After I hung up, I tossed my phone onto the dresser, my nails raking over my scalp as my eyes skidded over the posters hanging on my wall. Stevie Nicks—my namesake—Florence Welch, and Joan Jett.
Warring with the urge to lay eyes on Everett, I filled the tiny watering can I kept in my room and gave some love to the succulents that dotted the windowsill.
“Your room looks different during the daylight hours.”
Almost dropping the can, I turned to find Everett leaning in the doorway to my room. “Where’s Hendrix?”
“Outside. Dale just arrived with some auto electrician friend of his.” He moved into the room, closing the door with a quiet click. “He’ll be busy for a while.”
I nodded, tucking some hair behind my ear as he strode toward me, the laces of his boots undone and slapping against the worn leather.
Warm skin met my chin, tipping it up as the rough pad of his thumb brushed beneath my bottom lip and his other hand took the watering can from me. “Can’t look at me now?”
I licked my lips, then moved out of his hold to sit on the bed. “It’s just…”
“Just?” A thick brow quirked. My little pink watering can looked tiny in his large hand.
“I haven’t seen you since, you know, and I don’t know.” I let my eyes find his, noticing the red rimming them and littering the white globes. Concern had me forgetting my eager heart. “How are you?”
“How am I?” he asked, setting the can back where it usually sat in the corner of my windowsill. “That’s not what I expected you to ask.”
“What did you expect me to ask?”
Rubbing his hand over the scruff on his cheek, he exhaled a tired breath and sat beside me. “Don’t know. The usual girly shit.”
I tried not to be offended or jealous that he’d been in these situations with others. “You look tired.”
“I am,” he said. “Been busting my ass at the garage. Rent’s due and the assholes have decided to stop paying it now that I’m done with school.”
“You’re kidding,” I choked out. “But you haven’t even graduated yet.”
“They don’t care,” he said, hands moving behind his head as he fell back over my blue and green patchwork duvet. “As far as they’re concerned, I should’ve already dropped out and gotten full-time work.”
A squeezing sensation constricted my stomach. “I hate them.”
Everett huffed a laugh. “They weren’t always this bad.” A pause. “But yeah, I hate them too.”
I lowered and turned onto my side, leaning on my elbow to stare down at him. “What made them change?”
His expression tightened, fingers drumming over his stomach to an invisible beat. His black shirt gathered enough to show a glimpse of skin above his jeans and the waistband of his briefs.
My stomach unclenched, leaping at the sight of the coarse trickle of hair that led from his belly button to the depths beyond, beneath his pants. I’d seen plenty of guys with their shirts off, but I’d never seen one I liked this close, one I wanted to see more of. To touch. To feel—
“You’re making me hard,” he said.
Shocked, I sputtered out a coughed laugh, my cheeks heating as I removed my eyes from his stomach and tented pants. “Your parents,” I prompted, needing to know, even if the temptation to maybe do other things was strong.
His gaze shuttered, then he rolled into me, his hand molding to my waist. “Enough about them.”
I froze as his thumb started circling my hip, my T-shirt rising and drooping over my midsection. His eyes stayed on mine, watching, studying. “This okay?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“Can I kiss you again?”
I almost said yeah but stopped. “Why do you want to?”
He blinked, eyes hooding and hand sliding higher to settle into the dip beneath my ribs. Taking his time, he stared, and it felt like someone was blowing bubbles inside my veins. “Because I realized something the other night.” I waited, dizzy for whatever it could be. “Maybe even before then, if I’m being honest. That what I feel for you is far more than friendship or brotherly protectiveness.”
“It is?” I breathed out.
He leaned closer, nose gentle as it bumped mine, the scent of mint and tobacco on his breath. “It is. It just took me looking outside my own shit for longer than two minutes to actually see it for what it is.”
I erased the space, my mouth melding to his, his hand pressing our bodies together. Our teeth clinked as the kiss went from