When she whimpered and moaned my name, I knew I was thinking with my dick and was only minutes from taking her right here on the damn porch. No girl had ever made me feel so out of control. Forcing myself to stop, I put my hands on either side of her face. “Slow down,” I whispered against her lips, shocked at how right kissing her was, at how badly I wanted to bury myself in her and not stop until neither of us could walk. The kiss drove home what a friendship- wrecking idea us together was and nagged at me to tell her I’d changed my mind. But I couldn’t form the words that would push her away. This girl owned pieces of me that no one else ever had. Pieces I didn’t want to examine too closely and that was dangerous for both of us. I couldn’t let her fall for me. The people in my life always ended up damaged because of me and I’d rather break into a thousand pieces than to break her.

My body screamed at me, calling me an idiot for not taking the next step, but I ignored it and dragged my mouth away from hers.

“Wow,” she whispered with a glow in her eyes.

Her expression was full of shooting stars and what-if fantasies. I had to crush the fairy tale, make her see that reality with me was cut and dried. Sex and nothing else. I injected as much arrogance in my voice as I could muster. “After you get on the pill, show me the proof.”

She yanked her head back like I’d slapped her. A disgusted expression flashed across her face and she shoved against my chest. “You think I’m looking to get pregnant?”

“No, I don’t think that.” I glanced away from the accusation in her eyes. I’d meant to create distance to clear my own head and make sure she didn’t think I could give her more, but I hadn’t meant to insult her. Tana didn’t know the drama that went on with some of my friends and I’d be damned if I was ever going to let myself end up as a father. With my fucked up history, I didn’t have anything to offer a kid. There was no way I wanted to pass that legacy on.

“Fine.” Her eyes flashed her anger. “I’ll show you the proof. Anything else?”

A heavy awkwardness settled between us, coolness where there had been heat. I wanted to reach for her, but it was better that I didn’t. “I’ll let you know when I set up a place we can go.”

Nudging a piece of cracked wood on the porch with the tip of a pink painted toenail, she sighed, the anger draining from her. She looked more unsure of herself than I’d ever seen her when she turned her beautiful eyes back up at me. “I know it’s only sex and you said that we won’t talk about it afterward but...could you like...not make me feel bad about it later?”

That stung. I wasn’t anything like her damn father. He’d done some emotional damage to Tana as well as her mom and brother but I didn’t play mind games and I didn’t hurt women. I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. It had always been easy to talk to Tana before sex became the topic. “You really think I’d do that?”

“No.” She gave me a smile. “I’m just nervous, I guess. I shouldn’t be.” She rubbed her hand across the tattoos covering my left arm. “Despite your fierce appearance, you’ve always been so gentle around me. Tough on the outside, sweet on the inside. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.”

Her words sucker punched me in the heart and the blood drained from my face.

Laughing, she patted my chest, her hand lingering for a sweet torture of a second. “Easy. You can breathe, Ryan. I would have been so crazy without you when we first moved here. You were my anchor. I didn’t mean that I’m in love with you. I meant I love you as in you’re my best friend.”

“Oh.” I took a deep breath and let it out as everything righted itself again. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll call you later.” I walked to my car, waiting until she was safe inside the house before I backed from the driveway. I didn’t like the funny sensation coursing through my body. Like I was in a race car doing two hundred miles an hour headed straight for a wall and even knowing a crash was inevitable, I kept my foot on the gas pedal.

Chapter Two

TANA

I walked back inside the house with my lips still tingling from Ryan’s kiss. Kisses that gave a girl butterflies and caused her heart to race were things that happened in movies, not in reality. Yet, here I was, no doubt with a stupid grin on my face, dealing with butterflies and a racing heart. When I’d put my hand on his chest, I’d felt the solidness of his muscles and the strength there. My legs had quivered and I’d been surprised at how I’d pushed up against him without even thinking about it. It was a little surreal that we were going to cross the line of friendship to lovers.

When I’d first met him, I’d been caught up in such a dark, heavy space in my head and I couldn’t see a way out. After Dad supposedly lost all the money, I’d foolishly thought nothing would change. I’d assumed that I’d still be at the private school I’d attended with all my friends and my boyfriend, Tristan. I’d thought I had people in my life that I could count on.

But after my family’s fall from grace and the ensuing scandal and humiliation that followed in the wake, all my friends except for Shelby had stopped hanging with me. Then the phone calls had ended. They were busy going from one party to another. Shopping. Gossiping. Ruling high school. And I was officially the poor outcast, emphasis on the poor. My social standing took a nosedive and Tristan had broken up with me on social media. After neglecting to clue me in first. I’d seen pictures of him and his new girlfriend trying to swallow each other’s tonsils on Instagram.

Reeling from the all-guy’s-suck pain ripping through my heart, my parents splitting up, losing our home, and the worry about how we were going to survive without money, I’d gone to the park. I’d tried to get rid of the gnawing hurt in me by pounding my hands over and over onto the ground until my skin cracked and blood oozed out. What I’d hated was that I couldn’t make things better for my mom or for Mark. I was used to always making things better for them, often running interference when Dad was in one of his tear-everyone-down moods. I was helpless to ease Mom or Mark’s heartache. I could handle struggle if it was only me doing the struggling. But I hated seeing them suffer. Hated seeing the wounded, little boy hurt in Mark’s eyes when he’d asked to live with Dad and been told that he wasn’t wanted. The whole awful mess had played over and over in my head and that’s when Ryan had found me.

His eyes had held concern and a banked anger as he’d crouched down beside me and gently placed his hand on my shoulder. I’d jumped at the sudden contact and gasped when I’d seen him. With the fierce look of a warrior and the darkness in his eyes, he’d scared me at first. But then he’d told me that I was safe, that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. I knew what he’d mistakenly thought and I’d wanted to correct that. I’d ended up pouring my heart out to him, thinking he was a guy I’d never see again. But then I’d run into him at school a few days later.

“Better?” was all that he’d quietly said and I know it sounds stupid, but I’d recognized in that breathless moment that we were meant to meet, meant to become friends. We’d sort of stuck together since then.

Ryan was more than my anchor. He was the missing piece that I didn’t know had been missing until my life had intersected with his. Maybe I did just want to lose my virginity so I could experiment in college without that hanging over me. And maybe, deep down in an area of my heart that held the kind of secrets I lied to myself about, I wanted my first time to be with Ryan, the guy who made me feel protected, who’d given me hope when I’d lost mine. I still couldn’t believe that he’d said yes. Though I’d asked, I don’t know that I really believed he’d agree to it. I didn’t think there was any way he’d want me. Kissing me on the porch had disproved that when I’d felt the hard length of his erection pushing against me.