I was right.

Living with Whitney is excruciating.

It was bad enough trying to avoid her. Mornings were easy enough during the week. I left early, when she was still in the shower. Evenings, I stayed late.

The less I saw her, the better. The less I saw her, the less I had to see those little flashes of openness in her face. The less I had to picture those lips on mine. The less I had to work at pushing her away. She’s one of those women who’s so damn enthusiastic about everything, so confident, that you can’t get them to leave you alone. Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. Whitney can’t come that close.

She can’t find out what it’s really like inside my head.

I thought I could handle watching a movie with her. I thought it would be easy as hell to sit there on the couch with a cold beer in hand, staring at some raunchy comedy.

I was wrong.

I could hardly follow the plot of the damn thing, if there was a plot, because all I could think about was her. We were only separated by a few feet. I could have reached out and touched her. I could have done more than that. If she hadn’t gone out with her girlfriends...

I run a hand over my face and let out a long breath. It’s time to work.

I can’t sit here focusing on Whitney. Running all the new things I’ve learned about her through my mind. She works for an insurance agency, but she wants to be an actress. It partially explains her sharp wit, the way she always rolls with the punches. It doesn’t explain why I find this so fucking sexy.

“Something on your mind, Sullivan?”

I spin around in my chair and face Greg, who is paused in the aisle outside my cubicle, brows knitted together with what looks like concern.

Whitney. Whitney is on my mind. Her relentless energy. The way words pour out of her, faster and faster, when she gets going. The way her mouth feels on mine. This ridiculous desire I have to know what makes her this way, to know what she’s hiding.

People are always hiding something.

Greg takes my too-long pause as an invitation. “Troubles on the home front?”

I smile in spite of myself. “You mean, with my roommate?”

He waggles his eyebrows. “Yes. Your roommate. Is she giving you trouble?”

Yes. In all sorts of ways. Namely that every time I look at her, I have the strangest urge to draw her into a battle that we’ll start with words and end with bodies colliding in the private space we’re going to be sharing for at least the next six weeks.

“Nah. She’s fine. Just making sure I’ve got everything lined up for this client.” It’s half a lie. I was doing that before one of the women in the office walked by wearing a pink t-shirt that reminded me of a dress Whitney has.

“You need some help?”

I hate asking for help. I hate admitting I need it. But more than that, I hate talking about Whitney. It seems gross, a violation somehow. “If you’d take a look—” I swivel back around to my computer screen and lift one of the papers from my desk. “Right here.”

Greg is a helper, and he dives right in. I do my best to act like I’m paying attention.

The air in the city smells like sunshine, if you can ignore the general scent of piss and garbage that runs underneath everything. I do my best to focus on the fresh air on the walk home. I try out some bullshit technique that some roving therapist gave me after the incident in the Humvee. Being aware of my surroundings, but without focusing on the negative details.

Sunshine it is.

I wish I didn’t have this fucking headache.

My head throbs lightly with every step, and even though it’s sunny, even though it’s warm without being oppressive, I can feel my mood plummeting. Outside, by the traffic, it’s too unpredictable. I want to wrap my hands around all the cars and shove them into order, silence the cab drivers shouting at each other.

On the last corner before the apartment, some asshole runs a red light and almost gets nailed, the brakes screeching. They’re shitty brakes and the metal-on-metal scream makes my heart beat faster, adrenaline running its fingers up the length of my spine.

The pressure in my temples intensifies.

What the fuck is wrong with me? A car braking, narrowly missing another car, and a man shouting at the top of his lungs, his speech laced with a foreign accent, and I’m breaking out into a sweat that’s hardly appropriate for a gentle spring day in Manhattan.

I clench my fist around the handle of my bag and watch the walk signal across the street. Living here, like this, was supposed to make this better.

It’s getting worse every day.

I’ve almost got it under control by the time I step into the apartment. All the lights are off and it’s blessedly dark. With the locks shut behind me, the pounding pressure in my chest eases a little bit.

I put my bag on the table and take a breath.

Whitney is silhouetted against the big window behind the television, mouthing words that I assume are written on the paper she’s clutching with both hands. She must have another audition. When she’s not running out for wine with her friends, or inviting me to casual movie nights where we sit on the couch and try not to stray into uncomfortable territory, she’s practicing for auditions.

She makes a hideous face, teeth bared, mouth stretched open.

I can’t help myself. “You’ll never get the part with that face.”

Whitney glances over, her face neutral, not at all surprised to see me. “It was good enough for you to kiss,” she says dismissively, then goes right back into the hideous expression. “So I’d shut my mouth, if I were you.”

“Maybe you should shut it for me.” Oh, my God. It’s like the headache has dissolved the filter that normally keep idiocy like this from coming out of my mouth.

Whitney looks across at me, eyebrows raised. “Yes, because that worked out so well for me before.”

“Didn’t it? I went to the wedding.”

She scrunches up her face into a smile. “And thank goodness, because you were a joy and a delight to all involved.”

“Please. You liked it.”

“Are you talking about the part at the reception where you were an ass to me?” Whitney’s tone is still light, but there’s a seriousness to her words that takes me aback. “I wouldn’t say that I liked it. I liked that you decided to be there for Summer.” She looks back down at the paper. I’d bet anything she’s pretending to read it. “As for the rest...” Whitney shrugs.

“Are you serious?” I laugh out loud, bewildered, and suddenly I don’t care about boundaries. I don’t care about pushing her away. No, I want to draw her in closer. I want to know what’s really going on in that head of hers. Hot and cold. Sarcastic and vulnerable. Which one is the real Whitney? “I saw how you looked at me the day I moved in.”

“You were mistaken,” she says primly. “I was hot for that rent money.” Whitney moves into the living room, her face shadowed. She’s like a magnet. I step out of the entryway, stand at the edge of the couch.

“You’re a liar.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

Whitney’s facing off with me, arms crossed, paper crumpled in her hand. A slow smile spreads across her face. “What is this, Wes? What kind of day has it been?”

“What kind of day?”

“Yeah.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, and the movement of her hips is so distracting it’s hard to haul my eyes away from the curve of her waist and back up to her eyes. “What kind of day would make you come home like this? Such aggressive jokes.”

Whitney grins at me, and I have no idea what the hell is going on, but I know what I want it to be.

“Such aggressive lying,” I counter. “I saw how you looked at me that first day I moved here, and I saw how you looked at me when we were watching that stupid movie.”

“That movie was funny.”

She steps toward me and I take a breath. The air in here is light and clean, like she’s opened a window, and on top of it is the scent of her, fresh and bright and utterly intoxicating.

“If you know I’m lying, then prove it.” Whitney lifts her chin. I could reach out and take it in my hand right now. “One kiss. Right now.”

We’re way over the line. Way.

“I don’t fuck around with roommates.”

She takes another step closer. “I’m not fucking around.”

We are inches apart.

“That’s not true, and you know it.”

Whitney cocks her head to the side, her dark eyes endless in the cool light of the living room. “I don’t have anything to prove.” She raises one shoulder an inch, then lowers it.

Every inch of me wants to close that infuriating distance between us and take her, right here on the floor. There’s nothing stopping us. She’s not about to walk down the aisle in professional makeup and a bridesmaid’s dress that has to be spotless. The door is locked. The only thing I’d be crossing is the line we drew in the sand.

“Good,” I tell her. “I’m late to meet someone anyway.”