We were silent as he put his clothes back on. I tried to keep my eyes averted to give him some privacy, but couldn’t help but glance over a few times, marveling at the way his muscles flexed as he moved. I knew it was a bad idea, and I was nauseous with guilt, but I still wanted him so badly that my heart was racing.
“Bye,” he said awkwardly, giving me a shallow nod before walking calmly out the front door and closing it quietly behind him.
“Oh shit,” I said, once he was gone. “Oh, God. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
I stood there in the entryway, replaying every single moment since he’d come to the door, with the heels of my hands pressed against my stinging eyes, until I heard Etta calling for me.
Chapter 11
Trevor
I’d done a lot of stupid things in my life. I’d let my cousin Kate cut my hair into a Mohawk. I’d raced my car when I was sixteen to earn extra cash. I’d sold the only thing I had left from my birth parents, a watch I’d been told was my grandfather’s, because I was angry. But I’d never, in my entire life, done something as stupid as bending Morgan over her kitchen table and fucking her like I hadn’t had a woman in years.
I was shaking as I drove back to my hotel.
I’d really messed up this time.
As soon as I threw my parents’ SUV into park, I quickly dragged my phone out of the pocket of my shorts.
Within seconds, I was blurting, “I need to talk to you.”
My cousin Ani didn’t miss a beat. “Hit me,” she shot back.
“I need you to listen and I need you to keep your mouth shut and then I need you to tell me what the fuck to do.”
“Oh, shit, Trev,” she said, clearly understanding the gravity of my words. “Give me a sec.”
She put me on hold while I fidgeted and slammed my head back against the headrest, then came back on the line.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I like her. I’m fucking crazy about her,” I said quickly. “I’ve been thinking about her since the minute we met. It’s not getting any better. If anything, it’s getting worse. The more I see her, the more I want to see her.”
“We’re talking about Morgan?” she asked.
“I told you not to speak.”
“Sorry. Continue,” she said, clearly amused.
“So, we’ve been talking. Flirting, kind of. She’s into me, I know that much. The chemistry is through the roof. I swear to God, it’s enough to burn a fucking house down.” I rubbed at the headache growing right above my eyes. “I’m never wrong about this shit, Ani. Never.”
I paused, but she’d taken my directions to heart and didn’t reply.
“I had sex with her,” I blurted, unable to stem the flow of words. “It was incredible. I sound like an idiot, I know that, okay? But it was the best sex of my life. What the hell is wrong with me?”
“Oh, shit,” Ani murmured, her surprise obvious. “What is it with the people in this family boning inappropriate partners?”
At any other time, I would have laughed at the truth in her words. My cousin Kate had gotten pregnant with her dead best friend’s husband, my foster brother Shane, and Anita had started a secret relationship with her foster brother Abraham. Neither of those situations had started out very well, but everyone ended up happy.
I didn’t see that happening for Morgan and me.
“Everything was great,” I said, shaking my head, then wincing at the way the movement made my head pound. “But then the second we were finished, she got weird.”
“Weird, how?”
“She got jittery—started getting dressed as fast as she could and told me it was a mistake.”
“Oh,” Ani muttered.
“What does that mean, ‘oh’?” I replied, panicky. “What?”
“I don’t know her, Trev,” Ani said soothingly, trying to calm my ass down. “I’m not sure—”
“Just tell me.”
“It sounds like she was having some buyer’s remorse,” she admitted apologetically.
“You think?” I asked sarcastically. “Tell me what to do.”
“Take a step back,” she said instantly. “Trev, take two steps back.”
“I don’t even know if that’s possible.”
“It has to be,” she argued. “You have to look at this from all angles, dude. She’s Etta’s mother.”
“I know that!”
“Then you know that what I’m saying isn’t bullshit,” she snapped. “This chick is going to be around. She has to be if we’re going to see Henry’s kid. Don’t fucking scare her away.”
I inhaled sharply at the idea that Morgan would use what happened as a way to distance herself and Etta from my family.
“She wouldn’t do that,” I said, refusing even to contemplate it. I couldn’t imagine that scenario without losing my fucking mind. It was hard enough having any respect for myself after banging my brother’s ex, but if I ruined our chance at having a relationship with Etta I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.