Beautiful Burn (The Maddox Brothers, #4)(43)

“What if this gets ugly?” I asked. “What if you hate me when it’s over?”

“Not gonna happen.”

“It did with Sterling.”

“I’m not going to make you trip balls, and then have sex with you.”

“So … friends?” I asked.

The water cut off, and Tyler stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, and then he cleared his throat like he was about to make a promise he didn’t want to keep. “Friends.”

“Will you still stay?” I asked.

Tyler managed a small smile, the thoughts swirling behind his eyes clouding his irises. “I wasn’t going to try to sleep with you, anyway, Ellie.”

“No?”

“No. It’s just different now.”

I stood, stunned, unable to form a response. Whatever the ache was in my chest, I was sure it was something similar to a broken heart.

“C’mon,” he said, standing. “Let’s crash. I’m beat.”

He followed me to the bed, but there was a difference in the air between us. Tyler seemed more relaxed, as if the question was gone, the pressure eliminated. With the towel still wrapped around him, he crawled into my bed, turning onto his side.

I opened my dresser drawer and slipped on a pair of Calvins under my towel and then walked over to bathroom doorway, picking his T-shirt off the floor.

“Just leave it, Ellie. I’m going to wear it home in the morning.”

He watched me with confusion and then surprise when I slipped it over my head and padded over to the bed, climbing in next to him. He wrapped both arms around me, burying his nose in my hair, and sighed.

“You’re half naked, wearing my shirt. This isn’t exactly fair.”

I reached into my nightstand, and then turned to face him, staring into his eyes while I peeled open the package in my hand. “We can still be friends,” I said, reaching down, sliding my hand between the towel and his skin. He immediately hardened in my hand.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Tyler breathed, leaning in to graze his lips across mine while I slipped the latex over his skin. “This in-between shit, Ellie. I don’t think I can. You’re either mine, or you’re not.”

“I’m not anyone else’s.”

He planted his mouth on mine, kissing me hard and deep.

“We don’t have to fit into any special box,” I said. He pulled away, looking for more answers in my eyes. “It is what it is. Can’t we just do that?”

Tyler slowly climbed on top of me, scanning my face for half a minute before leaning down to claim me with his mouth.

I tugged on his towel until it slipped away, and it fell somewhere next to the bed.

“You’re right,” he whispered. “This is a bad idea.” He swept the fabric of my Calvins aside, just enough for him to slide inside me.

I took a deep breath and sighed. Tyler felt too good … too safe. I could see in his eyes that he was willing to try me like poison; even after the first taste, we were already wondering how excruciating the end would be.





CHAPTER TWELVE


Tyler seemed to be in an uncharacteristically cheerful mood, chomping on his pancakes and smiling at everyone who passed by our table at Winona’s, waving with his fork.

I’d woken up in his arms, his nose pressed against my neck. Once he began to stir, I half expected our night together to end in this awkward walk of shame, not sweet kisses and cuddles while he schooled me on doing a load of laundry. He’d loved removing his shirt from my body to drop it in the machine. He’d taken a lot longer to do that than he had chucking in his pants, underwear, and socks.

We’d barely gotten through the first cycle before he lifted me on top of the machine and settled between my legs, reminding me why I’d woken up so wonderfully sore.

In spring fresh clothes, he’d held my hand out to the truck and opened the door for me at Winona’s. Now he was looking down at his nearly empty plate, grinning like a fool.

“What’s funny?” I asked.

He looked up at me, trying to subdue the smirk on his face and failing. “I wasn’t laughing.”

“You’re smiling. Like, a lot.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. I was just wondering what you were think—”

“You,” he said immediately. “The same thing I’ve been thinking about since the night we met.”

I pressed my lips together, trying to keep them from curving upward. His good mood was contagious, making it easy to forget what Sterling had said on my front steps the night before, and the worry that he was right.

Finley hadn’t called or texted in twenty-four hours. Maybe Sterling was right. Maybe she did know.

Tyler’s phone chirped, and he held it to his ear. “Hey, dickhead,” he said. His expression changed as he listened, at first concentrating on whatever was being said. Then his eyebrows bounced once. He glanced up at me for half a second, and then looked down, blinking.

“But he’s okay,” Tyler said, listening again. “He … he what? No they didn’t. Are you f*cking serious? Wow … Yeah, no. I won’t. Who might come here? What kind of questions? About Trav? What do you mean? Oh. Oh, f*ck. Do you think it’ll work? All right. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll tell Taylor. I said I’ll tell him. I get it. We’ll circle the wagons. Love you, too, Trent.”