her in my arms.

I still wasn’t sure enough on my feet to stand completely, but I was strong enough now to be able to lower her onto her bed. Her eyes were wide, and I grinned. “I’ve been doing my exercises religiously.”

“I hope you’re not overdoing it,” she chided.

“Only where you’re concerned.” She grinned as I leaned over her and kissed her, slipping my hand down her body and under the waistband of her pants. She groaned in my mouth and I hissed in return to find that she was already wet for me. I drew my fingers out and touched them to my tongue as she stared. “I think you taste as sweet as ever, but I can’t be sure unless my tongue is down there, too.”

“My parents,” she murmured, but she didn’t stop me as I tugged her jeans down her hips. 

“Lift that pretty ass for me,” I urged. “Dammit, Everly, I swear that someday I’m gonna fuck you in a normal-sized bed,” I complained as I shifted down and perched myself at the narrow edge of this tiny bed. “A fucking California King where we can move around and...”

She sat up and silenced me with a kiss. Searing and hot, her tongue slid against mine until I’d forgotten everything except the feel of her. I groaned and sank my hands into her hair, loving the way it twined into my fist, making it easier to hold her and kiss her properly. She whimpered as I nipped at her plump bottom lip and I used that moment to slide my fingers between her legs again. She moaned into my mouth when my thumb circled her clit, then screamed in her throat when my forefinger dipped inside of her.

I held her fast in that kiss, tugging gently at her hair until she was a mindless mass of sensations. I felt her pussy tighten around my fingers as I stroked that special place inside of her, timing my finger thrusts with strokes of my thumb over her clit. She clung to me, shuddering around my fingers as I swallowed her moans and gasps and pleas, until her whole body went rigid.

I groaned as her pussy muscles clamped down on my finger like a vise and my cock throbbed in jealousy of my fingers as she started to fall to pieces around me. I thrust my tongue into her mouth and devoured her sounds as she came over and over again until I felt her body go limp. 

“Fuck, baby,” I breathed. “That was intense.”

“Condom,” she moaned. 

“In my wallet.”

“Hurry,” she breathed. “I need you.”

I’d never moved so fast in my life. Injuries be damned, I was naked and rolling the condom on in three seconds flat. She moved to straddle me again, but I pressed my hand to her chest. “No, baby,” I told her. “Today I’m gonna fuck you. Lie back and spread those legs for me.”

Her eyes went dark and heavy-lidded. She reclined back on her bed like a princess and I positioned myself over her. “Wider, baby. Give me those hips.”

She arched up and I plunged into her in one smooth motion. 

I saw stars. I saw the fucking fabric of the universe. That searing heat burned me from the inside out and I was close to coming before I was ready. Desperate, I deliberately leaned over her in a way that put pressure on my ankle. The pain brought me back from the brink long enough that I was able to focus again and finally fuck her the way I’d been wanting to all this time. 

“Gabe.” Fuck, I loved the way she said my name while I was inside of her. And I definitely loved the little yelps of pleasure that escaped her lips every time I thrust into her. I was being way too rough, pounding into her with an unexplained urgency, but she took everything I had and kept asking for more, no, pleading for it with her eyes, her lips, and the arch of her back as she lifted herself up off the bed to brush her spectacular tits against my chest.

She needed that explosion, so I gave it to her, pressing my thumb to her clit and leaning over to nip at her pretty little nipples. When I bit down, she gasped, which only made me thrust harder, slamming myself into her and making her tiny bed squeak. “Gabe! Gabe!” Her breath caught as I curled my tongue along her ear and nipped again, and right then and there I had the mind-blowing pleasure of feeling Everly’s pussy clamp down on my cock as I fucked her.

“Shit, baby, yes.” I was babbling but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but the fact that I was claiming this girl. She was mine, mine, mine. 

Something white and hot exploded behind my eyeballs even as fireworks exploded up my spine. I came with a roar, thrusting into her so hard I was sure I was going to split her in half. But she clung to me, and at the perfect moment, she raked her fingers down my back, sending me over the edge into oblivion.