Page 47 of Ever With Me

Dig, dig, dig.

But piece by piece, he felt the bricks on his walls loosening around her.

He smirked. “Nice try.”

“How about you just play a song on the guitar? It used to be your best friend, right? You don’t have to sing.” She leaned closer. “Or has Brooks Kent lost his spark?”

He glared at her. “You’re not as clever as you think you are, Madison.”

“And you’re not as hard and bad as you think you are, Brooks.”

She was too close for comfort.

He had a flashback to an hour earlier when she made s’mores. A tiny bit of marshmallow had clung to her lip. He’d imagined licking it off.

However, nothing could be as sweet and alluring as those lips looked right now.

She was only a few years younger than him.

But she was from a completely different world.

This country, small-town-loving sunshine woman.

God, we couldn’t be from more different worlds.

Any closer, though, and he might just have to see for himself what those lips tasted like.

“I should have just let you leave me to quiet while I had a chance,” he growled irritably.

“Yet you didn’t. Now play. Before you force me to beg.”

He grinned wolfishly. “Begging might be interesting.”

Stop.

Fucking stop it.

He couldn’t keep flirting with her.

The pupils in her eyes widened, and she moistened her lips.

Painful.

Dragging the guitar case closer, he opened it to stop that line of thought. The familiar wooden scent greeted him, and he breathed in deeply because he needed it to slow his erratic heartbeat and because it was the closest thing to the scent of home to him.

Pulling out his guitar, he threw the strap over his shoulder, grabbed the case, and stood, then left the game room without bothering to say a word. She’d follow.

He needed a moment away from her to get his head on straight anyway.

Apparently, so did she because she took a full minute to join him outside on the deck near the firepit.

Even at home near the beach, he couldn’t get far away from the lights of the city to see stars like this. The quiet wasn’t lonely here, either, even though it should be. Maybe that was because of Cormac and Audrey.Maddie.But even when he’d taken his coffee alone out on the deck this morning, he’d relished the way his mind could be blank here, without the cloud of anxious thoughts pressing in.

Nothing was lonelier than feeling alone while surrounded by people, anyway.

The tour had been a whirlwind of cities all over the world, blinding lights, stadiums, crowds of tens of thousands, sweat, and noise. Deafening noise. For months.

Hotel rooms, strangers, foods prepared by different people all the time. Interviews. Celebrities. Flashes of cameras.

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