CHAPTER SEVEN #2
A moment later, a woman with a dark, silky high ponytail joins Maverick, sliding her arm around his waist. It’s Scarlett. She nuzzles into him.
Holy shit. I just spent at least twelve hours watching them on TV, and now here I am, lurking in the honeysuckle while watching them in real life.
Have I accidentally taken a hit of a bong and am just imagining this on Griff’s television?
This is the height of parasocial weirdness, but I can’t look away.
They’re having a house party of some sort, but I can’t piece together why Kru is at the house directly behind Griffin’s.
Maybe Scarlett lives there? I don’t know much about her; she’s from Bayshore, but she was a few grades ahead of me in school, and we didn’t cross paths much.
Other people stream in and out of the house as Kru cooks, continuing his story.
I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I’m dying to know the punchline.
Grayson Daly joins Maverick after a bit.
Hazel’s husband in the flesh. Good lord, the Daly brothers are good-looking.
Maverick and Grayson share smiles, nodding and chatting about something.
But then the star of the show closes the lid of the grill, turning to face the Daly brothers.
My gaze solders onto those biceps. I can remember how his forearms flexed when he hoisted me, seemingly effortlessly.
Like I weighed nothing. Memories slide through me, sticky sweet. I bite my bottom lip.
“Piper?”
Griffin’s voice breaks through my voyeuristic daydreaming. I jolt, turning to shush him. I don’t want his neighbors to realize what’s going on.
“Keep it down!”
“What are you doing?” He looks genuinely confused, standing there on the cement patio.
I carefully remove myself from the honeysuckle and hurry toward him. “I’m spying,” I whisper. “You won’t believe who’s back here.”
His brows arch, and I beckon him to the honeysuckle with me. He begrudgingly follows, though I can practically hear all the doubts and sanity checks he’s not saying out loud.
“Piper…” he begins as I part the greenery for him.
“Shh. Just look.”
Griffin bends his enormous athlete body to peer through the bushes. I’m looking through my own honeysuckle window, immediately seeking out Kru. He’s brushing something on the meat with a silicone brush. Maverick is clapping as he does it. Damn, I wish I were over there.
“Is that…” Griff finally starts.
“Kru, my landlord.”
“I still can’t believe Kru is his name.” Griff’s incredulity is a little too loud for the backyard peeping so I shush him. “What does it mean?” he asks in a slightly lower voice.
“It’s his nickname, I guess. I don’t know. I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Most sociopaths don’t want you to know their real identities,” Griff mutters.
“He’s not a sociopath,” I shoot back.
He turns to look at me. “He kicked you out of your apartment and gave you less than a month to find a new place.”
“Right—”
“He axed through your back wall without any warning,” he adds.
“Yes,” I concede, “but—”
Griff huffs. “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be looking at other than a bunch of guys having a party, one of whom I’d really like to punch right now.”
“ Griff,” I hiss. “Don’t you find it interesting that all of these people are at the property behind you?”
“Yeah. One more notch on the sociopath column, if you ask me. Koopa wasn’t satisfied with taking your home, I guess, now he’s following you to mine. That’s some crime documentary behavior if you ask me.”
I shake my head, the familiar sense of defeat threading through me. My brothers can’t ever just be normal human beings. They always have to escalate everything to the nth degree of danger when it comes to me. Maybe it was a bad idea to move in with my brother, even temporarily.
“His name is Kru, not Koopa.”
Griffin grumbles as he extracts himself from the honeysuckle. “This is weird, Piper. I’m gonna go back inside now.”
I wait until the back door shuts behind him before I return to the honeysuckle.
He might think Kru is a sociopath, but me?
I’m just curious. Perhaps too curious. I’ll admit the Daly brothers are something like local celebrities now, after Maverick was on the show and Hazel and Grayson got married, not to mention their older brother Dominic opening up a heart clinic downtown that specifically serves low income patients.
They’re great guys—and if Maverick is in this backyard with Kru right now, that means Kru must be great, too. Right?
Grayson brings out a new round of beers; everyone clinks bottles before drinking.
I spy until I, too, begin to feel weird.
I need to lay this post-coital obsession to rest. Kru is my landlord now.
Potentially my neighbor as well, and definitely my usurper.
Resuming the behaviors from our first night together would not be wise, because it would make everything intolerably messy.
Not just for me, but also with my family.
No way in hell would any of my brothers let me date the man who kicked me out of my own apartment.
So this is it. You’ve thrown muffins at his bare chest. You’ve binge watched his reality TV show. You’ve spied on him during a cookout. Can this be done now?
I turn to extract myself for the last time from the honeysuckle but my T-shirt snags. Damn, it’s the rose bush. I twist to find where exactly I’m snagged, but my fingertips meet the sharp point of the rose thorn. I yelp, bringing the wounded fingertip to my mouth.
It’s too dark back here along the fence line, so everything is a struggle.
Not to mention, I really don’t want to mess up the perfect roses I’d spotted, so I’m trying to dodge those as well.
The leaves rustle as I twist and bend and grope for release.
Does this rose bush have claws? Has it grown fingers and made a fist around my T-shirt?
Frustration grows as I continue my battle with the foliage.
“Can I help you?”
A rough voice interrupts my struggle. I look up, finding Kru along the fence line, looking down at me with a smug smile.
“Uh…no. I’m fine, thanks.”
He tips his head, and I can feel his gaze coursing over me, even in the low light of the backyard. “Damn, Piper. You just can’t get enough of me, can you?”
The grit of his voice scrapes through me, leaving goosebumps in its wake. I’m embarrassed to notice that my panties are damp now. Still, I scoff, even though internally I’m agreeing with him. “Please. I just came out to enjoy the night air. I had no intention of finding you here.”
“Finding me is one thing. Staying is another.”
