Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Tyler
I slept like crap last night. I felt bad after I took out my frustrations on Mira. I shouldn’t have gotten in her face like that. But fuck. Me and Mira living together? That’s messed-up.
There’s no question Mira is in danger. What I want to know is why. She owes money, so sayeth Lewis. I don’t get it. Mira has Lewis’s rich parents to help her out. It doesn’t make sense that she’d turn to a loan shark instead of his family.
I rub my eyes and blink at the ceiling. There’s gotta be a way to fix this.
If I can fix it, I can get Mira out of Cali’s place and return my life to normal.
My new normal isn’t exactly a peaceful existence—there’s none of that after Colorado—but it’s an escape.
Cali’s home has become my safe house, and Mira’s presence has destroyed that.
Cali is right about my drinking, and I’ve been trying to ease up on it lately, but that went out the window last night. I didn’t drink as much as I have been, but I still downed four beers on the back patio before my mind calmed enough for me to drag my ass upstairs and crash.
Everything about Mira has me at peak anxiety, like I could punch a hole in the wall or kick down a door. The kind of pent-up agitation that needs an outlet.
Living with her is going to put me in an early grave. “Christ.”
“You say something, Tyler?” Mira’s lilting voice drifts up from below my loft.
Like I said, no peace.
“Nothing,” I grumble, and sit up, pinching the bridge of my nose.
I put up with my sister and Gen’s crap reality shows, the hogging of the bathroom, but living with Mira is—goddamn, how did I get here?
There was a time when my life was good; not great, but decent. Now…Now I don’t think good is on the horizon.
The scent of spice fills the air, like cinnamon and licorice.
I swing my legs to the floor of the loft, my knees near my shoulders since the mattress is on the ground.
I reach for a pair of jeans and my gaze lands on the rumpled T-shirt I wore yesterday.
Normally, I don’t wear a shirt in the morning.
Fuck it. I’m not changing my ways. If I didn’t change for my fiancée, I’m not changing for Mira.
Cali’s right—I am an asshole. But I already knew that. It became apparent after everything went down in Colorado. I can never fix things with Anna. She’s lost to me forever. But I can get my life together and be a better person than I have been.
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, fighting a headache that’s building with every heartbeat, and glance around.
It’s not much up here—a mattress on the floor with a couple of bookshelves built into the wall on either side, my clothes scattered about—but I’ve come to like this place.
It’s cramped, and it reminds me I don’t need a lot to survive.
I pull on my jeans and climb down the ladder.
I should start paying my sister rent. As a dealer at Blue, she pulled in sweet tips, but all that’s changed.
Cali isn’t making as much as she used to, and she and Gen are barely living here anymore.
I enjoy irritating them both, but I’m not that big a mooch.
I’ll pitch in. I have money saved. A lot, actually.
I just didn’t want to be alone. Makes me sound like a pussy, but I needed to return to my roots and regroup after Colorado.
There’s something about Lake Tahoe. It’s my hometown, and maybe that’s it.
At the bottom of the ladder, I turn around to find Mira standing in the center of the living room, pulling her long, dark hair into a ponytail.
Her hands pause as she takes me in. She looks away, but not before her gaze trails my bare shoulders to the waistband of my jeans hanging low.
Movement down below has me fighting an adjustment. Fuck.
Maybe walking around without a shirt first thing in the morning isn’t such a great idea. Mira is still a beautiful woman, and that little eye linger sent the wrong signals to my body—which is primed for release this morning, thanks to the anxiety I’m bottling.
Mira brushes past me into the kitchen, dragging a chair with her. She climbs on the bottom rung that supports the legs, and opens one of the upper cabinets, the chair creaking and wobbling beneath her.
Great. She’s going to kill herself all on her own.
“What are you doing, Mira?” My voice comes out irritated. The view she’s flashing me in her pajama shorts is adding to my annoyance.
I drag my gaze from her smooth, shapely legs to the cuts on her arms, the bandages on her head and the tip of her ear.
She’s injured, fragile. Only she’s not acting like an invalid.
She’s moving around spryly for first thing in the morning.
She seems normal, and the male parts of me, fully awake at this hour, agree.
It doesn’t matter that I tell myself she’s off limits, the worst possible choice. My body has tuned out that voice.
Fucking biology. How can I possibly still have a physical attraction to this girl?
The black widow occasionally chews off her mate’s head. How’s that for postcoital thanks? Why the hell do we males put up with this? And yet, I’ll need to remind myself continually what Mira was like in high school, because my dick has a mind of its own.
Mira reaches for the top shelf, her shorts riding up higher. The curve of her ass is on full display, her long legs narrowing to delicate ankles. I look up, and she’s glaring at me. “You could help, you know.”
