Breaking Bro Code (The Line Up #4) - Misti Murphy Page 0,46

move?”

“No.” He puts his drink down on one of the bamboo side tables. “What about you?”

Would I move across the country for love? Home has never been a place to me. It’s always been the people I’m surrounded by. My brother and his friends. Lewis and Trix and Kiki. My grandparents. People who wanted to be in my life as much as I wanted to be in theirs. Goosebumps break out on my legs. “I don’t care if I live the rest of my life in Chicago or move to Timbuktu. Home base is where you and Hud are.”

“Lily,” he cautions.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not telling you because of how I feel about you. I get that nothing is supposed to happen between us. It’s just the truth. You and Hud and Jane are my nucleus.”

“It isn’t okay though.” He comes to stand beside me at the edge of the pool. Fingers tucked back into his pockets and glued to his thighs. “Not after this evening.”

“No, it isn’t.” I turn on him. “You really hurt me tonight. That was such an asshole move.”

“I’m not a nice guy.” He shrugs. Can’t even look me in the eye. “But you knew that already.”

“I don’t know that.” I shake my head and shove my hand into his chest. “The guy I grew up around is not that mean. He’s a nice guy who would protect me from jerks like you.”

“That’s what I was doing,” he says.

“Oh. That’s what you were doing?” The pitch of my voice rises higher than my eyebrows as I stare at him in disbelief.

“Yes.” His voice is calm and steady as though his response is so well-rehearsed as to be ingrained.

“I don’t even know what that means.” I throw my hands up. “You’re trying to protect me from jerks? Or from you?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“So you’re saying you’re a jerk?”

“Lil.” He sounds frustrated. “What else would you call it? I kissed you, for fuck’s sake. My best friend’s sister. My closest female friend. And I fucking stuck my tongue down your throat with nothing but the intent to know exactly what you taste like.”

I know he’s frustrated and angry at himself, but damn if hearing him say that doesn’t make my thighs clench. “Y-you chased me across the country?”

“Yes.” He moves into my space. “Damn it all to hell. That’s exactly what I did.”

“You kissed me because you…” My brain stutters to a stop. He’s too near. All pheromones and heat and blue, blue eyes. All I can think about is that kiss. His taste. His smell. The bruises on my hips, shaped like his fingers. How much I want to stretch up on my tiptoes and repeat that toe curling kiss despite the fact that he was such a jerk about it. I take a step back.

Big mistake. I teeter on the edge of the pool for the longest second of my life.

“Lily.” He grabs at me but I’ve already got momentum and he doesn’t have balance. My arms go around his neck like I’m grabbing onto a life preserver as we fall.

I splutter and spit water as I surface. The water is chilly, and coupled with the breeze coming in off the beach only yards away, it cools my skin. I wrap my arms around my waist.

He stands there calmly. Drenched. His button down clinging to him like a second skin. Floppy hair dripping water droplets on his cheeks and down his jaw. His gaze is locked on me.

I clear my throat. “You kissed me because—”

“Because I wanted to.” The dangerously low level of his voice sends a delightful shudder up my spine.

“You wanted to.” You know how sometimes it takes a minute to catch up with outside input when you’re not expecting it? I’m all caught up now. I’m not alone in this attraction. Maybe Kiki wasn’t so far off base when she suggested he doesn’t know how to handle what’s happening between us.

“I needed to.” He seems to choke on the words while he strokes my cheek.

I swallow the excess saliva pooling in my mouth. Can’t do much about the wetness between my thighs though.

“Just once. Just so I could stop thinking about it. You did a number on me that night, Lily. Kissing me. Haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

“What?”

“It won’t happen again,” he says. “You liking me… it’s a bad idea. But me wanting you… that’s worse.”

“Is it?” Every inch of my skin vibrates from his proximity. Any closer and