Page 64 of A Favor Owed

“Brady,” I whisper. But this time I let him wrap his arms around me.

“I’m sorry, Ange,” he says, and the pain and remorse in his voice make my breath hitch. “I’m really sorry. I can’t believe I was such a jerk to you. I swear to God I was just trying to protect you.”

I realize that I’ve brought my arms around his waist. I sigh and let myself relax against him. “Don’t do me any more favors like that, Brady.”

“I won’t.” He rests his head on mine. “If you knew the truth about me, Ange, you’d never want to be with me.”

“Who says I want to be with you?” He huffs out a laugh and squeezes me tighter. My hands grip the back of his shirt to hold him closer to me. “The same goes for me, by the way,” I say. “You wouldn’t want to be with me if you knew the truth.”

“Wrong,” he says. “There is not a single thing you can tell me about yourself that would make me run from you.”

“You can’t know that—”

“Yeah, I can. I would do anything to be with you, Angela. And if that means not telling you the one truth that would make me lose you, then that’s what I’ll do.”

“You would lose me over whatever it is you’re not telling me? How do you even know that?”

“I just know.”

I pull away so I can look up at him. “So, you’re just…not going to tell me?”

He puts his hands on my face and meets my eyes. “I’m just not going to tell you.”

“That’s a dead end, Brady.”

“Yeah. I know,” he says with a sigh. “There’s a little bit of road before we hit the dead end, though. Can we just stay on it for now?”

He has nothing on my secrets. I’m sure whatever he thinks is a dead end is just a bump in the road. “Yeah,” I say. “We can do that.”

He brings his lips to mine. The kiss starts out gentle and tentative. But my mouth is so happy to taste his again that within seconds I’m devouring him, he’s groaning and falling back onto the bed with me on top of him, and our clothes are coming off.

“I don’t have any condoms,” he says, his lips on my ear.

“That’s okay,” I say. “We’re not having sex.”

“Right. Yeah, of course. I didn’t mean…”

“Please shut up, McDaniels,” I say, smiling against his mouth.

“Whatever you say, Pines.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Brady

Okay, so my mom is going to kill me, and I’m still in the same situation as before—totally falling for a girl I have no business being with, keeping a massive secret from her, and letting her keep one from me. I still feel like crap for selling her out. I still can’t ignore the fact that I might have put her in harm’s way. If the feds get ahold of her, her family will know, and her jig will be up.

But as soon as she let me touch her, the world tilted back onto its proper axis and the blood that had been limping through my veins came roaring back. I was back where I belonged. And I never want to leave, consequences be damned.

“Fuck, I missed you,” I whisper, nuzzling her neck, smelling her hair, totally eating up all the cornball shit I never thought I’d be susceptible to. I want it all with her. Dates, Netflix, spooning, you name it. If it’s girly relationship shit, I want it with Angela Pines.

“You sure had me fooled,” she says, angling a little bit of a glare my way.

“You had me fooled, too,” I say. “Jesus, Pines. Not a single pissed-off ‘WTF’ text? Not a glance in my direction? You could have tripped me in the hallway or something. You just looked right through me like I wasn’t there.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Brady,” she says softly.

Coconut, citrus, warm girl smell. I want this smell on my skin, on my sheets, in my car, all the time, for as long as possible, until we hit that dead end. I’ll protect her as long as I can, but I won’t do it by running from her.

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