When Damien rolled over and pulled the covers over his body, I could practically—sadly—feel everything start to sink in for him. The reality hit him, and he wasn’t as prepared for it as I thought he was.

It was amazing how clear one’s head could be a second after temptation was satisfied, even if that clarity is how big of a mistake you just made

He hid his face and repeated several times, “Oh my god. Oh my god,” into his hands before he removed them and said much clearer, “I shouldn’t have let this happen. What the fuck. What the fuck.”

I hit him on the arm, fairly hard, but continued to stare at the ceiling. “Old habits die hard. Might as well accept it.” In reality, I hadn’t really comprehended the situation myself, but I still needed to act like I was the one on top of it all.

He flopped over in the bed to look at me. “Are you serious?”

“What?” I laughed at how stern his face looked. He really needed to chill out. It already happened. What was arguing going to do us at this point? “Did you really not expect the night to go this way, showing up at the bar looking like that.”

I motioned to him from under the covers, but it just ended up being a poof of the duvet.

His face changed from serious, to baffled, to flattered in one beat of my still-pounding heart. At least whatever had him worried about the situation disappeared as he sat up and reached for his jeans off the side of the bed. I couldn’t help but admire the stretches of red marks down his back.

It was my only artistic talent.

“This is just the way I look, so you know. You’re the one who showed up with those goddamn boots.”

“You still have a thing for the white boots, huh?” I lifted off the bed with a cunning smile, thankful to still have my compression shirt covering me at this point. “I knew it.”

He finished pulling his jeans on and turned back to me with his mouth open wide. “Jesus Christ, you meant for this to happen?”

“Well, no. Not necessarily. But I wasn’t trying to avoid it either,” I said. In my defense, I was kind of hoping he’d turned into an awkward troll by now, and I wouldn’t have been tempted.

Damien stood up and started throwing my clothes at me from around the room with a fairly not-so-pleased look on his face. I caught my white T-shirt as he launched it at me.

As I threw it on, I added a little more to prove I was as chaotic as I truly was. “Oh, come on. Tell me it’s not the ultimate power move: fuck your trauma. Literally. I feel good about it.”

He paused as he picked up his own shirt and pointed at me with a disappointed look that showed he kind of understood that I was joking…but also wasn’t happy about it. “You’re an extremely messed up human being, you know that?”

“I am well aware, yes.” I put on my shirt and my jeans, and before we knew it, we were both dressed and all remanence of the moment was gone. I sat on the edge of his bed, lacing up those glorious boots as he paced back and forth so many times it made me anxious.

When I finished my laces, I slapped my hands on the bed to signal there was nothing else to do but leave.

His pacing stopped. “So, what now?”

“Well first things first, I’m removing the hearts from next to your name on my phone,” I said as I pulled my phone out from my jeans and brought up his profile.

Delete. Delete. Delete. Maybe leave the kissy face for good measure. He was an excellent kisser.

“Wait, you still had those?” He rushed to me to look over my shoulder.

I pressed my phone to my shoulder. “Uh. No…” An obvious lie, but it got him to laugh, which allowed me to admire his perfect smile.

Post-sex I was able to see how charming and sweet it was, rather than it driving my body absolutely bananas.

“I guess you deleting those means we aren’t going out for coffee in the morning?” He asked as straightened up and stretched out his neck.

Hope I didn’t pull something… but then again… do I?

I continued to click away at my phone, trying not to keep staring at him, and making sure I didn’t have any updates from mom… or Sky.

Dammit, I was supposed to be babysitting, wasn’t I? When did it become midnight? I’d say that it was more my parent’s fault for putting me in charge when I clearly shouldn’t have been.

What he implied registered in my head, and I looked up from my phone. “Oh no. No to the coffee. Nuh-uh. I have rules now.”

“Oh? After sex rules? That’s what every guy loves to hear.”

I ignored him and raised one finger. “One: I never stay the night.” I put up my second finder, “Two: I never sleep with the same person twice.”

Damien leaned on his wardrobe—yes, a wardrobe, not a closet like a normal person—and crossed his arms. “Do I want to know how many people you’ve applied those rules to?”

“Probably not.”

“Wow.” He shook his head toward the floor. “I’m not sure if that is a step up or step down from ‘dating someone for three years and never sleeping with them’”

I made an audible huffing sound as I pulled my arms into a pout. He just had to bring that up again. Sure, it was technically true we never actually had sex while we were dating, but there was plenty of other stuff we did. “We were fifteen when we started dating.”

“And eighteen when we stopped.”

“Sorry, you missed my hyper-sexual age by about two years.” Sure, I was a late bloomer than most of my friends, but that was something that happens when you grapple with your identity forever.

