CHAPTER ONE

 

 

Sarah tossed down her suitcase and her camping roll and sleeping bag onto the dusty hardwood floor of the small attic bedroom. She knew that the attic room had most likely been used as a kid’s room or an office in the past. She also knew that there was a lovely master bedroom downstairs. But as of Wednesday last week, she officially owned this house and she could claim any room she wanted as hers. And she wanted the attic room. Even though, with its angled ceilings, she could only stand straight in the very middle of it.

She dragged her suitcase to one side and set up the camping roll and sleeping bag underneath the small stained glass window on one end. The dust she disturbed made her sneeze, but her vision cleared in time to watch the dust motes floating through patches of light dyed ruby and sapphire by the stained glass. She lifted her hand and played with the colored light for a moment.

Maybe I’ll get a tattoo, she mused as she watched the colored light play over her skin. A really visible one.

She shook her head at herself as she headed back down the creaky attic stairs. No. She wasn’t going to do things that were solely meant to piss her father off. That wasn’t the point of moving here. The point of moving here was to forget about him, extract him from her life. If she did things just to aggravate him, it was only allowing him to remain present.

This was a chance to start a new life.

She made her way the rest of the way downstairs and crossed her toned arms as she surveyed the mess on the first floor of her house. This wasn’t just a new life, it was a new, extremely messy life. The front room of her tiny house was an absolute atrocity. It was piled with teetering mountains of boxes that were messily taped and lacking labels of any kind. Some of them she’d already opened and pawed through and some of them were dirty and smashed up from the move across country.

Unpacking was going to be a real bitch.

All the more reason to put it off until tomorrow, she figured. She could live out of a suitcase for a few days. She’d been doing it for most of her life, so in some ways she was more comfortable with that anyways.

Her clunky, ugly, waterproof watch beeped on her wrist and she smiled at it. It was horrible to look at, but it was glow-in-the-dark, had a compass and stopwatch, and could tell her the barometric pressure. She couldn’t have loved it more. It was also programmed to remind her to eat. Which was another reason she loved this thing. If she didn’t have a third party to tell her to eat, sometimes her old bad habits and neuroses had a way of sneaking back into her routine and she was more than ready to kick that shit to the curb. Along with her father. Bad habits and fathers were not welcome on 3rd street in Boulder, Colorado.

Well, she couldn’t speak for anybody else’s house. But definitely not in hers.

She’d just gotten herself an obscenely large scoop of peanut butter from the jar in her kitchen when her doorbell rang.

It was one of those bells that played a little song when it rang. She hadn’t even known she had a doorbell. But there it was, playing that ding-dong-DING-dong song that church bells played at noon.

She brought her scoop of peanut butter with her and yanked her front door open. She wasn’t worried that it was her father, because he would never do something as polite as ring a doorbell. If it was him on her doorstep, he’d be attempting to bang the door off its hinges and shouting her name loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.

Her eyes swept over the caller. It definitely was not her father on her doorstep.

The man that stood there was in his mid-twenties, had perfectly manicured blond hair, tan skin and green eyes. He was clean shaven and had brilliant white teeth that were currently grinning at her. Sarah’s eyes dropped from his rather stunning face all the way down to his perfectly laced boots. He wore a green flannel shirt underneath a denim jacket and jeans that were a different shade than the jacket. He looked like Brooklyn’s version of a lumberjack. Everything was perfectly cuffed and perfectly buttoned. Even the late afternoon sunlight shadowed his face in a way that suggested he’d curated it.

The man’s smile faltered as he took in Sarah’s expression. She’d never been able to hide anything on her face and she was sure her skeptical judgment was showing through quite clearly.

“Ah, hello,” he said in a surprisingly deep and scratchy voice. His voice was rock and roll but his look was Eddie Bauer catalogue. “I’m Seth Durant. Your neighbor.”

He jogged one thumb over his shoulder to point at his house directly across the street. She poked her head out of her doorjamb, where she was currently leaning, and observed a house she’d barely even looked at before. She immediately noticed that it was as perfectly manicured as the man who stood in front of her right now.

It was a charming little redbrick two-story with a navy blue front door and an expertly crafted front porch. Some flowering, late summer bushes exploded with deep purple flowers lining his porch, which gave the place a kind of cottage-ish feel. But the front yard was a maze of perfectly placed cactuses and succulents. It was pretty and colorful and put every single other dried, brownish lawn on the block to shame. Including hers.

