“I’m not sure. I don’t do that scene, or I never have. I wouldn’t even know anyone.”

Krit studied me a moment. “You could bring a friend,” he finally said.

A friend. I had two of those. At least I thought I did. I was still trying to figure out what constituted a friend.

“I’ll see if I have one that wants to go with me,” I told him, wanting to change the subject.

“You have that public speaking class yet?” he asked.

I nodded. I had suffered through it and somehow made it out on the other side alive. But that didn’t mean I would always get out of being called on to go up front. “Not my favorite,” I admitted.

“You really have a problem with attention don’t you?” he asked as he finished off his first slice of pizza.

He had no idea how much of a problem I had with attention. He loved it. I hadn’t seen him perform yet, but I could tell by the look on his face when he talked about it that he adored having all eyes on him. I had no doubt those eyes on him loved every minute of it too. Having a reason to look at Krit was always nice.

“I just don’t have good experiences with it. . . . I like to go unnoticed.” I wasn’t telling him anymore. My past needed to stay in the past. This was my now and my future. I didn’t want to bring all the ugliness and pain from my past into the life I had now.

“Problem with that, love, is that you’re really f**king hard not to notice,” Krit said with a small smile on his lips, but a sincerity in his gaze that made me think he didn’t mean that in a bad way. Almost as if he was saying he liked what he saw.

“I try to blend in,” I replied, not sure if I was misunderstanding him or not. I wanted to believe he meant that as a compliment, but how could he?

“That’s a shame,” he said, then reached for another piece of pizza.

I decided to change the subject and asked him about how he learned to play the guitar. Our conversation became easy then and relaxed. I loved hearing his voice and listening to him laugh.

What I didn’t expect was that Krit would show up every evening like this and eat with me for the next two weeks. But he did. And I liked it. No, I didn’t just like it . . . I planned my day around it.

KRIT

It was becoming a habit. That was all. Nothing more. I was not addicted to her. I wasn’t. Just a nice little distraction. Seeing Blythe in the evenings before I left for my gigs was a way to have a moment to just be me. Blythe didn’t require me to be anything else.

Last night she had actually rolled her eyes at one of my jokes and thrown her napkin at me. It had taken every ounce of strength I had to stay in my seat and not grab her face and taste those full lips. She wasn’t nervous with me anymore. She smiled at me and let me in when I knocked on her door.

Somehow she had become my level ground. The place I could go to find myself before I went out and entertained everyone. She didn’t hang on me and beg me for anything. It was easy with Blythe.

Or at least I kept telling myself that.

If I acknowledged the truth, I would panic. So instead I was going to believe this was all I wanted from her. Just seeing her was enough. Hearing her laugh made my f**king day.

“Hey,” she said with that smile from heaven as she stepped back and let me inside her apartment.

“I got the pad Thai you like,” I said, holding up the bag from the Thai place down the street. After watching her make those sweet little moaning noises as she ate it the last time I picked it up, I decided I needed to watch her eat it again.

Her eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands and bounced on her feet like a little girl. Women who looked like Blythe were not supposed to be so damn cute. Seeing her get excited over food made me want to feed her three meals a day.

“I made sweet tea just like you showed me. Come, taste it. I think I got it right,” she said as she hurried to the kitchen.

Two nights ago she had said she loved sweet tea, but she didn’t know how to make it, and buying it was too expensive. So I’d taught her how. You would have thought I was brilliant by the way she watched me and asked me questions. It was as if I was conducting a science experiment. Another thing about Blythe: she made me feel important. Needed. Like I was a part of her life that she relied on.

That felt f**king good. Too good.

But I was not addicted. I didn’t care what Green said. Blythe was not an addiction. I hated that he had started accusing me of that.

I sat the bag down on Blythe’s kitchen table and followed her to the bar where she was filling up a glass of ice with tea from the gallon-size plastic pitcher I had brought her when I taught her how to make sweet tea.

“Taste it,” she said with excitement dancing in her eyes.

