At one point in the game, I stand up to get some air because I feel like I’m doing something I really shouldn’t be doing. It takes every single ounce of self-control I have to edge away from Malcolm’s huge chest and go to the kitchen. It’s like leaving bed on a Sunday morning, Malcolm being my own personal king-size mattress. The moment I leave I miss his warmth, his arms, the sound of his voice next to my ear when he talks. I remember I could even feel his abs move under my head. His stomach is rock hard. I shudder and focus on getting my cool back.

When I come back, I sit down with ten inches of couch between us again, hoping that I’m sending him a message. He doesn’t even think about it this time, just looks at me like I’m doing something funny, and snakes his arm around my hips again to drag me back to my place. Which, in his opinion, is under his arm and against his chest. And so we stay like that for the remainder of the game. Tahoe actually stands up at one point and gives my leg a little nudge because apparently I’m falling asleep.

They joke that it’s time for my afternoon nap, and Malcolm just tells them to shut the fuck up and watch the game. The fact is, I was actually falling asleep. He has a very comfortable chest—the asshole. I hate that he’s making me feel these things. I hate how I feel naked if I’m not next to him. I hate how I feel like a part of me has been ripped off if I’m not lying on his chest or his arms aren’t around me. And I hate how the guilt creeps up and starts to corrode me.

“Do your parents know you’re here? Bartender, you might want to check this girl’s ID again,” Tahoe says.

I glare. “Why do you insist on joking about my age?”

“T.”

Tahoe grins. “Yeah, Saint?”

“Leave her alone.”

I twist my hair up in a bun, suddenly feeling very female under Saint’s protectiveness. The sexual chemistry leaping between us is undeniable. The more I try to suppress it, the more I’m aware it’s there.

Tahoe laughs and reaches out to tap my shoulder, presumably wanting to tell me something.

“Don’t touch her, Roth,” Saint says.

Tahoe leans back. “Dude, do you have to have them all?”

“You can have your pick of anyone.”

“Well then—”

“Except her,” he says, not even looking at me to see if I agree. “I won’t say it again.”

He stands to go get more wine and Tahoe grins, while Callan leans across the coffee table. “He’s in a piss mood.”

“Why?”

“Old man is having a commemorative event for his mother. If Saint has a button, that’s it.”

“His mother? Or the dad?”

“The combination,” Callan says.

I can’t ask him anything else because Saint comes back and glances at me with all the concentration of a torpedo. He takes his seat and puts his arm around me and runs his thumb over the side of my neck, and I blush beet red, my body hot. “I like your hair up,” he tells me.

“Thank you.”

He smiles and runs his finger down my jaw like he does.

I exhale through my lips; I can’t believe how easily he arouses me. All of me. All my senses; hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch.

“Stop sweet-talking her, Saint, her ear is going to fall off,” Tahoe ribs him.

I study Malcolm’s somber, brooding expression as he sits quietly beside me. “Right? His talk is cheap but very, very sexy,” I tell Tahoe, trying to make Saint come out of his man cave. “He doesn’t have to worry. I’m so emotionally unavailable right now, he has no clue,” I say dramatically.

“Trust the man! He knows all the locks and bolts to go through to get a girl like you to open up.”

“I’m not a regular vault.”

Malcolm says nothing. I look at him, then lean in and whisper, as I trail my fingers up his chest, “I want to cheer you up, Malcolm.”

All that does is get him to shoot a frown my way. “Who said I needed cheering up?”

“Don’t sound mad. I can tell the difference between you being simply quiet and relaxed and quiet and mad.”

He takes my chin in his hand. “I’m not mad at you.”

Yeah, I guess. Still, I want to see that smile reach his eyes, I want to kiss his wounds better, but I know there are those that no Band-Aid can touch. What kind of wounds made such a hard, unemotional man?

I’m quietly pondering that when he drives me home that night. “I have something tomorrow. I’ll see you another day?” he tells me as he walks me quietly to my apartment door.

I really ache a little. I want him to share, but he’s a man, and we’re having a . . . what? A prolonged one-night stand?

“Sure, good night,” I whisper.

But before I go in, I lean back against the door, wanting him to kiss me.

So when he curls his hand around the back of my neck, I instantly go on tiptoe, wrap my arms around his shoulders, and meet him halfway. His kisses are my number-one addiction. One minute becomes two, then three, until he pulls away and looks at me. “I’ve got to go.” He runs his hand restlessly through the sexy disorder of his hair and heads off.

I want to call him back. He seems on edge and as if he doesn’t trust himself to be with me and in control like he’s used to. “Saint,” I call to him as he gets into the car. I consider asking him to spend the night, but he doesn’t hear me.

I scowl and go inside, then rub my hand over my chest. Did you want him to spend the night, Livingston? No man has spent the night here, and Gina would flip. It was better that he leave, right?

So what are the pouty feelings for? Did you actually expect him to invite you tomorrow, Rachel? Really? To his mother’s commemorative event?

Well, maybe I did. And I hate that the next day, I feel like a voyeur looking in on his pain as pictures flash on the internet. Saint, his father, their faces, the tension. The event is held in memory of his mother, who died of leukemia; his father hosts the yearly gala to raise money for a foundation in her name.

“Noel and Malcolm Saint, as we can see, are still not talking to each other. . . .”

I slam my laptop shut and go do something productive instead. I start scanning all of Gina’s fashion magazines. “Don’t unfold the folded corners,” she warns from where she’s on her laptop, listening to music on the living room couch. I untuck a folded corner and wonder why she marked the page. Maybe the cute boho bag? Or the yellow shoes the model is wearing? I’m mindlessly flipping, then I see his text message.