“If you want to stay inside tomorrow to give your neck a break, we can,” he suggested, moving his leg just enough so that the entire length of his thigh was squished against mine.

“That’s probably a good idea,” I said. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to stay inside with me if you don’t want. I can just watch TV by myself or something.”

His hand landed on my bare thigh, and I was really grateful that I’d showered and shaved after I’d come back inside following our swim.

“Ru, I don’t care—”

The suggestion came out of my mouth so unexpectedly, I hadn’t even realized it was still on my mind. “If you wanted to call your friend or hang out with her, I’d understand.”

The lids covering those dark brown eyes hung low. “My friend?” he asked slowly.

Why had I brought this up? It was too late now, wasn’t it? “The, uh, waitress.”

“The waitress?”

Crap. “The one at the restaurant.”

At the rate of a snail, the confused expression on Aaron’s face slowly melted off, replaced by a smile at the same pace. Why did he look so smug? “RC, I know her, but she’s not my friend.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“She used to mess around with my brother. She’s nice and all, but we’re not friends.”

Well. What could I say after that besides “Oh”?

The blond beside me grinned a little too smugly. “She’s not my type.”

“Did she just stick her fingers in his ass?”

What? Where? I wondered, forgetting all about what type Aaron had.

Across the room, Brittany let out a laugh in response. “She did!

“What the hell are you watching?” came Max’s second question as he sat up and looked around the room to make sure his little sister wasn’t still in the kitchen.

She wasn’t.

I could feel rather than see Aaron tense beside me. What I did see was him leaning forward, planting those impressive blond-hair dusted arms on his knees and saying in his controlled, even voice, “Would you change the channel? Ruby and Mindy don’t need to see that shit, come on.”

Me? Mindy I could understand. But me?

“Put it on something else,” Aaron said with a finality I couldn’t miss. “Ruby’s right here.”

And when three other sets of eyes all swung over to my direction, I blushed. Everywhere. Up to the roots of my hair.

While I wouldn’t have been outraged at seeing a girl sticking her fingers in a guy’s butt—and it wouldn’t be the first time or the second or third I had—I cringed on the inside at Aaron basically comparing me to a seventeen-year-old. Because just like that I knew what he was saying and why he was being so defensive and overprotective.

He was hinting at what I thought he was hinting at, there was no doubt about it.

All I could do was give the other three a smile, which probably looked like a mixture of deranged and embarrassed, even as I looked down at my clean fingernails and stretched them wide on my lap, saying, “You can leave it on if you want.” My voice was all whispered and funky and I don’t want to talk about this, but…

But these friends of my friend, a lot nicer and kinder than I ever could have given them credit for, changed the channel. Immediately.

They all thought…

Yeah, they all thought I was a virgin now. Or maybe just really, really, really innocent. Basically: a virgin.

What was this? The 1860s? Was porn not a click away anymore? Did he not have any idea the kinds of things I’d seen on the Internet late at night when I had my door locked?

Not that there was anything wrong with being a virgin, but I wasn’t one. I hadn’t been one for a while. Where the hell could Aaron had gotten that impression from?

It took me all of a moment, sitting there embarrassed out of my mind, to figure it out.

It was the never-having-a-boyfriend thing. Being in love with the same guy for years. Not really even dating ever. That would be it. I knew it. It had to be.

Oh man.

I couldn’t look at him as I blindly reached over the side table where I’d set the aloe vera gel and picked up my phone instead. I could sense Aaron’s gaze on me as I brought the phone close to my face and opened my notepad app, typing the words that I didn’t expect to ever tell anyone, much less Aaron. But I didn’t know how else to get out of this conversation gracefully. I couldn’t let him keep thinking… that. No wonder he thought of me like a little sister if he was comparing me to Mindy. This was my fault. Totally.

You know how much I love that you’re so nice to me? I wrote him, before handing over the phone not very discreetly.

His eyebrows rose in my direction as he took it from me and read the screen, his eyebrows dropping back into place in an expression of confusion. I know, he replied before returning it to me.

How was I supposed to tell him this? I’d never told anyone this, never even thought it would come up and I’d have to have a game plan. Yet here we were, and I knew I needed to tell him.

I’m not THAT innocent, I typed.

Then I added, But thank you for watching out for me, and set the phone on top of the thigh he had lined up with mine. He lifted it up without hesitation and read the words. There was a moment between when he read it and then stared at the screen before typing, his thumbs looking too large for the touch screen.