Maybe I wasn’t as much of a badass as I thought I was as a teen…

“Did I though?” Damien untwisted his arms and put up his palms, basically presenting the smug-as-shit smile he wore. “If everyone only gets one, it worked out all the same for me in the end, no? I just got to skip the awkward first time.”

“Um…no. No. No. You don’t get to talk like that. I won here, today. I was the one who got what I wanted and now gets to move on with their life. Not you.” I picked up one of the fluffy-as-hell pillows scattered around his bed and chucked it right at his stomach.

Damien caught it and threw it to the side, obviously unscathed by the hunk of goose feathers and cotton. “Uh-huh. Sure.”

Oh, now you wanna be the asshole?

Why did I like it?

I needed to get out of here.

But I wanted to have the final word. I always needed the final word.

Too bad I had nothing. It truly felt like I’d zipped right back to highschool with my hot boyfriend at my side to cause all sorts of ruckus, and if I stayed any longer I wasn’t going to want to leave at all.

But I had rules about relationships, and Damien Matthews may’ve been an exception to some of the sexy ones, but he’d lost his chance to be an exception to the others.

“I have to go.” I stood from the bed. “I need to see if I have to kick out Sky’s friends. Again, a school dance on a Sunday night? Whose bright idea was that?”

Damien watched me through the side of his eye while I walked to his door. “Whose bright idea was it to leave a bunch of kids alone at their house?

“Someone who wasn’t prepared to babysit for four weeks.” I stopped at the door and turned to him with a shrug. “They’re fine. We used to go into the middle of the woods alone until, like, 2 in the morning. We turned out okay.”

“No. We didn’t. Not even a little bit.” Damien laughed through the words while his eyebrows scrunched in all sorts of ways that told me he knew I was full of shit. “There were plenty of things we did in those woods, if you recall.”

Oh, I did. I had tried to not think about them in years, on purpose, but I sure as hell was now.

I kept my cool. I needed to get out of here with my dignity intact, and Damien had proven he could easily take that from me unexpectedly. “Eh. I mean we didn’t really start any of the bad stuff until, what? Sixteen?”

Damien stepped closer to me.

Closer.

He was so close I easily could have pulled him in and kept going for another hour. I should have backed up, but my feet stayed in place.

I could only hope my face kept a cool composure as he spoke softly, “I distinctly remember two twelve-year-olds pushing each other into the creek with water snakes. We are kind of lucky we lived long enough to do bad stuff.”

Don’t look at his lips. Don’t look at his lips.

Of course, that left me staring into his eyes which wasn’t all that much better. I managed to squeak out, “Then it’s a good thing Sky is smarter than we were. She’s terrified of snakes,” as I took one step back only to jam my back into the edge of the open door.

I gritted my teeth to not show the pain of slamming wood into my old injury.

“There are worse things than snakes out there,” Damien said, thankfully not closing the distance once more.

My fingernails tapped, tapped, tapped, on the door behind me as I tried to convince myself to spin around the door and down the stairs. After the tapping went on too long, Damien realized there was more that needed to be discussed and took the lead.

“Is this where I disappear now?” he asked. He didn’t say it like he was disappointed, nor did he say it like he was begging me to say no. He just asked, like he was curious about what I wanted more than anything.

Fuck him for that.

Where was the asshole when I needed it?

Maybe, just maybe, I needed him to tell me to swallow my pride and come back another night. I don’t think I had the power to say no.

I ceased my tapping and, for once, answered honestly. “I don’t know yet.”

The corners of Damien’s mouth turned up for a brief second, like any answer other than “yes” was good enough for him. “Right. Well. I’ll be here when you decide. It is the most boring town in America, after all. If you ever need a drink—just a drink—let me know.”

“I will.” And that was the truth.

I could, by some miracle, see a world where Damien and I could be friends. It would be hard to keep to my rules and not give in to temptation, but everyone needs a challenge in their life once in a while, right?

I wasn’t sure I was ready for that yet, but it was a good feeling to know that option was there. For the future. Maybe in the distant future. Who knew?

I pushed the door away from my back, opening it further and giving me a path out. After a few steps backward, I turned to the hallways, ready to finally make my escape.

I hadn’t taken one step out of the room when a sound rumbled through the house like the front door slamming, and the voice of a loud, angry man echoed off the unnecessarily tall ceilings.

“DAMIEN!”

I turned to Damien slowly, unsure if I should run and hide or try to find something to use as a weapon. “Uh…who is that?”

Damien’s eyes were bulging from his head as he stared into the blank space of the hallway. “Oh…shit.”