She brought her eyes back to the neighbor. Who was this guy? Her opinion of him was dropping lower and lower. If there was one thing Sarah had learned over the last few years of her life, it was to be highly suspicious of people who cared so much about appearance.

Realizing that too much time had passed without her saying anything to him, she introduced herself. “Sarah Moyer.”

Her mouth was still pretty full of peanut butter, though, so the words came out a little sticky. Her neighbor’s eyes fell to her mouth and a strange expression crossed his face. She held out one hand, realized that she still held the spoon, jammed the peanut butter spoon into her mouth and held her hand out to shake again.

“Nice to meet you,” she said around the spoon, waiting for him to shake her hand.

His light brows furrowed, but he shook her hand, his palm hot and rough under hers. He gave her hand a good, strong shake, which surprised her considering how perfectly pressed and permed this guy was.

“Welcome to the neighborhood. You all moved in?” he asked.

She nodded her head behind her to the front room. “Yeah. I dropped off the U-Haul this morning.”

His eyes tracked into her house and widened when he saw the mess of boxes and bags in her front room. She could have sworn a vein in his temple started pulsing. “Wow. You’ve got your work cut out for you.” He cleared his throat and flashed her that blinding smile again. “You need any help?”

She was certain that the look of skeptical judgment was back on her face. Pretty boy wanted to help her unpack? Yeah. No way. Nobody just offered to help a stranger with a shitty job like that. He was definitely angling for something if he was offering. She was not about to let herself get hooked on that line.

Not wanting to be entirely rude, she hid her facial expression by looking back at the pile of her things in the front room. When she turned back to face him, his eyes shot up to meet her gaze. But there was no hiding the fact that he’d just been looking at her legs.

Sarah wore a plain, oversized T-shirt, workout shorts, and bunchy knee-high leg warmers, one blue and one green, because the early September day had ended up a little colder than she’d expected and she hadn’t wanted to go digging through her boxes to find sweatpants, or the matching leg warmers. Who cared? She didn’t have anyone to impress.

But this Seth guy looked thoroughly confused by her outfit. She didn’t want to be rude but she also didn’t especially need this interaction to go on any longer either. She pulled the spoon out of her mouth.

“Nope,” she said, answering his question about needing help.

His eyebrows raised in surprise, maybe because she’d popped the ‘p’ in nope a little hard, or maybe because a guy that beautiful wasn’t used to hearing the word no.

Frankly, Sarah didn’t care.

“Oh. Okay. Well, yeah. Welcome to the neighborhood,” he said in that deep voice of his that reminded Sarah of driving slowly down a gravel road at night. His brow furrowed even further and he jammed his hands in his pockets. “I already said that.”

“You must really mean it, then,” she said, adding a small smile to soften her snarky statement. She wasn’t trying to be an asshole, but she hadn’t moved out here to make friends. She’d moved out here to disappear for a little while. And the last thing she needed or wanted was attention from the neighborhood hottie. Which this guy definitely was. He wasn’t her taste in the least, but there was no denying that he was very pretty.

“I do! Mean it, I mean.”

She had to give it to him, his smile seemed very genuine. With his hands still in his pockets, he backed up a few steps to the edge of her porch, giving her space. Maybe he was a nice guy. Not that it mattered—she didn’t need any kind of guy in her life, nice or otherwise.

“Look,” he continued. “It’s a great neighborhood. Lots of families. You’ve got Marcia Owens, two blocks down, she’s a massage therapist, she’ll cut you a deal since you live in the neighborhood. Three houses down on this side are Mort and Michelle, he’s a mechanic and loves helping people in the neighborhood.” He paused for a second. “Um, he’s also kind of a talker, so just make sure to build in an extra hour or two if you bring your car to his shop. Let’s see… who else… Ah! Lynn Sark one block east of here, she can get you lift tickets at the Eldora resort for a discount if you’re into skiing or boarding.” His eyes skated over Sarah’s legs and arms again and she was certain he was noting how toned she was. He seemed to lose his train of thought for a second but then he jumped back in to what he’d been saying before. “Don’t let Lynn’s manner fool you. She can seem like she’s a real—”

“She’s my aunt,” Sarah cut in.

His tan face went dead white. “But she’s a real nice lady. That’s how I was gonna end that sentence. I swear. I like Lynn a lot. She’s my friend.”

“Who apparently gives you a discount on lift tickets.” Sarah couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows. She also couldn’t help but chuckle when he took his hands out of his pockets and dragged them down his face, stretching his pretty features into a look of horror.