This living together is the worst physical and mental torture I could imagine. “With?”
She points to the top shelf. “I need that mug.”
Cali’s place houses every coffee mug in existence. Cali and Gen have their favorites, and it seems Mira has picked out hers as well. Must be a chick thing.
I walk over and move right up behind her, resting my hands on the countertop on either side of her body, until my chest is touching her back.
“Which one?” I say near her ear.
She swallows. “That one.” She points again.
Keeping one hand on the counter, I reach for the “Dear Karma, I Have a List of People You Missed” mug, and hand it to her.
“Thanks,” she says, remaining very still.
It’s not wise, but I’m a guy and she’s beautiful, so I breathe in her scent. It’s vanilla and floral, like last night, along with the intangible something I still gravitate to. The cells of my body are saying, Her, her. Now.
I’m telling them to shut the fuck up.
It’s always been this way with Mira. From the first time we sat near each other during our tutoring sessions, she smelled so good to me. I couldn’t stop myself from breathing her in then. I can’t stop myself now.
But I will keep my hands off her.
It’s sheer cruelty. Thanks to nature, my prehistoric pheromones recognize this girl’s scent and form, out of all the other beautiful women out there, as the most attractive imaginable.
Mira pushes back, her ass against my lower abdomen, a not-so-subtle indicator that she wants me to move. And not at all helping my body’s inconvenient physical response to her.
Her face is close—inches away—close enough that the glisten on her full bottom lip where she wets it with her tongue captures my attention.
That, and her smell. Combine it with her slender body pressed to my chest and other areas, and a series of memories fire through my mind…
Mira naked with me above her, my lips skimming the inside of her thigh…
Heat spikes down my groin, turning me rock hard, tension rolling off my back.
“Hold up.” I move my hand from the counter to just above her ass, keeping her still while I reach for another cup.
She scans my selection. A mug with the words “Morning Wood” scrawled below an image of a stack of lumber.
Those full lips twist into a smirk. “Classy,” she says, heavy on the sarcasm. My hand and body continue to press into hers, and her breaths turn hitchy. Not so unaffected.
I have no doubt she can feel my want.
She clears her throat. “I’d like to get my tea now.”
I back away, holding my hands out in surrender, the Wood mug in one of them. “Have at it.”
I flip the switch on the coffeemaker I filled the night before, and stealthily make an adjustment to my jeans.
How am I going to stay away from her when she smells the way she does?
No one should smell that good first thing in the morning.
Then she has to look at me all pissy and hot-tempered.
Why is that such a turn-on? Was it always?
I don’t recall being drawn to bitchy chicks, but Mira’s always had the sauce.
At one point, I thought she had a sweet hidden core, but I was wrong. So wrong.
I push off the counter, away from the kitchen, away from her amazing scent.
Space. That’s what I need. Space and distance.
Mira walks out of the kitchen with her cup of tea, and sits on the couch in the living room.
God. She’s a tea drinker on top of it all. Out of every reason we’re not compatible, that one settles it. I can’t live with a tea drinker.
“How long do you think you’ll stay here?” Not subtle, but whatever.
She stops in the act of raising the Karma mug to her wine-tinted lips, and shrugs.
“I had planned to only stay the night when I thought I’d be with Cali, but now I’m not sure.
It’s not ideal, but…” She takes in my tense features and lets out a huff, daggering me with a glare.
“Lewis is right. I can’t go home, Tyler. ”
At my blank stare, she sets her tea on the end table. “Jesus,” she says, and stands forcefully. “I don’t like this any more than you do.” She storms out of the living room and into the bedroom.
A moment later, Mira returns with the clothes she wore yesterday in her arms, and slams the bathroom door behind her.
Humph. A little more sensitive than I remember.
I boot up my laptop, the squeak of the shower starting coming from behind the bathroom door, the pipes rumbling below the house.
I’m well into my edits by the time I register Mira emerging from the bathroom, her long, slightly wavy hair wet and hanging in thick strands down her back, making her beautiful face all the more pronounced.
My fingers pause above the keyboard, my breath catching in my throat.
She removed the bandage on her ear, and the cut seems to be healing a little.
The sweatshirt she borrowed yesterday hides the curves I know exist. Doesn’t stop my gaze from searching them out before she disappears into the bedroom.
I grab a random textbook from the piles I keep stacked along the wall of the dining area and thumb through The Neurobiology of Olfaction, trying to focus on the words instead of the girl behind the bedroom door. A red Jeep pulls up.
Lewis’s car.
He honks, and Mira exits the bedroom, whipping out the front door and slamming it shut faster than I can blink.
I slump in my chair, my head tipped to the ceiling. I breathe in deeply for the first time since I found Mira in the woods last night.
This will never work.