“Are you working on your book?” I asked.

“Trying to. I decided I need to pick a premise and stick with it, even when my other ideas start to seem like they’re so much better. But I’m still struggling to get the story off the ground. I feel so distracted.”

“By what?”

“Um…” She met my eyes and I had a flash of her face mid-orgasm, while I held her hair and made her look at me while she came.

Jesus, Gav. What the fuck?

“I’m distracted by a lot of things, I guess,” she said.

“Yeah, I kind of know the feeling.” Although I doubted her problem was having uncontrollable sex fantasies about me.

My phone buzzed, then immediately buzzed again, so I took it out of my pocket to check. It was my brothers in our group chat.

Levi: Gram’s furnace is probably going to need replacing soon. It’s old AF.

Logan: Shit.

Asher: I’ll get some quotes so we know how much it’s going to cost.

Levi: Do you think she can afford it?

Asher: I don’t know.

Evan: We’ll figure it out if she can’t.

Asher: Do any of you know how stable she is financially?

I sure didn’t. Gram had never discussed money with me—not hers, at least. I’d just always assumed she and Grandad had saved enough for her to live comfortably. Plus, she owned her house and all the surrounding acreage. That had to be worth a lot.

Levi: I don’t have any details. We should probably talk to her about that.

Me: You know she’ll just tell us it’s none of our business.

Asher: There’s nothing wrong with making sure.

Me: I’m not arguing, I just know what she’ll say.

Logan: I bet she’s fine. Grandad probably stashed money all over the place.

That made me smile. He probably had stashed money all over the place. That seemed like a Grandad thing to do.

Me: Check behind his Cherry Coke fridge out in the shop.

Skylar was quietly typing, her eyes intent on her screen. I didn’t want to interrupt her, so I just hung out for a while. You’d have thought I would have been bored—if I’d been anywhere else I would have been. But I wasn’t. There was something about just sitting at a table in a coffee shop with Skylar that was weirdly soothing. The click of her fingers on the keys lulled me into relaxation. I almost felt drowsy.

It was nice.

Eventually, she blinked, gasping like she’d forgotten to take her last breath. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what? You’re fine. Although I should probably get going. I’m getting a massage.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah, apparently this guy is really good. I’m all jacked up from walking weird.” I got up and tucked my crutches under my arms. “Bye, Sky. I’ll text you later.”

She nodded and gave me that cute shy smile of hers, and suddenly I really didn’t want to leave. But she was trying to work, and I’d probably been distracting her. And I did want that massage. My back felt all knotted up.

So I left. And it was the weirdest thing, but not ten seconds after I walked out the door, I already missed her.

14

Skylar

My feet ate up the small amount of space in my bedroom. Back and forth, over and over. I was too anxious to sit, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

I was probably overreacting. That was one of my superpowers. But my mind was fevered, my fingers itching to know if it had been a coincidence.

I’d written an entire chapter in the coffee shop, all with Gavin sitting at my table.

My fingers had flown across the keyboard, the words coming easily. The scene had taken shape in my mind, the main character’s motivations, thoughts, feelings, and actions all crystal clear. I’d been able to see the dark forest, feel the debris crunching beneath my feet. It had all been there, ready for my brain to turn into words, sentences, paragraphs.

Even more amazing, the result wasn’t awful.

Sure, it would need work, especially as the story progressed. Revisions were part of the process. But this didn’t need to be relegated to my alarmingly large collection of cut text files. I didn’t have the heart to delete things outright, but my folder of discarded half-written chapters had turned into a graveyard of abandoned ideas.

Rest in peace, stories that could have been.

But this? This wasn’t garbage. I could feel it.

The problem was that once Gavin had left, the words had dried up.

It was utterly inexplicable. He’d come into the coffee shop, made a little conversation, and then sat quietly at my table while my mind had gone crazy. While the words had poured out of me as easily as if someone had turned on a faucet, ideas flowing like water. When I’d come to, it had been like waking from a too-long nap. My mind had been so focused, so captivated, I’d barely remembered where I was.

Then he’d gone, and it had stopped.

I’d tried to get it back—tried everything. But the words wouldn’t come.

It was entirely possible that I was just done for the day. I’d used up my creative well and tomorrow I’d be right back at it. After all, Gavin Bailey’s presence couldn’t possibly contain that kind of magic—that kind of power. This had to be my overactive imagination making connections that didn’t really exist.

But I had to know for sure. So I’d texted him and asked him to come over.

A knock at the door roused me from my tangled musings and I raced downstairs.

Gavin’s dimpled grin when I answered the door almost rendered me speechless. “Hey, Sky.”

“Hi,” I managed to get out. Pull yourself together, Skylar, he’s not that good-looking.

Okay, yes he was.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I need your help with an experiment.”

His eyes swept up and down, and he caught his lower lip between his teeth. Suddenly I was thinking about a very different kind of experiment. Heat rushed to my core and my inner thigh muscles twitched.

Focus, Skylar.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

Other than give me a much-needed orgasm? “Come in. Upstairs. Wait, can you do stairs?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it.”

I let him in and closed the door behind him, then led him up to my room.

He hesitated just inside the doorway, leaning on his crutches as he glanced around.

Gavin Bailey was in my bedroom.

It made me wonder how different things would have been if I’d grown up here. If my parents hadn’t divorced and I’d spent my childhood around the Bailey brothers, instead of hearing about them second hand. Would Gavin and I have been friends? Would a teenage me have invited a teenage him up to my bedroom?

Probably not. He would have looked right past me at that age.

“You can sit on the bed if you want,” I said. “This is probably going to sound weird.”

“Not gonna lie, I’m curious as hell right now.” He laid his crutches on the floor and hoisted himself onto the bed.

“When we were at the coffee shop earlier today, I wrote an entire chapter.”

“That’s awesome, Sky. Good for you.”

“Thanks. Specifically, I wrote it all when you were there. Before you came in, I’d barely written anything. And after you left, it was like… I don’t know, it was just gone.”