“Seriously, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Sarah cracked. She smiled at him. “It’s okay. I know exactly what you mean about Aunt Lynn. She can seem like a real asshole but it’s all a cover for how gooey she is at heart.”

“Exactly,” he breathed, seeming to go soft with relief that she understood. “Well. Now that I’ve completely put my foot in my mouth, interrupted your day, and insulted your family, I guess it’s time for me to go.”

“Okay,” Sarah said, stepping back into her house and starting to close her door. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Sarah,” he called, and for some reason she was vaguely surprised that he’d used her first name. He looked like the kind of guy who forgot people’s names the first second he heard them. “If you change your mind about needing help unpacking, just knock on my door. The offer’s on the table.”

“Okay,” she repeated, giving him a small wave and closing the door all the way. She supposed having a nice neighbor was better than having a jerk neighbor. But maybe she should have moved someplace further out in the hills where should wouldn’t have had to deal with any neighbors at all.

She shrugged. What’s done is done. And for now? More peanut butter.

 

 

***

 

 

Seth shook his head at himself as he jogged back across the street. Well, he’d really botched the hell out of that one. He didn’t usually put his foot in his mouth like that. To be fair, there would have been no way for him to guess that Sarah and Lynn were related. They had different last names and they looked nothing alike. Lynn was a tiny thing, barely over five feet with jet black hair. Sarah was probably about 5’9” and athletic. Lynn was pale where Sarah was more golden. And Sarah’s hair was a wavy, honey brown that was blonde at the tips.

Seth unlocked his truck and slammed his way in, checking to make sure that the casserole he’d stowed in the front seat was secure enough for the drive across town to his mother’s house.

There’d been no way for him to know that she and Lynn were related, but he knew better than most that last names and physical appearance didn’t mean shit when it came to who you called family.

He and his twin brother Raphael had been adopted at the age of two. Even though it was more than twenty-five years ago, and he’d been just a toddler, he’d never forget the feeling of going from him and Raph against the world to suddenly having a mother and an older brother all at once. Elizabeth and Jackson were already a bonded unit when Seth and Raph had shown up. But the four of them had just all sort of instantly blended together.

That’s not to say that it hadn’t been rocky. Having one kid was very different from having three kids and Elizabeth had definitely had to adjust. It had been a big adjustment for Jackson as well, though Seth hadn’t known about that for many years. Jackson was more the kind to bear discomfort in silence. He wasn’t exactly a complainer.

Regardless, Seth was very aware that families came in all shapes and sizes. Maybe he should find a way to apologize to Sarah again, even though she hadn’t seemed very insulted by his slip of the tongue. But apologizing would be a good reason to go back to her house. And Seth really, really wanted to go back to her house.              

He steered his truck down the long, gravel driveway of his mother’s house, secluded back in the hills west of Boulder. His brothers were already there, which was unusual. Seth was always exactly on time, but Raphael was typically extremely late, cutting the full moon so close that Jackson was always close to a pissed-off heart attack by the time their truant brother finally arrived.

Seth grabbed the casserole and jogged up the stairs of the home he’d grown up in. He loved it here. The porch stairs creaked in that familiar way and the white sage that grew naturally in his mother’s side yard perfumed the dry air. Wind chimes chattered on the wind as Seth kicked the dirt off his boots and entered the house without knocking.

“Seth?” his mother called from the kitchen. “Is that you, baby?”

“Hey, Ma!” he called back. “I’m not late, am I?”

He walked down the hallway lined with pictures of him and his brothers at every awkward age.

“No. It’s just that the world started turning backwards and Raphael got here early.”

Seth entered the kitchen just in time to see his twin shrug. “I was hungry,” Raph said, leaning over the salad bowl Elizabeth was chopping carrots into. She slapped his hand away.

“Wait until it’s on the table. You’re not an animal.”

Raphael smirked and made eye contact with Seth. “Well…”
“Oh, hush up,” Elizabeth laughed. “You know what I meant.”

“Hi, Ma,” Seth said, coming across the kitchen to kiss her cheek and to toss the casserole into the oven she’d preheated for him.

“Is that the broccoli casserole I love?” she asked.

“Sure is.”

“Kiss-ass,” Raphael accused his brother, side-arm hugging Seth, whom he hadn’t seen in a few days.

“If you’re going to complain about your brother’s cooking skills, I’ll eat your portion,” Elizabeth said, checking one of the covered pots on the stove.

