“Sure about that?”
I turn back, eyeing my dad, and suddenly, it feels like I’m in high school again. It’s that moment when you know you could be in trouble, but you aren’t yet. It’s that moment of coming home high and trying to figure out if your parents know.
“Yep,” I say with a shrug, slugging the beer.
“Careful there.”
“Dad, you’re seeing stuff that isn’t there. Eva Ellis? Really?”
The timer goes off on the microwave, and my dad’s eyes linger on me a second before he stands. I sit, trying to wipe the guilt off my face. He comes back to the table with two plates and the lasagna.
“Do me a favor.”
“Yeah?”
“Give me a little credit.”
I shake my head. “Dad, it’s nothing.”
“I’ve got eyes, Row.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And so does Leonard Ellis.”
I dig into the lasagna. “Nothing to see, Dad. And by the way, that guy is…” I look up, arching my brows.
Dad smiles. “Yeah, he’s-”
“A psycho?”
He grins. “Intense. He’s an intense man.” He takes a bite of his lasagna and looks up at me again. “Evangeline is a sweet girl, but, c’mon Rowan.”
“Dad, what?”
“She’s young, son.”
“She’s twenty-one, that’s hardly robbing any cradles.”
He arches a brow at me and I laugh and shake my head. “And anyways, I’m telling you, you’re seeing this wrong.”
“Fine, I’m dropping it, since you don’t want to have an honest discussion with me.”
“Can we just enjoy this lasagna?”
“Fine,” he grumbles.
We do drop it for the rest of lunch, and after, when I help clean up the tools from the driveway.
“Oh, damn, I almost forgot. Can you take something over to the Ellis’s place? One sec.”
He jogs back to the house and comes back a minute later with a manila envelope.
“Insurance and town licensing stuff. I need Leonard’s signature on them for Monday.”
“You got it.”
I stuff the envelope into my leather jacket and zip it up. I look up to see Dad eyeing me with the same look as before. “I thought we were dropping this?”
“Done,” he shrugs. “Just gonna say it one more time.”
“What.”
“Be careful.”
I wave at my dad before revving my bike and taking off down the street I grew up on, back through town and back over to my own little dive bar corner of it.
But the thing is, he’s right.
He’s very right.
I need to drop this shit with her. I’m not being careful, and it’s not Leonard I’m worried about, though he does freak me out with his fire and brimstone shit.
It’s her.
Because as fun as it is, and as goddamn hard as it makes me knowing I’m showing her all this for the first time, the other part of me worries. I worry that I’m screwing her up.
I worry that I’m going to break her somehow.
And it sucks, but I know what I’ve got to do. This little game has gone on long enough. We’ve had fun, we’ve snuck around like teenagers, but now it’s time to be the adults we are.
It’s time to stop this, before I hurt her.
I pull up outside the rental house and turn off the bike, kick the stand down and swing my leg over. I jog up to the front door and knock.
Silence.
I knock again, and still get nothing.
Well, shit.
I try the knob, and the door opens wide.
“Hello?”
I stick my head in, glancing around the empty house.
“Probably at church, or Bible study,” I mutter to myself.
Whatever.
I slip inside, and shut the door, heading for the kitchen. I drop the envelope on the counter, and I’m getting ready to leave when I hear steps coming down the back staircase.
“Hey, Chas, sorry, I think I used the last of that conditioner you brou-”
Eva freezes as she rounds the corner.
Her face goes red.
Her eyes get big.
Her hands pull the towel tighter. The towel that’s wrapped around her wet, perfect body.
Fuck.
And everything I just told myself goes right out the window. Because I’m not stopping this. I’m not walking away from this. This girl is sweet fucking temptation.
And I want more.
I walk towards her.
“Rowan,” she whispers. “We-”
“We can,” I say quietly, still moving closer.
She backs away, until she’s against the wall. She hugs the towel tight as her eyes spark at me.
“Where’s your family?”
“At the Center,” she says quickly, her cheeks flushed.
“How much time do we have?”
She whimpers, and my cock throbs in my jeans.