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I opened my eyes to one of my favorite faces about three inches from mine. “Hey. We missed you at dinner.” I sat up on the couch. I’d meant to just sit down for a minute after doing the dishes and must have blinked out. “How long was I out?”
“A few hours.”
“Oh, shoot. I wanted to go see Aunt Laverne about a room.”
Hayes stood up. “Scoot over.”
I inched down the old leather couch that had seen a lot of naps. He sat beside me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. The familiar scent of pine and mint settled around me. “You can crash in my room tonight. We’ll bring you over tomorrow.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That bed?”
He arched his brow at me. His brilliant blue eyes tired but shrewd. “I’ll have you know there are fresh sheets in the closet just for this sort of occasion.”
“Why are you back home? I thought you moved out too.”
He shrugged. “Things with Cheryl didn’t work out. Seemed stupid to throw money out the window. I just crash here.”
“In between girlfriends?”
He withdrew his arm and scrunched down on the couch to match me. “Been quite the dry spell on this end of the Manning family tree.”
“We are a pair.”
“Yeah?” He gave me one of his squinty smiles. God, I missed his face. “I heard there might need to be some murder.”
I laughed. “Guess you talked to Beck and Justin.”
He smirked. “Yeah, Beck has an evil side. I mean, I knew he had one, but whoa.”
“Luckily, Ian’s on the other side of the country.”
“Musician, huh? Doesn’t seem like you. You usually like the nerdy dudes or dramatic artsy ones.”
I tapped his dark rimmed glasses. “I do happen to love nerds like my big brother. However, I’d say musicians count for the emo crowd.” Not that Ian was especially emo. He liked to pretend he was. Those big, soulful green eyes had certainly held a lot of…well, everything. From passion to fear, then love. It had been pretty incredible to watch all of the different facets of him unfold with each day they’d been together.
He liked to think he was a big, bad tough guy—and to some extent, the streets had certainly honed him into someone jaded about the world—but in the end, he’d been more lover than fighter. He’d been starving for love.
Starving for me.
Hayes tipped his head and studied me. “Hmm. Yeah, that’s true.” He nudged my arm. “The way the idiots were talking, I was expecting you to be all wrecked. The woe of intense woe.”
I laughed. “No. I left my woe in Michigan, I’d say.”
“He’s not worth it.”
Oh, he was. He was worth every minute right up until the end. “He did something.”
Hayes sat up. “Like what?”
“Not like that. He didn’t lay a hand on me. Besides, you guys taught me how to handle myself quite well.” Except for that one day. The one day that thad pretty much started my little metamorphosis. And not just because of a bully’s knife and eyes full of malicious intent.
But the guy who’d come to my rescue.
The day Ian had truly crashed into my life.
The concert had been my first foray into his onstage persona, but Ian? The real Ian had held me while I cried out the fear of what could have been. Then he’d showed me just what love looked like.
Even with lies between us, I knew he loved me.