“Nonono! No complaints here.” Raph put his hands in the air. He was a terrible cook himself, but it was a damn shame considering how much he loved to eat. And he had the bulk to prove it. He wasn’t fat in the least, but he was bulky, built like a tank where Seth was built like a sports car.               Technically, they were identical twins, but their personalities and style choices easily distinguished them. Seth was neat and trim and fashionable. Muscular but lean.

Raphael, on the other hand, wore whatever happened to be on the top of the clean clothes pile in his room and didn’t bother with many personal grooming habits. He had the five o’clock shadow and overgrown, shaggy blond hair to prove it. Raphael’s muscles were bulky and made him a few inches wider than Seth.

“Where’s Jackson?” Seth asked.

Raphael rolled his eyes. “Probably doing Mom’s taxes eight months early.”

“Rude.” Elizabeth pointed a bossy finger at Raphael. “Just because Jackson likes to take care of his mother doesn’t mean you need to give him shit for it.”

“I take care of you, too!” Raphael insisted, snatching a rogue carrot from the cutting board and grinning at his mother. “Remember when I flirted with that salesgirl at JC Penney’s so that she’d accept your expired coupon?”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes but her love for her son was wildly apparent. “A real knight in shining armor, my son.”

“And don’t you forget it!” He lunged for another carrot stick but yelped when Elizabeth slapped his hand away.

“Are we eating soon, Ma?” Jackson asked as he came into the kitchen. “The moon’s only an hour away from rising.”

Seth turned and watched his oldest brother take a knee in order to stow away the toolbox he’d just been using to fix whatever it was that he’d fixed for Elizabeth.

“Jackson Durant, do you think I need your help to remember when the moon is rising? I’ve been doing this since you were in diapers. Literally.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, rising back up with a small smile on his generally serious face. “Oh. Seth. I didn’t know you’d gotten here yet.”

The brothers bumped fists. Seth and Jackson, though not genetically related, assumed a startlingly familiar position as they both leaned up against the counter, arms crossed over their chests and their legs crossed at the ankle. Jackson was dark where Seth and Raph were blond. And he wore the same carefully sculpted beard that he’d worn for a few years. He was taller than the twins, topping out around 6’3”, and lanky. Jackson’s wingspan had been a source of admiration from Seth since they were children. Playing basketball against his older brother was a study in blocked shots.

“Sethy, will you set the table?” Elizabeth asked over her shoulder, and with the manners of a well-brought-up son, Seth immediately grabbed out dishes from the cabinet.

“Enough for the girls, too,” Elizabeth reminded him.

“Oh. Nat and Kaya are joining us?” Seth asked, glancing over at Jackson surreptitiously.

Just like Seth knew he would be, Jackson looked livid. “You invited Nat and Kaya here on a full moon night, Ma?”

Elizabeth kept her back to her sons while she fiddled with something on the stove, which was the first clue that she’d known Jackson would react this way. “They eat dinner over here three or four nights a week, Jacks. Why would tonight be any different?”

Jackson took a deep breath that obviously did nothing to calm him down. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed closed his chocolate brown eyes. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, with a deadly calm. “Because it’s a full moon night, Mother.”

“Oooh, Ma, you’re in trooooouuuuble,” Raphael sang out. “You got hit with a ‘mother.’”

“Shut up, Raph,” Jackson said, pushing off from the counter. “Ma, I thought we agreed that it isn’t safe for humans to be around us on the full moon.”
“No,” Elizabeth said, whirling around and wielding a spatula like a sword. “You agreed that. With no one but yourself. These boys right here are not a danger to anyone on a full moon night. And neither are you. It’s about time you learned that.”

Jackson’s face battened down and it was clear just how much he disagreed with his mother on this point. “Ma, it’s bad enough that Nat and Kaya even know about us. But to be here for it? To see it?”

“It’s not the first time they’ve joined us on a full moon, Jackson,” Seth said in a soft tone he’d always used to calm his family down.

“I know that, Seth. I hate it every time.”

“If you hate full moons so much, Jacks, then why do you even bother coming here? Why not just chain yourself up in your own basement?” Raphael demanded.

His words fell like gravel on a glass-top table. The silence swelled and strained in the kitchen. They rarely spoke, as a family, of the ways that Jackson felt he had to punish himself for what they were, who they were born as.

The silence broke at the sound of the front door opening.

“Yoohoo!” Nat’s voice rang through the house. “Honeys! We’re home!”

“In the kitchen,” Raph shouted back to Natalie, his best friend since grade school.

“Great. Just great,” Jackson muttered, yanking the dishes and silverware from Seth’s hands and vacating the kitchen before the girls set foot in there.

