As I lost myself in the memories of Sydney, I wasn’t concentrating on anything else. I didn’t hear the lock of my apartment turning, and I didn’t hear the door opening until it was too late. When the jingle of keys sounded, I froze, and was pulled frantically back to reality. I was about to be found out. Busted. My solitude destroyed.

I sucked in a breath and waited to see who would appear. Eden Rivers, my best friend, as well as my best friend’s girlfriend—confusing I know—came into view. Eden and I went to college together, but we were more like acquaintances back then. She had disappeared for four years, but then she stormed back into my best friend’s life and completely shook his world. I knew at that moment we would be close, and we have never looked back.

Eden’s steps faltered, and her eyes widened when she found me. Her inquisitive gaze didn’t leave mine as she placed my spare set of keys on the coffee table and moved toward the kitchen. Her face looked like she was trying to decipher whether I was real, or simply a figure of her imagination.

“Ashlyn? What the hell?” Eden gasped and rushed the last few steps toward me with her arms open.

I fell into them, and accepted her hug wholeheartedly. The comfort was overwhelming. A comfort Eden had no idea she was providing. I closed my eyes and relished the moment, while trying to stop any wayward tears from falling.

She finally let me go and took a step back. Her eyes scanned my face and body, and I knew she was trying to read me. Being under her watchful gaze was nerve wracking, but it was deserved.

“Coffee?” I asked softly, desperate to make this seem like any regular Saturday morning where two best friends would catch up.

“Sure.”

I turned back to the coffee machine and grabbed another mug. Her eyes burned into my back, and I knew she was bursting with questions. Fuck, I’d be bursting with questions if I turned up at an apartment that was meant to be empty, yet the owner was going about her day as if she had never left. The bubbling of coffee collided brilliantly with the bubbling of awkwardness I was feeling. I took a deep breath and faced her.

Finally, after what felt like a millennium, a smile appeared on Eden’s face, and I allowed myself to begin to relax. After handing her a mug, I lifted mine to my lips and took a sip, continuing to look at her over the rim.

“What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be back for another two days,” Eden asked with an uncertain tone.

Shit! Think, Ashlyn.

“Lachlan had to travel for work, so I decided it would be best to come back and have a couple of days to settle back in. I arrived late last night.”

I was going to hell. I was blatantly lying to my best friend. What the fuck was wrong with me? My gaze darted from hers. Yep, I was officially going to hell.

“Why didn’t you call? Ky, Josh, or I would have picked you up from the airport.”

“It was late, so I decided to catch a cab. As soon as I got home, I went to bed.”

Jesus, I was digging myself in deeper. Hand me a shovel and let’s see how deep I could go. I’d be very chummy with the devil before this conversation was over.

Eden hesitated briefly, before a smile that told me she was happy to see me took hold of her face. “So, tell me everything. How was Australia? How was Lachlan?”

I knew this was coming, so why did it feel like my heart was trying to rip itself out of my chest? I had supposedly just spent a week in Australia, where it would be assumed I was having hot sex with a hot Australian, and living the life by the beach.

“Australia is beautiful. It was kind of a whirlwind, to be honest,” I said softly. And with every word I spoke, it felt like I was twisting the knife deeper into my heart. I didn’t want to talk about the disastrous trip, but more than that, I didn’t want to admit the mistake I had made. The more I spoke, the more lies I spat.

“Are you okay, Ash?” sweet, beautiful Eden asked, and proved once again that she was always so in tune with others around her.

“I’m just tired.” Finally, there was some truth in my words. “Jet lag seems to be hitting me. You know how I get when I’m tired.” And there was another lie.

“Go back to bed and I’ll call you later. I know Ky will want to see you, and Josh will be ecstatic to have you back.”

“Maybe I’ll head back to bed for a couple more hours. Can you keep it quiet that you saw me? I want to surprise them,” I asked hopefully, pleading with my eyes.

“Oh, they are going to be surprised all right. I’ll let you go back to bed. I’m off to have breakfast with Ky. He is at Josh’s at the moment.”

Eden hugged me before standing from the couch and leaving my apartment. My solitude was officially gone. I headed to the sink and washed out our empty mugs, and the thought of getting some more sleep hit me with force. I needed all the strength I could get; keeping my secret from my friends was going to take a lot of energy. My eyes slammed shut under the enormity of this. Why couldn’t I just admit I’d made a mistake, that I should have listened to the warnings?

Because I’m stubborn, that’s why.

I grabbed my phone and opened my text messages. Josh’s words still appeared on the screen, and I found myself scrolling through all of his messages over the past week. He was something else. They all started in jest, full of teasing and inappropriate comments, but they slowly changed, and serious Josh appeared, a Josh that intrigued me.

The two of us share a precious memory that I only wanted to have with him. The moment he took my virginity, it connected us, and gave us our own special link that no one else could have. It was a Josh and Ashlyn thing. Josh had the ability to turn me into a mass of girliness at the best of times. His cheekiness would make me fall into a craze of giggles, but he also had the ability to piss me off like no one’s business.

The thought of him, of what we shared, had gotten me through of some of the toughest times. It was during our few hours together that he gave me something I’d wanted my whole life. He gave me every bit of his attention, and made me feel like I was worth something, like I was everything. I knew people had paid attention to me before, but it was superficial because of my family.

There was something different about Josh Crawford’s attention. It made me feel like the world was spinning out of control around us, but all he focused on was me. It was the gleam in his eyes when he stared at me as I spoke that made me feel as if there was nothing else on his mind but me. He remembered everything, he digested everything I said, and could read me like an open book. No one could do that but him

That was Josh Crawford.

And that was why, after all these years, I still craved him. I still imagined him as the guy I met in college, but I knew that guy was gone. Now he was living the life of a forever bachelor—a commitment-phobe who was notorious for his one-night stands.

I was just the girl he had a one-night stand with, whose cherry he popped, and now I had a bruised heart and broken dreams of a happily-ever-after.

Fuck my life.

THE LONGER I REMAINED conscious, the worse I started to feel. My body ached, I felt dirty, and the usual feeling of satisfaction was nowhere to be found. I headed down the hall in a daze, and fatigue followed me as I stepped into my bathroom. The smell of cheap sex lingered on my skin and had ingrained itself in the fibers of my shirt and pants, and I was desperate to erase it all. I peeled my clothes from my body, stepped under a scolding-hot shower, and begged for my Friday-night escapade to disappear down the drain. This was my routine: random fucking, getting home as the sun rose, washing the womanly scent from my body, and crawling into bed. I never claimed to be a saint; I was a sinner, and everybody knew it.