Once I had that taken care of, I sat up on the side of the bed. Still not fully awake, I debated if I needed food first or a shower.
“Turn the lights off,” Cannon whined from the other end of the bed.
“That’s called the sun, dumbass,” I told him as I finally got to my feet. My stomach was rumbling loudly, so I decided food was definitely more important than hygiene.
I got all the way to the door when I realized I needed a shirt. Wearing only a pair of basketball shorts around the kitchen was something I could get away with at my parents’ house, but Cannon would bust my balls if I did it at his. He had a problem with me even being in the same room with his sister these days. Probably because he knew I wanted her like I’d never wanted anything in my entire life, but we never talked about it.
Saying it out loud made shit real, so we never spoke about the stuff we didn’t want to deal with.
For me, it was admitting I was half in love with Shaw. That I wanted her more than I wanted air, but because I knew I would lose my best friend if I even tried to tell her what I was feeling, I kept quiet.
When we’d started noticing girls, we’d made a pact. No girl would ever come between us. If we saw one we both wanted, neither of us could touch her. And under no circumstances could we touch the other’s sister. Seeing as Mia was older than us and barely paid us any attention when Cannon was around anyway, I didn’t really think it was an issue where my own sister was concerned. And Shaw was always following us around, getting just as dirty as we did and causing just as much—if not more—trouble than we could.
I saw her as nothing more than another sister.
Until she wasn’t.
I knew she was beautiful; a person would have to be dead not to know just how gorgeous Shaw Cage was. Inside and out. She had this hard outer shell that was all feral lioness, but underneath, she was a sweet and kind little kitten.
A kitten I really—fucking desperately—wanted to pet.
But it wasn’t until a year or so before that I’d realized her beauty could stop me in my tracks, cause the air to get trapped in my throat, make me get tongue-tied, and go completely brain-dead. She’d only been fifteen to my seventeen and playing in my pool back in Malibu. Her best friend Violet and the Thornton twins splashed around as I came out of the house with a drink in my hand and Cannon right beside me.
He’d been saying something to me, and I’d glanced at the pool just as Shaw called my name. I’d looked down, and she’d grinned up at me, causing those damn dimples to pop. Her thick lashes were damp, making her blue eyes glitter. Dressed in a conservative bikini top that covered her chest, she wiggled her fingers, wanting me to pull her out of the water.
I felt something shift in my chest, and my cock was ready to go off at the slightest touch, something that had never happened to me, not even when I first became sexually active. I left her brother still talking on the deck as I jogged over to her and lifted her out of the pool. She’d been soaking wet and I still had my shirt on over my swim trunks, but I pulled her against me so hard, she couldn’t miss the fact that I was already pulsing for her. All she would have had to do was stroke a single fingertip down my shaft, and I would have erupted all over her sweet body.
I heard her soft gasp and shivered as her glittering eyes filled with heat.
If Cannon hadn’t pushed me into the pool then and there, I wasn’t sure what I would have done. Instinct had been screaming at me to kiss her, to let the world know this girl was mine and I would fucking destroy anyone who so much as thought about touching her.
But as the cool water enveloped my head and I came up for air, seeing the pissed-off look on Cannon’s face, I knew I couldn’t make Shaw mine.
If I took what I wanted, it would mean giving up Cannon.
And as much as I wanted his sister, I wasn’t willing to