Bad Girl Reputation (Avalon Bay #2)(5)

My whole life I made efforts to connect with her. To figure out why my mother didn’t seem to like me much. I’d never gotten an answer. Maybe now I can stop asking.

“It’s not terrible,” Evan says. “Some people make shit parents. It’s not our fault they don’t know how to love us.”

Except for Craig—Mom certainly knew how to love him. After five failed attempts, she’d finally gotten the recipe right with him. Her one perfect son she could pour a lifetime of mothering into. I love my little brother, but he and I might as well have been raised by two different people. He’s the only one of us walking around here with red, swollen eyes.

“Can I tell you something?” Evan says with a grin that makes me suspicious. “But you have to promise not to hit me.”

“Yeah, I can’t do that.”

He laughs to himself and licks his lips. An involuntary habit that always drove me crazy, because I know what that mouth is capable of.

“I missed you,” he confesses. “Am I an asshole if I’m sort of glad someone died?”

I punch him in the shoulder, to which he feigns injury. He doesn’t mean it. Not really. But in a weird way I appreciate the sentiment, if only because it gives me permission to smile for a second or two. To breathe.

I toy with the thin silver bracelet circling my wrist. Not quite meeting his eyes. “I missed you too. A little.”

“A little?” He’s mocking me.

“Just a little.”

“Mmm-mmm. So you thought about me, what, once, twice a day when you were gone?”

“More like once or twice total.”

He chuckles.

Truthfully, after I left the Bay I spent months doing my best to push away the thoughts of him when they insisted their way forward. Refusing the images that came when I closed my eyes at night or went on a date. Eventually it got easier. I’d almost managed to forget him. Almost.

And now here he is, and it’s like not a second has passed. We still have this bubble of energy building between us. It’s evident in the way he angles his body toward mine, the way my hand lingers on his arm longer than necessary. How it hurts not to touch him.

“Don’t do that,” I order when I notice his expression. I’m caught in his eyes. Snagged, like catching my shirt on a door handle, only it’s a memory tripping up my brain.

“Do what?”

“You know what.”

Evan’s lips lift at the corner. Just a twitch. Because he knows the way he looks at me.

“You look good, Gen.” He’s doing it again. The dare in his eyes, the implications in his gaze. “Time away agreed with you.”

The little shit. It isn’t fair. I hate him, even as my fingers make contact with his chest and slide down the front of his shirt.

No, what I hate is how easily he can have me.

“We shouldn’t do this,” I murmur.

We’re tucked away but still visible to anyone should they get the urge to glance in our direction. Evan’s hand skims the hem of my dress. He pushes up under the fabric and softly drags his fingertips along the curve of my ass.

“No,” he breathes against my ear. “ We shouldn’t.”

So, of course, we do.

We slip into the bathroom next to the laundry room, locking the door behind us. My breath lodges in my throat when he lifts me up on the vanity.

“This is a terrible idea,” I tell him as he grips my waist and I brace myself against the sink.

“I know.” And then he covers my mouth with his.

The kiss is urgent and hungry. Lord, I missed this. I missed his kisses and the greedy thrust of his tongue, how wild and unbridled he is. Our mouths devour each other, almost too roughly, and still I can’t have enough of him.

The anticipation and frantic need is too much. I fumble with the buttons of his shirt, pulling it open to drag my nails down his chest until the pain makes him pin my arms behind my back. It’s hot and raw. Maybe a little angry. All the unfinished business working itself out. I close my eyes and hold on for the ride, losing myself in the kiss, the taste of him. He kisses me harder, deeper, until I’m mindless with need.

I can’t stand it anymore.

I force my arms free to unbuckle his belt. Evan watches me. Watches my eyes. My lips.

“I’ve missed this,” he whispers.

So have I, but I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

I gasp when his hand travels between my thighs. My own hand is trembling as I slip it inside his boxers and— “Everything okay in there?” A voice. Then a knock. My entire extended family is on the other side of the door.

I freeze.

“Fine,” Evan calls back, his fingertips a scant inch from where I was just aching for him.

Now, I’m sliding off the vanity, pushing his hand off me, withdrawing mine from his boxers. Before my flats even connect with the tiled floor, I already hate myself. Barely in the same room with him for ten minutes, and I lose all self-control.

I almost had sex with Evan Hartley at my mother’s funeral reception, for fuck’s sake. If we hadn’t been interrupted, I have no doubt I would’ve let him take me right then and there. That’s a new low, even for me.

Damn it.

I’d spent the last year training myself to at least approximate a normal functioning adult. To not surrender to every destructive instinct the second it pops into my head, to exercise some damn restraint. And then Evan Hartley licks his lips and I’m open for business.