sexy and you like when I pull your hair and talk dirty to you. That’s mine. That’s the part of you I get. So I’m not being a jerk. Smug, maybe. Grateful, definitely. Happy as fuck to be standing next to you—unquestionably yes.”
Man, Trey really needed to stop saying stuff like that, or I’d get the wrong impression. It was hard enough for me to keep my emotions locked down when I’d been daydreaming about the man for months. I will admit, it was his looks that caught my attention, but probably not the same way they caught most women’s. It wasn’t the scars that marred his beauty—they made him more interesting, masculine, dangerous. It was his perpetual frown when no one was looking that had captured my heart. I wanted to know why he was pretending and what he was hiding. I also wanted to help him work it out.
Then I got to know him. He wasn’t pretending, he was straight-out lying to his friends. He smiled and joked with them. But with me, the real Trey came out. The anger, the guilt, the feelings of inadequacy. I wondered if he realized his vulnerability was what had endeared me to him. It was his raw honesty that made me overlook the times he’d behaved like a jerk. And I overlooked them, not because I was a spineless twit but because I knew I was the only person he showed his pain to. And deep down in a place I didn’t want to admit I had, I liked that.
“Trey,” I started, but said no more and averted my gaze.
“Need to ask you a favor.”
“What’s that?” I asked his bare chest.
“Ride this out with me.”
“Huh?”
His hands tightened and he tilted my head back until I was forced to look at him or close my eyes. Since I wasn’t actually as immature as I was behaving, I lifted my eyes and I froze.
His green eyes were intense. Deeper, darker than they normally were. Even darker than they were when we’d been in bed. More intense than when we were arguing about his PT.
“Take a chance and ride this out,” he repeated.
“I still don’t understand.”
“You and me, Adalynn.”
“Like, be your girlfriend?”
Trey’s brows pulled together and his jaw ticked. Seeing that, my gaze skidded over his shoulder, and embarrassment set in. Not as much as Brady seeing me naked but enough that I wished I could rewind time and not make myself sound like an idiot.
“Haven’t had a girlfriend since the sixth grade.”
Sixth grade. Cripes, Trey started young. If he had a girlfriend before he even hit middle school, God knows what he was doing in high school. Of course, that would explain his superior skills in bed.
Since I was at a loss for words, I didn’t say anything. I just lamely bobbed my head and studied the large canvas print that hung over my bed. Which was now crooked to the side, probably due to my bed rocking against the wall.
Sweet mother of God. Sweet, old Mrs. Landon next door must’ve thought there’d been an earthquake. She was older than Mrs. Parker and very rarely left her bedroom. A room that shared a wall with mine.
“Addy, swear to God if you’re booking a flight to the Bahamas thinking you can crawl out your bedroom window so you don’t have to talk to me, I’ll hunt you down!” Hadley shouted and I closed my eyes.
Damn.
There were a great many things I loved about having a twin—Hadley knowing what was in my head at all times was not one of them. Being as she knew what was in mine, I knew what was in hers, and if I didn’t hurry up, she’d start talking to me about Trey through the closed door, not caring Trey was in the room with me.
“I need to get dressed,” I told him.
“Adalynn,” Trey called.
I forced my gaze back to him.
His was soft and gentle.
Oh my.
Soft and gentle on Trey was the very definition of male perfection. I’d seen Trey loads, I’d spent time with him at family gatherings, in the gym, and now in my bed. But right then, it was like I was seeing him for the first time. I thought he’d shown me the real him. I thought I’d seen him raw and vulnerable. I had not.
God, he was handsome. He looked like he should’ve been a movie star.
“Baby,” he whispered.
Any lingering harshness softened and I shivered. Trey felt it and smiled. It lit his eyes and