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Landon is the only person in this house who cares about grades. He’s also a bit—just the smallest miniscule—more discreet about his sex life.
Except for that time I caught him alone in the shower.
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The wet image is permanently burned into my brain.
Reed watches me in the darkness, moonlight shining in his gleaming gaze. For a moment, I think he’ll linger, taunt me some more just because he can never fall asleep before one a.m. Instead he pulls back, his big palm searing over my tank top, skimming along my lower stomach and over my hip before falling away.
When Reed fully pulls back, Landon seems pleased with the work he’s done here. He’s my sweet protector in a way. He’s always on my side.
And with a house filled with three arrogant men, I need someone on my side.
“Night, Dee.” Landon lifts his hand to me in a weird half wave before walking out. I hear his bedroom door close and the walls between the two rooms are so thin, I hear his bed creak when he flops down.
“I hope you don’t wake Landon up with your sex moans tonight. That’d be completely rude.” Reed smirks at me, falling back on his bed just across from mine.
“You’re such an ass, you have no idea.”
“Oh, I have an idea, I just like the idea, really.”
I roll my eyes at him again in response. Minutes pass and I turn on my side, studying him in the darkness of our room. I’ve lived here, just five miles away from my old trailer for nearly a month.
I think they broke me.
These three assholes broke me.
All because they showed me they cared too much. They took in this awkward girl who still misses her mom like a little kid and they treat me like I’m theirs.
But they make it very clear that I’m not theirs.
When I first moved in, I was worried they’d try to sleep with me or hurt my feelings or break my heart. It never occurred to me that they might ruin me by taking care of me.
And now, I don’t know how to go back. I don’t know how to go back to not thinking of them in a wanting way. In a way that makes my heart pound with strength but break with weakness just to be near them.
I’ll pretend for now. I’ll laugh and match their snark word for word but I’ll never tell them how much it hurts me not to be real for a single second with the few people I truly trust in this world.
It’ll be easy. It’ll be so easy to pretend for just one year.
Senior year will be over and then we’ll all go our separate ways. Me to college, Reed off to whatever football scholarship offers him the best future, Landon to the best ivy league in the country.
And Knox...
The mattress dips beneath me and a smooth, chiseled chest presses firmly against my back, his palm skimming down my arm before his fingers brush back and forth against my knuckles.
“Reed wake you up again with his inability to stay hard, Vi?”
Warmth sears through me from the way he uses my real name.
Violet Demure. But Landon and Reed refuse to call me such an innocent name.
As for Knox, I think he likes how innocent it sounds.
I hated the name before I met him. Before his lightly rasping voice rolled across those letters, my name raked on my every nerve.
And now it makes me tremble every time he breathes it along my ear.
My lips pull up in a smile when a pillow is lunged our way from the bed across the room. I twist away from the attack, tucking myself into the strength of perfect solid muscle.
