that. Maybe if I lie enough, I can start to forget how terrible she was.”
Decker lifted his hand up like he was going to brush a strand of my hair out of my wild eyes. He stopped himself though, and I wasn’t sure if I cared or not. He still looked angry and determined to figure me out, but there was something else there, too. “Give me a truth,” he whispered instead.
“I hate dancing,” I whispered, surprised that he didn’t even have to bribe me for this little bit of honesty this time.
“Why?”
“Because last time she dragged me to a dance hall to be her designated driver, her date felt me up,” I replied, making Decker’s gaze turn into a blazing inferno of protective fury. It felt hollow though. Men were painfully generic when it came to caring about accosted women after the fact. Too bad no one was there when I needed them most.
“He what?” Decker asked, taking another step closer. His chest brushed against mine, and I could feel a steady heat rise up my body.
“Don’t make me repeat it. And don’t act like you care. The second I knocked on the door, you had me all figured out. This is temporary, remember? I’ll give Lance the narrative he wants, then be out of his hair. Just don’t pretend like a sad story makes you give a shit.”
Decker looked down at me, his slowly traveling eyes taking me in. I felt breathless and on edge. “When’s your next day off?” he asked, surprising me. I’d expected him to lash out, prove me wrong, or tear me apart.
“Tuesday,” I replied.
“Good. Don’t make any plans. I’m taking you somewhere,” he replied before biting his lip and pulling away, taking his heat with him. It felt like I could actually breathe again.
“I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you,” I replied before crossing my arms at my chest and inadvertently pushing my breasts up. His eyes traveled down to my cleavage, then snapped back up to me.
“Too bad,” he replied with a smirk before leaving my bedroom, taking his confusing personality with him.
Too bad? Too fucking bad? Decker Harris was one confusingly sexy jerk, and I didn’t like how much I was starting to like it.
6
Decker
I wasn’t up early to see her.
Nope. Not me.
I normally woke up at fucking six a.m. on a Sunday. I normally went for a run to get rid of the tension in my chest. I normally sat at the kitchen table, staring down the hall like some goddamn creep.
I knew the moment she woke up. I could hear her alarm going off through the thin walls of Lance’s loft. I lifted a strategic yet casual glance in her direction as she left her bedroom and strolled into the bathroom across the hall with a yawn.
I was so totally, utterly fucked. Her age was already an issue, but that, combined with the fact that she was Lance’s little sister, made her completely off limits. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if I liked her or not. I was a man of science—double majored at fucking Princeton in Chemistry and Biology. I liked to solve things, rip molecules apart just to figure them out. And Blakely? She was a conundrum of contradictions, an experiment I couldn’t get a hold on, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I could hear the water running in the bathroom, and my mind wondered how she looked in the damn shower, droplets of water flowing over her perky tits. Nope. Not going there. Not even for a goddamn minute. Get your shit together, Decker.
When Blakely first showed up, I had her right under my thumb. Some long lost sister appeared out of the blue and wanted to set up in Lance’s house? I’d decided: Fuck that.
People like Lance and me had had wagon hitchers breaking down our doors since the day we were born. I might have been a damn teacher, but my trust fund was worth a couple hundred years of my cushy private school salary—and then some.
We were simple guys with simple lives, avoiding the money and bragging rights our parents gave us. But that didn’t mean we were able to go blindly into any friendship, any relationship. When we moved to Memphis, we ran away from that all, but of course Blakely had to show up and tilt our world on its axis.
The bathroom door opened, releasing a plume of steam. And God dammit. She walked out clutching a