Fuck. Heat floods my cheeks, and I’m glad it’s dark so he can’t see proof of my embarrassment. Maybe he’s been watching me for longer than I realized, which is another source of embarrassment altogether.
"I’ve only stayed long enough to notice you don’t have your camera crew following your every move. I wasn’t aware you were able to survive without that level of documentation.”
“Just like you can’t survive without keeping tabs on me.” He delivers his rebuttal so coolly, effortlessly, that I want to stomp my foot. This was the same type of energy that hooked me the night we first met. And I’ll be damned if it’s going to get me a second time.
“I have zero interest in keeping tabs on you,” I tell him. “Meanwhile, it seems you are obsessed with following me everywhere. Even to my brother’s house.”
“Me?” A small laugh escapes him. “I didn’t even know your name until last week, how could I have possibly followed you to your brother’s house?”
“There are ways,” I tell him, though I don’t care to expand on what they are. “Fact is, my brother has been living here for longer than you’ve even known Bayshore existed, so I don’t want to hear anything that suggests I’m in the wrong here.”
His head tips to the side. “I found you creeping along the fence line, staring at my party like an underfed orphan from a Dickens novel, and somehow that’s my fault?”
The Dickens novel reference stops me, so all I can do is blurt, “Yes.”
He laughs. Genuine belly laughter. It dissolves every last ounce of friction inside me and suddenly I’m glad the rose bush has its death claws in me.
I’d like to stay here.
“It’s not funny,” I tell him when his laughter dies down. “Stalking is a serious thing.”
“Stalking. Right.” He drifts closer, leaning his forearms against the chain link fence. I wish it were lighter back here so I could see how close he truly is. Maybe I’d catch the flecks of amber in his eyes like I did in Cleveland. Get lost in the map created by the tiny freckles on his cheeks.
“Piper, I have one question for you.” The rough scrape of his voice straightens my spine. “Do you remember me from last month?”
He’s added “from last month” to his question because he remembers how I answered this question last time.
Damn him. The question, combined with the fact that I can feel the heat radiating off him, catches me off guard.
I lace my fingers into the chain link fence for stability while I grope for my answer in the darkness.
“I guess I should take your silence as my answer, huh?” His voice is a little softer now.
I can hear the hurt threaded through his words.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I wish emotions had an off button.
But there’s no stopping the tidal wave of desire that courses through my body whenever I’m near this man. Especially this close.
“Maybe I just need a reminder,” I blurt.
My throat is dry and I swallow hard. Did I really say that?
I tip my head back, and Kru fills my vision.
My belly presses against the fence between us, and my knuckles brush against the solid heat behind his gray tee.
Everything else shrinks to a blip around us.
All I can see is his handsome face bathed in shadows, those brown eyes drinking me in, his lips curling at the corners.
“Oh yeah? What kind?”
I push up on my tiptoes, hoping my meaning will become clear as our noses touch. I don’t remember in what moment we erased the space between us, but I’m glad we did. The hard planes of his chest press against me. He wants it. I want it. Anticipation bloats between us, heavy and seductive.
I don’t know who moves first, but the air whooshes out of my lungs and suddenly my lips are against his.
The scent of wood smoke fills my senses, mixed with the manly tang of his cologne that takes me straight back to the intimate cocoon we created in Cleveland.
One kiss turns into two, then his lips are parting, inviting me to do the same.
His tongue presses into my mouth, searching for mine.
I whimper as his hand finds the back of my neck.
His touch sends electricity skating through my limbs and I push higher onto my tiptoes, begging for more.
He lets out a soft grunt as our kisses go from tentative to unrestrained. Heat pools between my legs. Yes, I remember this. I remember it so well, and I don’t just want more of it, I need it.
“Does that remind you?” His voice sounds drugged as he breaks away. His rough fingers are buried in the hair at the nape of my neck, sending tingles down my spine.
I can see the haze of arousal in his eyes; maybe I’d feel it pressed against my hip if it weren’t for this damn fence in the way.
Suddenly, none of the awkwardness or bitterness about recent events matters.
I just want this man between my legs again.
Face buried in the V of my thighs like it was in Cleveland, sending me to heights of pleasure that I hadn’t even known existed.
“Mmmm,” I begin, my eyes fluttering shut.
“You need another reminder, huh?”
I nod, and he tugs on my hair before dipping back down. His lips consume mine, and we’re fucking each other’s tongues when Griffin’s voice pierces the air.
“Piper?”
Fuck. I disconnect from Kru with a gasp, like I’ve just come up from the bottom of the ocean. And in a way, that’s what this is. My attraction to Kru submerges me to a dangerous level—I need to stay up where there’s air. Clarity. Logic.
“I need to go,” I bite out, ripping myself away from him. Except those kisses erased the rest of the thoughts in my brain. I forgot about the snag. About the rose bush and the death grip of the thorns. My shirt is still snagged as I begin sidling out of the foliage.
“Piper,” Kru starts.
“Sorry. I need to leave.”
My head is cloudy. My limbs are desperate to stay near Kru. But my brain knows Griffin can’t find out I just kissed the man responsible for making me homeless, so I plow toward the house.
Rrrrrrrrip.
I stumble a few steps away, still kiss-drunk. I feel the breeze across my belly before I notice I’m no longer wearing a shirt. Just my bra. My T-shirt dangles from the thorny claw of the rose bush. Kru just smirks at me, and I hurry toward the house.
"Don’t ask,” I warn Griffin as I speed past him into the house.
“A few questions come to mind,” he says, but I don’t let him ask a thing before I’m shut in my bedroom.
I need some time—and space—to myself after what just happened in the backyard. My heart is pounding and all I can think about is more .
More of that sweet pause. More kisses. More Kru.
But everything in my life right now is telling me I should have as little Kru as possible.