Seconds later, Natalie and Kaya Chalk came into the kitchen. Natalie came in like a firework, grinning and waving her hands. Kaya, though younger than Natalie, was much more reserved, and came in with a small smile on her face.

Seth noticed the way Kaya’s eyes flashed around the kitchen and then dimmed just slightly as she realized that they were short one Durant.

Natalie, with her chin-length, dark brown hair and flashing green eyes, launched herself into Elizabeth’s arms for a hug and then elbowed Raph in the side in greeting.

Kaya kissed Elizabeth’s cheek and then sidled up next to Seth. “Is he mad that we’re here?” she asked in a low voice. Seth didn’t need clarification on who she was talking about.

“He’ll get over it,” he whispered back.

“He’s capable of getting over things?” Kaya’s eyebrows rose abruptly. “News to me.”

Seth smirked. Seth and Raph were friendly and goofy. Jackson, on the other hand, was reserved, businesslike, ordered, and very hard to know. Besides, he and Kaya were practically in different generations. Jackson was thirty-five to Kaya’s twenty-two. When Jackson had gone off to undergrad, Kaya had only been eight years old. When Jackson had returned to Boulder after Veterinary school, Kaya had been graduating high school, and in many ways, had been more a part of the Durant family than the distant Jackson.

In Seth’s opinion, Jackson had a tough time forgiving the Chalk sisters for commandeering his family while he wasn’t looking. But Seth wished he’d just get over it already. It had been four years since Jackson’s return and he still could barely be in the same room as the sisters.

“Dinner’s up, kids,” Elizabeth said, snapping Seth out of his reverie. “Let’s get some food in these boys’ bellies before moonrise.”

 

***

 

 

Jackson ate his food quickly and silently, barely looking up from his plate. All full moon days were torture for him, but ones where he had to act like a civilized human being, sharing a dinner table with Kaya Chalk? Well, those were extra torturous.

It was as if Kaya Chalk had been specifically designed by the devil to test Jackson’s limits.

She was thirteen years younger than he was. And in his eyes, she was utterly and completely perfect. With hair that was sometimes brown and sometimes blonde, and always messy, her bright green eyes always seemed to be looking up at him from the bottom of some terrifyingly powerful ocean. She had the poutiest set of lips he’d ever seen in his life and a small, straight nose. She was classically gorgeous, except for how messy her hair always was, and it endeared her to him to no end.

He tried not to think about her hair. In fact, he tried not to think about her at all. Which was infinitely easier when she wasn’t picking carefully through broccoli casserole on one end of his mother’s table. He thanked God they hadn’t been seated next to one another.

He would never forget the last time they’d sat next to one another. It was four years ago and he’d made sure it had never happened since. He’d just come home after graduating Veterinary school. He’d paid his way through school and hadn’t been able to afford to visit hardly at all in pretty much a decade. His mother had thrown him a coming home party with ‘just family’. Which, Jackson had realized belatedly, also meant the Chalk sisters.

Nat Chalk was Raph’s best friend since forever and apparently since Jackson had been gone, she and her sister Kaya had been spending quite a bit of time at the Durant house. Enough time for Ma to consider the girls family.

He’d entered his mother’s dining room to see Nat looking almost exactly as he remembered her. Smiling, chatting, her face a constant, moving piece of artwork. He’d hugged her and then turned to the other person in the room.

It was then that Jackson’s life as he’d known it had ended.

The most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen in his entire existence was blinking shyly at him with big green eyes.

“You probably don’t remember me,” she’d whispered. “I was only eight when you left.”

…Which made her eighteen years old then.

Jackson’s image of himself took a stab to the gut. No. No way. He was not lusting after an eighteen-year-old. He was a thirty-one-year-old man! This. Was. Not. Happening.

“I remember,” he’d told her, and shook her hand.

Unfortunately, they’d sat next to one another at dinner. Jackson had closed in on himself, refusing outright to even directly address her. It was an act of self-preservation. Any word shared between them merely ballooned his desire for her. And he refused to fan those flames.

Thus began the four-year trial of denying his attraction to the girl. The girl who’d turned into a woman before his very eyes.

Time marched on and Kaya aged. But unfortunately, so did Jackson. As cruel as the world was, their age difference never shrank.

