I had fallen asleep that night to the gentle rhythm of his breathing, promising myself that I’d stay away from him from then on, thankful that he’d be leaving for school soon and I wouldn’t have to see him again.

• • •

I snapped back into the present as Cody squeezed my hips once and stepped around me, headed toward the kitchen.

“You guys have any beer?” he called, as if I hadn’t just zoned out for God knows how long, and he hadn’t shown up on my doorstep like he freaking belonged there.

“Your sister keeps that piss you like stocked,” I answered, rolling my eyes as I followed him. “I don’t know why you drink that shit.”

“I don’t bitch about your beer, you don’t bitch about mine,” he warned, using the scarred countertop to pop the top off his beer bottle. “You in for the night?”

“Yeah. I had Will for a while, but he sleeps better at Gram’s, so she took him a little while ago. For some reason, he refuses to sleep in his own bed when Callie’s not here.”

I watched him with confusion as he made himself comfortable in my kitchen, then I came to a decision. I grabbed a beer for myself from the fridge, then bumped him out of the way with my hip. If he was going to act like being here without Callie was no big deal, I’d do the same.

If anyone could pretend that a situation wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable or just plain weird, it was me. I’d had years of practice.

“Hey, sweetheart, looks like you spilled some shit on your pants,” he joked, leaning against the countertop.

“Yeah, thanks for the flash, Gordon. I spilled nail polish all over the place when you started pounding on my door like the gestapo. You’re buying me some new freaking sweatpants,” I grumbled, opening my bottle. “I’m going to go change. Clean the shit off the coffee table, would you?”

I heard him bitching as I walked toward my bedroom, and grinned. He could take the blame for not being able to get that shit off Callie’s coffee table. It was his damn fault it had gotten spilled in the first place.

Shit, my room was a disaster. I’d needed to go to the Laundromat last week, but with Callie waffling about whether she was going to Eugene or not, and trying to rearrange her schedule at the salon so her clients wouldn’t revolt, I hadn’t had time.

Shit.

The only clean pants I had were a huge pair of sweatpants that I wore to bed when I was having a bad night. They didn’t stay up around my waist unless I tightened the drawstring as far as it would go and then rolled them like four times, but since the options were either the sweats or a tiny-ass pair of yoga shorts . . . I stuck with the sweats.

If only I would have listened to Gram when she told me to stop throwing damp towels in with the rest of my dirty laundry, I might have been able to wear a semi-clean pair that actually fit.

By the time I made it back into the living room, Cody had polished off most of his beer and was grimacing as he rotated his arm slowly.

“Does it still bother you?” I asked, startling him as I rounded the couch.

“Nah, it’s usually not bad. Long ride today, though,” he answered, pulling a prescription bottle out of the pocket of his jeans.

“You’ve been drinking,” I snapped dumbly as he dropped a pill into his mouth and washed it down with the last of his beer. “You better not be getting back on your bike tonight.”

“That’s funny, coming from you,” he replied with a short bark of laughter, shaking his head.

I almost took a step back, the hurt flashing through me quickly at his comment, but I hid that small tell. It always came back to this—always—so I shouldn’t have been surprised. I wouldn’t let him catch me off guard again.

I turned my head toward the TV, refusing to look at him as I sat down on the far end of the couch. He’d seen me at my worst, and it seemed as if I’d never be able to escape that fact. It was why when I’d noticed him watching me over the past year, I’d ignored it.

Was I attracted to him? Of course I was. Cody was gorgeous, and he carried himself with a confidence that had become even more apparent as he’d found his place in the Aces. I couldn’t help but be attracted to him; he was the embodiment of everything I’d ever looked for in a man—strong, kind, sexy, smart—but that didn’t mean that I would ever act on it. There was no way I could ever move past the fact that he had kept me alive and in one piece more times than I could remember. It caused an inequality in our relationship that I hated.

The times that I could remember were bad enough; I wouldn’t even let myself contemplate how bad the times I couldn’t remember were.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said, leaning forward as if to touch my leg before I jerked away. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, Farrah.”

“It’s fine.” I laughed woodenly, staring with unfocused eyes at the television. “No harm, no foul. Let’s not pretend that I should be making life choices for anyone.”

“Fuck!” he said under his breath, surprising me enough to whip my head in his direction. “This is not what I planned on happening.”

“What exactly did you plan?” I asked calmly, my mask firmly in place. “Your sister’s not here, and your grandmother lives right next door. Why the hell are you still in my apartment?”

I watched as he ran his hands over the top of his head in frustration, and was about to climb off the couch to put some space between us when he reached over and dragged me toward him.