If this tasted like shit, I wasn’t going to be able to tell her. Not with her looking like that. Hurting Blythe was something I was incapable of. I would lie to make her smile. I had done just that last week when she had made me a grilled cheese and burned it. She had seemed so worried about what I thought, so I swallowed every last bite like it was the best thing I had ever put in my mouth.

Preparing myself for the worst, I picked up the glass and took a drink. The sweet taste was just right. She had nailed it. No bitterness in the tea—the perfect blend of ice and sugar. Grinning, I set the glass down and smacked my lips. “Perfect, love. That was f**king perfect.”

“Really?” she asked, her eyes shining brightly.

It was times like this all I wanted to do was scoop her up and kiss her until we were both stripping off each other’s clothes. Fuck. Shit. I was not going to think about that again. I had to stop thinking about her na**d.

She was the kind of girl you had a relationship with. Not the kind you f**ked because you couldn’t stop lusting over her. She was also becoming important to me. To my sanity. I needed her. And f**king her would ruin that. This thing we had—I couldn’t ruin it. I had never had this before, and it was too important to mess up.

“Really. Fill up my glass, and let’s go eat,” I told her as I turned away from those eyes and went to get plates out of the cabinet.

“You want a fork?” I asked her, already knowing the answer. She had attempted to eat the pad Thai with chopsticks last time, and it had been a disaster.

She laughed and nodded.

I grabbed us both a fork and headed to the table to fix our plates. This was what I wasn’t willing to lose. I had never had a place where I felt like I belonged. This wasn’t the kind of friendship I was used to, and I loved it. I woke up every morning thinking about what I would bring to dinner and what we would talk about. Things would happen during the day, and the first person who I wanted to tell was Blythe. In the short month since she had moved in, she had made herself the most important person in my life.

Fuck.

I turned around to see her grinning at me like I’d hung the moon, and my heart clenched. No. This was wrong. I wasn’t that guy. She needed to see the real me. The me I was when I wasn’t here eating dinner with her and talking about our days. She was looking at me with . . . oh, hell no. She was looking at me with something more.

I set the fork down and stared at the table. I had to remind her. She had to remember who I was. I was only worthy of her friendship. She had to remember we would always be just friends. This need I had for her company was confusing her. It was in her eyes. Those big beautiful eyes were so expressive and trusting.

Fuck. Fuck. Shit!

“I, uh, I’m running late. I gotta run. Didn’t look at the time. Sorry, but you have plenty of pad Thai you can eat. Uh, yeah, I’ll see you . . . later,” I rambled. Panic was in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. Backing up from the table, I forced myself to smile at her, but I didn’t look in her eyes. I couldn’t. I turned and got the hell out of there.

Protecting Blythe was my original intention. Someone needed to protect her, but damn it, I hadn’t protected her from me. But there was still time to show her what she had forgotten during our cozy dinners. I was Krit Corbin. I was the lead singer in a band and I f**ked women. Lots of them.

Chapter Six

BLYTHE

No one’s sweet tea was that bad. But I couldn’t figure out what else I had done. Krit had left my apartment like he couldn’t get away fast enough. That was two weeks ago, and he hadn’t been back since. That night, and every night since then, his parties had been going until late.

I used the iPod he left me and, luckily, it worked. I was able to sleep, and only occasionally did loud banging on the ceiling wake me; it made things rattle in my apartment. Other than that, I was okay.

I stood at my door for an hour last night trying to work up the nerve to open it and go upstairs to see Krit. Maybe I should apologize for something, but I didn’t know what that would be. I had made sweet tea. He had liked it and gotten our plates. Then . . . then he suddenly left. I had thought it was odd, but I believed him that he was running late and hadn’t noticed the time.

But he didn’t come back the next evening. And after a week had gone by, I knew it had to be me. I hadn’t gone to his apartment to face him because I couldn’t stand it if he was disgusted with me. I shouldn’t have let him get too close. I shouldn’t have gotten comfortable with him. I had been ridiculously excited about my sweet tea. He had shown me how to make it, and that batch had been my third attempt. I was so sure I had gotten it right.

