Rebel at Spruce High (Spruce Texas Romance #5) - Daryl Banner Page 0,53

holding his breath, eyes wide.

Our lips are inches from each other’s.

His beautiful eyes are on mine—afraid, curious, dreamy.

Then something flexes between our bodies right at my crotch.

Both our eyes go down, confused for only half a second before we realize what it is: Toby’s got morning wood—and little amount of material in those shorts to contain it.

Are we going to ignore it? Are we going to acknowledge it?

Ignore it. “Thanks for getting me up,” I tell him. Getting me up? “I mean off the hard floor,” I quickly add. Hard? Why did I say hard? “Off the floor,” I amend. “Thanks for getting me up off the floor.”

That was unnecessarily difficult to say.

Then I feel it flex again, this time twice as hard.

And twice as urgently.

Toby rolls his eyes back and clenches them shut, mortified.

“I’d better get you off,” I realize.

Toby’s eyes flash open.

What the hell did I just—? “I’d better get off of you,” I stammer, then shut my own eyes in mortification as I roll right off of him and get to my feet. Also, maybe I should try not talking ever again. I sit on the edge of the bed and pull on my boots. Then I go for my shirt and thrust my head and arms into it, yanking it on.

“Are you leaving?”

I feel like I’m a cheap overnight date suddenly, except without the after-dinner sex. Or the dinner. “Gotta take a leak. I remember where your bathroom is.” I rise from the bed and make for the door.

“Oh. It’s just, uh … I mean, my family might—”

“They don’t scare me,” I throw over my back on my way out.

I couldn’t get out of there or away from that awkward wakeup situation fast enough. With the morning sun over my head, I make a beeline for the house. This sexual chemistry and frustration has my head spinning. Didn’t I warn myself this would happen? It’s a bad idea, twisting myself up with that boy. And now here I am, spending the night in his shed and humping his morning wood. On accident. Who the hell humps their chemistry partner’s morning wood on accident? How does that even happen?

I slip in through the sliding back door, and despite the noise of someone moving around in the kitchen, I go right for the hall, into the bathroom, and shut the door. The cluttered bathroom has a fruity potpourri scent hovering thickly in the air like steam from a shower, but I endure it. The mirror hangs at an odd angle, giving me a perfect head-to-knee-ish view of myself and my bedhead as I relieve myself.

You know, just in case I really want that sense of shame to burn into me more permanently this morning.

Why should I feel shame, anyway? Because I slept next to Toby last night in his tiny twin bed? We didn’t even do anything.

It’s after washing my hands that I bother to check my phone, and I discover one curt text from my mom last night asking me where I am, as well as a missed call from my dad. That’s it. Just one call and one text. That’s the extent of my parents’ panicking.

I should probably get home, but not on account of my parents and their half-assed attempts to reach me. I just feel really weird suddenly and don’t think I can act normal in front of Toby, despite my private declaration last night to be his protector or whatever.

What is it about the morning that changes everything? You’re a creature of the night, my dad used to tease me every time he came into my room in our New York townhome, catching me up at two in the morning drawing. I guess I get it from him; he suffers from insomnia and is up at any hour of the night.

I really hate mornings.

There’s a fist against the door. “Toby, I need to pee,” comes a deep, dull voice. “What’re you doing in there for so long, anyway? Jacking off?”

I whip open the door.

A tall, broad-shouldered troll in a threadbare black tank top and blue boxers falls back a step at the sight of me, as if the gates just opened to the seventh circle of Hell. “What the—?”

“It’s all yours,” I announce to the dumbfounded guy I can only guess is Toby’s stepbrother, brushing past him on my way out.

But an easy exit is the last thing I get. Standing in the living room now is a surprisingly beautiful woman—blonde, thin arched