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Once I'd calmed down, I went inside and turned the music down until it was background noise. I sat on the counter in the kitchen while Jeremy finished the story he was telling and Ethan poured us shots.

I wasn't listening to a single word being said. I was thinking about the way she'd kissed me. The way her fingers had gripped my shirt and the way her body pressed against mine. I also thought about the way she'd said never again, her voice cracking on the second word. She was trying to convince herself of that more than she was convincing me. That was fine, she could say whatever she wanted, but I had a feeling this wouldn't be our one and only kiss.

CHAPTER SIX

LILLAH

I closed my front door and pressed my back against it. My hands were shaking, and my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat and behind my eyes.

Cooper was sitting in the hallway, watching me with his head tilted. His ears were forward, his tail still, his whole body oriented toward me like a satellite dish tuned to my frequency. I stared at him and he stared back, and for a solid thirty seconds neither of us moved.

"Don't look at me like that," I said.

My voice didn't sound right. It was too thin, too stretched. "I went over there to tell him to turn the music down. That's all."

Cooper blinked and continued to stare at me.

"That's all, Cooper."

He didn't believe me. I could tell by the way his tail thumped and then went still again. Cooper had emotional intelligence that most humans couldn't touch, and right now he was looking at my flushed face and my shaking hands and drawing conclusions. I could tell.

I pushed off the door and walked to the kitchen, my socks sliding on the hardwood. I pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. My mouth was dry, and I drank half of it standing at the sink, staring out the window at the dark backyard where the motion-sensor light had clicked off.

He kissed me.

Marshall Hayes, the dog poop guy, the iced coffee catastrophe, the inconsiderate neighbor who threw parties on weeknights, had backed me up against his house and kissed me. And what made it worse was that I had kissed him back. I gripped his shirt, pulled him closer, and opened my mouth and kissed him back like I'd been dying to kiss him, which I hadn't.

Except.

There had been a moment, in the coffee shop, when he'd been holding out napkins with a look on his face caught between guilt and panic, when I'd noticed his hands. Big hands, long fingers, his knuckles slightly scraped the way most athletes' hands always were, and maybe for half a second, before my anger caught up to me, I'd noticed them.

I set the glass down too hard, and water sloshed over the rim, pooling on the granite. I grabbed a dish towel and mopped it up.

My lips were still tingling. I could still feel the pressure of his thumb on my cheekbone, the callused pad of it rough against my skin. The weight of his body leaning into mine. The warmth that came off him.

This was not happening. This was absolutely one hundred percent not happening. I had moved to Boston to start over. To build my career. To heal from a man who'd spent two and a half years dismantling me piece by piece until there was nothing left but an outline of a person who used to know who she was. I had moved to prove to myself I could exist on my own without anyone else steering the wheel. I had not moved here to make out with an athlete on his front porch.

God, an athlete. Of all the men in all the neighborhoods in all of Boston, my body had responded to another athlete. As if I hadn't learned my lesson the first time.

I leaned against the counter. My therapist was going to have a field day with this. Dr. Chen would sit in her chair with her legs crossed, her pen resting on her notepad, and she'd look at me and say something like, "Tell me what you felt when he stepped closer." I would have to tell her the truth, that I'd felt two things at once. One was real and one was a response to a pattern I couldn't seem to break no matter how hard I tried.

I went upstairs, washed my face with cold water, brushed my teeth twice because the taste of beer was still in my mouth and I needed it to be gone. I changed into a sleep shirt and climbed into bed, pulling the comforter up to my chin even though the room was warm. Cooper settled on my bed at my feet, circling twice before lying down with his customary groan, laying his head across my legs.

I stared at the ceiling, at the fan spinning.

The problem wasn't that he'd kissed me. Men had kissed me before. Some had been good at it, some hadn't, and I'd moved on from all of them without losing sleep.

The problem was how my body had responded when he did.

I'd been afraid for a fraction of a second when he stepped into my space. That old response that Brett had wired into me, a man getting close meant something was about to go wrong. My shoulders had tightened, and my stomach had dropped, and my body had done the thing it always did, the thing Dr. Chen called a "protective activation." My entire system preparing for impact.

The fear left faster than ever before, and something hot and dangerous took its place. It started in my chest and spread down to my stomach, to my hips and legs. My body recognized that he wasn't a threat, not in the way Brett had been. Marshall being close to me had felt different.

My body had responded before my brain could catch up. Hands reaching. Mouth opening. Hips shifting toward his. That was the problem. My body had decided without consulting the part of me that knew better, the part that had built ten months of careful distance between herself and any man who could take up too much space in her life.

I rolled onto my side and pulled the blanket tighter. Outside, I heard a car start, then another. The party was winding down. Soon it was quiet.

I thought about the way he'd looked at me. He wasn't drunk. The alcohol had filed away whatever kept him in check. What showed was raw, honest, and more dangerous than the exterior. Under that was curiosity, interest, and heat he couldn't deny, so he dove in to see what I was going to do.