Which meant that now, when Jackson’s phone alarm went off in his pocket, reminding him that moonrise was only fifteen minutes away, he rose without a word to anyone, and not even a glance in Kaya’s direction. He strode quickly and methodically to the stairs of his mother’s basement, where a set of steel chains awaited him and the long night ahead. As he descended the stairs, he didn’t even bother turning on a light. He just let the darkness swallow him up, every step a reminder of all the reasons why he could never, ever have Kaya Chalk.

 

 

***

 

 

Seth frowned after Jackson, still never quite able to understand why he was so much harder on himself than either Seth or Raph were.

Seth knew that within two minutes, Jackson would have firmly manacled a steel collar around his neck and around his ankles. Then he’d sit, naked as a jaybird, and wait for the full moon to rise.

Seth and Raph, on the other hand, always waited until they only had a minute or two to spare, and then they’d race one another outside. Seth glanced at the clock.

“Met my new neighbor today,” he informed the table.

“Oh yeah? The house across the street from you?” Nat asked. She was a real estate agent and had shown that house the month before to a set of clients who hadn’t liked it very much.

“Yup.” Seth fiddled with his napkin for a minute. “She’s cute.”

“Ooooooooo,” Raphael said, leaning across the table and batting eyelashes at Seth. “Seth has a girlfriend.”

“Be careful, Raph,” Nat teased, tossing her napkin at him. “If you say the word ‘girlfriend’ too many times in a row, you magically end up with one. It’s like beetlejuice.”

Raphael gave a fake shiver and, with wide, terrified eyes, pretended to zip up his lips. Natalie made eyes at her sister and they laughed good-naturedly. Raphael’s ADD dating life was a source of great conversation and gossip for them.

“She looked kind of familiar to me,” Seth said, ignoring Raph and Nat’s teasing. “But I can’t quite place her.”

“What’s her name?” Elizabeth asked, glancing at the clock. The last time the boys had missed the deadline for the full moon, they’d scratched her living room carpet to hell and back.

“Sarah Moyer.”

“Sarah Moyer?” Kaya asked, her voice rising in an excited pitch that they’d rarely heard her use. “The Olympian?”

“Huh?” Seth asked.

“Wait.” Kaya pulled out her phone, like a good little millennial, and searched the web for a hot second. She held her phone out to Seth. “Is this her?”

“Yeah, that’s—holy shit, she’s a silver-medal-winning Olympian?”

Kaya nodded and put her phone away. “Yeah. She’s totally badass. She won silver in archery two Olympics ago.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said, grimacing. “I think I heard about this.”

“Yeah,” Nat said, nodding her head. “It’s a sad story.”

“What happened?” Seth asked, glancing at the clock. They only had four minutes to get themselves naked and outdoors.

“Well, she’s considered to be the best in the world. This year she was totally expected to sweep and win all golds. But I guess she totally choked. She lost in every competition. She was even investigated for cheating.”

“Why would they investigate you for cheating if you lost everything?” Raph asked. He rose up from the table.

So did Seth, and the two of them started undressing. None of the women in the room even blinked. They’d seen this routine dozens of times.

“Because the Olympic committee suspected her of purposefully throwing the competition. They needed to make sure she didn’t have money riding on it, betting against herself or something. She was cleared, though.”

“So, why did she do it?” Seth asked.

Kaya shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

“Wow.” Seth folded his clothes neatly and shook his head at the wrinkled pile of his brother’s clothes on the floor. “Now I really, really wanna go back over there and make friends with her. Goodnight, everybody.” He waved his hands at the women and his mother blew a kiss to her boys.

He and Raph filed out of the house and to the backyard, standing in just their underwear, which they yanked off and set on the porch for when they got back in the morning.

“You really like this girl, huh?” Raph asked, stretching his arms across his chest like he was gearing up for fight night.

Seth called up Sarah’s blunt features, her fierce brow and her pink lips. He couldn’t help but mentally slide down her toned legs. The girl had serious stems. He shrugged. “Like I said, she’s really cute. But…”

“But…” Raph said, shoving Seth to get him to keep talking.

“I mostly want to go back to her house because she hasn’t really unpacked anything yet and her living room is a crime against humanity.”

“Oh my God! You are a total freak. You’ve got a cute, silver-medal-winning chick living across the street from you and you wanna organize her spice rack.”

Seth shrugged, grimacing as he remembered the astonishing disarray of her belongings. “It’s a sickness. I won’t be able to sleep knowing that mess is over there.”

Raphael chuckled and shook his head, his eyes on the horizon where the full moon was peaking over the edge of the earth, almost fully exposed. “Ready to party?”

Seth’s eyes were trained on the moon, his neck cracking from one side to the other. “Always.”