So I let my guard down, and I was me. He had seen me. That was the only thing it could be. I let him see me, and what he saw sent him running. It was stupid. I should have known better, but Krit made me feel different. I wanted to trust him, and because I wanted it so much, I had.

Stupid girl.

“Frowning again? Third time this week I showed up to see your smiling face and it wasn’t what greeted me.”

I snapped my head up to see Linc standing in the doorway with a white bakery bag. He looked concerned. Why did he keep coming around? He hadn’t kissed me again. But he brought me sweets and spent a good deal of time trying to make me laugh.

But I didn’t let him in. I was careful with Linc. That was why he was still coming around. I should have been careful with Krit.

Linc lifted the bag in his hand. “Cream-filled doughnuts with the sprinkles on top, just like you like them.”

I smiled at him. Seeing him helped me forget the sadness of Krit’s absence. “You are awesome,” I told him.

His smile got bigger, and he glanced back at the door. “Excuse me while I go buy some more doughnuts,” he said with a teasing gleam in his eyes.

“Do not leave with that bag,” I said, standing up.

Linc set the bag in front of me and put his hand on my waist before pressing a kiss to my cheek. He lingered there and inhaled deeply before pulling back. He had been greeting me this way since our kiss.

“I need to see you outside of this office. I was being patient with you because you seem so easily spooked and I didn’t want to screw this up, but I really want to take you out. Please, go out with me. Tonight, anywhere you want. Your wish is my command.”

I stood there staring at Linc as his words sunk in. He was asking me out on a date. I’d never been on a date. He seemed so hopeful. If I went and I let my guard down, would he run off and leave me too? This thing with him visiting me at work was safe. A date wasn’t safe.

“I, uh . . .” What could I say? I didn’t want to push him away. He was now my only friend, and I didn’t want to mess this up too. Now that I knew what it was like to have friends, I liked it. I wanted friends.

“Please,” he begged, tightening his hold on my waist. “I swear, I won’t push you. You’ll be in complete control. I just want to spend time with you.”

Telling him no would be a mistake. I couldn’t do that. I would just be careful not to be me with him. I would be what he wanted me to be. I could pretend. “Okay. But you need to plan the date. I’ve never been on one.” Oh, crap. I was being me. Crappity crap.

Linc pulled back and frowned at me. I had done it. He was about to leave me too. He was going to see the real me. The ugly inside was going to shine through. I closed my eyes, unable to watch another friend run away from me. I just hoped he did it quickly.

“How?” was all he said.

How? What did he mean how? I opened my eyes and looked up at him while he searched my face. Was he looking for something? What did he see?

I couldn’t do this again so soon. I was already sore from Krit’s exit. I stepped back and sat down in my chair. “It’s okay. Just go. I don’t need excuses.”

The doughnuts in the bag reminded me of the pad Thai that Krit had left me in his great escape. The sweet cream no longer appealed to me. I tried to focus on the papers in front of me.

Linc didn’t move at first, but when he did, I held my breath and expected him to walk away. Instead he bent down. “What just happened?” he asked gently.

I turned to him, and my eyes collided with his. “You’re not leaving?” I asked.

His frown deepened, and he shook his head slowly. “No, Blythe. I’m not going anywhere. I just can’t figure out why you seem to think I would want to leave.”

He didn’t see it. I hadn’t laid myself bare to him. He was still here. I let out a relieved sigh and smiled. “Sorry, I just thought that because I hadn’t been on a date . . .”Shut up, Blythe. I couldn’t seem to stop saying that I hadn’t ever been on a date.

“Was Malcolm very overprotective?” Linc asked me.

Pastor Williams, overprotective? Wait. He thought I hadn’t dated because I hadn’t been allowed to. He didn’t think it was a bad thing.

“Yes,” I lied.

Linc smiled then. “Good. He should have been.”