I was.

A ringing silence filled my ears as I slowly came to my senses. Lily was staring at me wide-eyed. Her perfect body was slick and shining. I bent my lips to her neck and tasted the salt on her skin. "You good?" I asked. I needed to know.

She squeezed my back with her ragged, bitten nails. "I'm good," she said into my neck. Then she twitched a little. I pulled back to see that she was laughing.

"Something funny about this, Bit?" I growled teasingly.

"I'm not…" She wiped her eyes. "I'm okay."

"You sound a bit unhinged."

"I am a bit unhinged. I just fucked my stepbrother on a folding table. I think that qualifies."

An icy tension gripped my heart. "Not yet," I grumbled. Separating from her was the hardest thing I had ever done. I was afraid of what would happen once I wasn't touching her any more. "We have…"

"Nine more days," she said. Was that sadness in her voice? I couldn't tell.

"Still technically ten," I corrected her, checking the clock on the wall.

"Yeah, but tomorrow…"

"So let's not let it be tomorrow yet.

"How the hell does that work?"

I pulled on my jeans and turned to the shelf by the mirrors and grabbed a tissue. She accepted it with a grateful look and dabbed at her thigh. "You get yourself cleaned up and come out with me."

She snapped her head up. "Out with you?" Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

"Yeah, Bit," I said casually. I knew what she was thinking. In the time we were together, we were always sneaking around. We were always careful never to be seen as a couple. But now, after this? I needed it. I needed to take her around, introduce her as mine. It was stupid and reckless and would probably backfire horribly, but I was pretty used to that drill by now. "There's an after party. Come with me. Be my date."

I always loved how uncomplicated Lily was. She couldn't lie for shit—every thought she had was a wide open book you could read from her face. It was something that made her unique in my world and why I had always treasured her reactions. But right now, I could have done with her being a little less transparent.

Her mouth opened and closed, and then she shook herself minutely, from the tips of her bare toes all the way to her shoulders. Flickers of worry, dread, and something I couldn't quite identify passed across her features. And then it just suddenly… shut down.

"Okay, sure!" she said brightly, but it was false. All wrong.

"Great." I smiled, but it felt like a mask I was putting on. What the hell just happened? One moment she was looking at me with all the trust in the world, and then next minute, she closed off entirely. I clenched my fists and for the first time since I spotted her in the audience, I turned away from her.

Had I read her wrong? Maybe she was worried about being seen with me, about our new familial connection. But that wasn't it. I could tell. She hadn't balked when I asked her to come out with me. She freaked when I asked her to be my date.

Was she ashamed of being with me?

The ice in my veins was suddenly replaced with white-hot rage. It would be one thing if this was still a year ago and I was still a stupid, cocky kid relying on nepotism to pave my way, but she had just seen me on stage tonight. I was making something of my own, separate from all of my mom's bullshit. I was my own fucking man now, a musician in my own right and she had witnessed that firsthand.

And as for the stepsiblings thing, who gives a fuck? We weren't related, not by blood any way, and we were grown fucking adults. Our parents marrying each other didn't mean a thing, if you thought about it. Which I had. Obsessively.

So what was her deal?

I kissed her as she dressed, helped her find her missing shoe, and smoothed her wild hair for her, but I felt like a robot doing it. I tried to push the anger away and relish how she felt nestled firmly against me in the back of Casper's beater as we drove to through the night. But her hesitant silence hung in the air around us like a barrier I thought had already fallen.

The house on the cliff belonged to Kayla, a trust fund baby friend of Banks, though the two could not have been more different. She must have been watching for us, because she swayed out the front door as we pulled up, dancing barefoot to music only she could hear.

"Hey, guys," she crooned. "Party's moved down to the beach."

"You ready?" I asked Lily. It was the first time we had spoken since I asked her to be my date."

"Sure," she said. "Lead the way, rock star."

Chapter Twenty-Three

Liliana

I followed his broad back as we picked our way carefully down the wooden staircase bolted to the cliffside. The moonlight reflected off the calm water, lighting the whole beach in an otherworldly blue glow. Everything seemed flattened out, the shadows and highlights missing, throwing my depth perception off-kilter.

Two steps from the bottom, the heel of my foot caught the back of a step and I tumbled forward with a yelp and slammed into Jax.

He whirled around and caught me just before I ended up sprawled across the ground. "You okay?" he asked, gently righting me.

His hands lingered on my shoulders. We were the same height, standing on the steps like this, and the moon lit the back of his head so that his eyes were deep pools of shadow.

"I'm okay," I gasped. It wasn't the fall that had me breathless.

Jax didn't nod or continue on his way. Pressing his palm to my cheek, he looked at me, his eyes darting back in forth like he was trying to read an incomprehensible book. "Good," he said. He took my hand and led me across the soft sand toward the group of people sitting around a bonfire on the beach. The sound of a soft guitar, just a few strums of chords and lazy arpeggios wafted in the night along with the smell of wood smoke that always made me nostalgic for the childhood I didn't have. I held Jax's hand tighter.

He looked back without speaking, but seemed to know I needed reassurance, because he waited a beat until I was at his side, then pulled me tightly in to him. "This group doesn't give a fuck about who I am or who we are. They all have their own shit they’re dealing with. Don't you freak out on me, Bit." He paused. "But if you do start to freak, just let me know and I'll get you out of here. I just want to be with you a minute… where no one is watching."

He started walking again, but I found myself rooted to the spot by his soft words. This was not what I was expecting. That moment in the hallway had been fun, reckless, and meaningless. The Jax that pressed me against the wall… he was the arrogant jerk I was used to. The one I had taught myself to despise. That was the Jax I wanted to hate-fuck and forget about.

This Jax? The one cupping my face and searching my eyes? The one reassuring me instead of giving me crap? Who the hell was he?

I shivered. "You cold, Bit?" Jax asked. Without waiting for my reply, he whipped his battered leather jacket off his shoulders and slung it around mine. He stepped back, sinking into the soft sand and grinned at me. 'I don't know what I expected here. You look like you're wearing a cape."

I pulled it tightly around me. "Or a sleeping bag." I was surrounded by his scent. "But aren't you going to be cold?"

"Yes. Which is why you need to stick close to me. Keep me warm." He plopped himself onto one of the logs by the fire and pulled me down into his lap. "There. That's better.