Page 124 of Unforgettable

Josh chuckled, shook his head, and with his hands tucked into his pockets, led the way down the dimly lit hall to our left. The house was split up into two separate wings. My parents’ wing, as I liked to call it as a child, was to our right, and mine was to our left. I turned left behind Josh, and our steps were quieted by the plush off-white carpet running the length of the hallway. And like Mom said, there was a lone dresser sitting in the otherwise empty corridor.

“She wants it in the attic?” Josh asked, looking above us for any sign of an access point on the ceiling. But I chuckled and opened my old bedroom door. The past smacked me directly in the face.

Neither of my parents had changed my space since I’d graduated from high school and moved out for college. The same navy bedspread was thrown over the end of the bed, and the walls were still medium gray.

“I think the last time I was in here was… Mama G’s birthday a few years ago. I still can’t believe they haven’t changed your room after all this time.” From my old bedside table, he picked up a picture of me and a few of my high school football teammates after a homecoming game one year. He set it back down, then opened the top drawer and smiled broadly before barking out a laugh.

“These had to of expired a long fucking time ago.” The box of condoms in his hand was one I likely bought my senior year for the summer before college.

“Yeah, Mom washes the sheets every couple of weeks. Then the housekeeper vacuums and dusts this room like she does every other room, but otherwise, no one steps foot in here.”

“Don’t parents usually turn their kids’ rooms into craft rooms or a gym or something?” he asked, continuing his perusal of all of my old belongings and posters plastered to the walls.

Opening the closet door, I turned on the light and jimmied open the attic access door in the back corner. When I was a kid, the smaller access door in the closet was a hideout I used in the cooler months. It was too hot to use in the summer.

When my dad began to notice I spent more time in the attic than I did with him when my mom was gone, he strategically began filling it with anything and everything. Suddenly, his office needed to be redecorated, yet none of the old furniture could have been thrown away.

My little sanctuary—which, to his credit, I did use as an escape when my mom was gone—turned into a storage space. The complaints I threw in his direction afterward didn’t go over so well. It felt like it was always something with him.

“I’m sure they would have changed it if they didn’t already have six other rooms that they could use for whatever purpose their hearts desired,” I finally responded and stepped back out into the room. He was enthusiastically flipping through a yearbook he’d found somewhere as I nudged him. “Help me with this.”

“You call me Sunshine because of my long-ass hair in high school, yet your hair was just as long.”

We both grunted under the weight of the solid wood dresser and hauled it into my room, through the closet, and wedged it into the attic between a tall mirror and an old desk.

In the nearly empty closet—because I did take my clothes with me to college—I closed the attic door and turned to Josh, who was watching me with his arms crossed over his chest. He’d tossed his navy-blue jacket next to where I’d discarded mine over a desk chair in my bedroom before we did any heavy lifting, which left him in his light-blue fitted shirt. The shirt was tight in all of the right places—over his broad chest and along his toned arms.

“I don’t call you Sunshine just because of your hair.” I stepped forward, crowding into his space. His arms fell to his sides and I took the liberty of running my hands down them. The muscles under my palms tensed even with the faintest touch.

“I call you Sunshine,” I continued, returning my attention to his ocean-colored eyes that were locked on my face, “because youarefucking sunshine.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Reed

His breath caught,and it was a reaction I probably would’ve missed had we not been so close and everything around us so completely silent.

“Is that so?” he asked with a small quirk of his lips.

“Yes,” I responded and let all my resistance snap at once. My hands fisted in his short hair, and I crashed my mouth over his. His trim facial hair scratched against mine as his fingers looped around my wrists, holding me steady to him.

I could feel the slip of our tongues and the mixing of our heated breaths throughout my entire body. It quieted the incessant, warring thoughts that came with being in my childhood bedroom and replaced them only with ideas of what we could get up to in the minutes we had to spare in my closet.

“Fuck,Sunshine,” I muttered against his skin, letting my lips travel across his jaw and down his neck.

How we’d gone from being best friends only a week before to so much more was unreal. But I wasn’t pumping the brakes—if anything, I wanted to move faster.

“Don’t you find it funny that we’re making out in a closet while we really arein the closet?” My lips poised against his throat, and I could feel the vibrations of his chuckle. His hands pressed against my stomach, and I knew he could feel my responding laugh.

“It does feel a little ironic.” I lifted my head and met his eyes, taking in a shaky breath. There was a playfulness in his eyes and in the slight tip of his mouth, but I was again buzzing with nervous energy.

Of course, he could tell. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he requested with a tentative hand against my cheek.

“This… I’ve been thinking about this all week.” He didn’t need any clarification—Josh knew exactly what I meant bythis.

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about, too,” he said, bumping his hips against mine and urging me backward. Stepping between my legs, the hard length of his cock brushed against my own straining erection, pressing against the seam of my suddenly too-tight dress pants. Josh greedily swallowed my groans and swept his tongue against mine.

“What have you been thinking about?” I prompted, hoping it would continue in the direction we were going.

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