Chapter Eight

**LILY'S POV**

Samantha's name lit up my phone for the fourth time that morning, and for the fourth time, I let it ring out.

I sat on the edge of my bed with my suitcase half-packed around me, staring at the screen until it went dark again, guilt curling low and persistent in my stomach. She'd want details. She'd want the whole story, delivered with her usual gleeful, relentless curiosity, and there was no version of that conversation where I could tell her the truth without saying his name.

*I danced with a stranger who turned out to be my stepbrother, then I told him to sleep with me, and now I can't stop thinking about it* was not a text I knew how to send.

I typed *call you later, packing for the trip!* instead, added an exclamation point I didn't feel, and hit send before I could think better of it.

It wasn't a lie, technically. It just wasn't the truth either.

---

The drive to Cedar Point took four hours, and I spent every single one of them acutely aware of exactly how much space existed between me and Aiden in the back seat of Richard's SUV — which was, infuriatingly, not very much at all.

My mother and Richard talked easily up front, trading stories about some old road trip from before either of us existed, oblivious to the silence stretched tight behind them. Aiden had his head turned toward the window, jaw set, one hand resting on his knee close enough that I could have reached it without even stretching.

I didn't look at his hands. I looked at his hands constantly.

Every time the car hit a bump and our shoulders brushed, I felt it travel straight down my spine, and I had to dig my nails into my palm to keep my face from giving anything away. It didn't help that my brain kept replaying fragments of that night completely without my permission — his hands on my waist, his mouth at my ear, the low, rough sound of his voice saying my name like it cost him something. I'd catch myself staring at nothing, heat crawling up my neck, and have to physically shake myself back into the present.

"You okay?" my mother asked once, twisting around in her seat. "You're quiet."

"Just tired," I said, which had become something close to a permanent excuse at this point.

Beside me, Aiden made a small sound that might have been agreement or might have just been him clearing his throat, and I didn't dare look over to find out which.

---

**AIDEN'S POV**

I spent most of the drive pretending to be absorbed in the scenery, which was a poor excuse for the amount of concentration it actually required, given that I wasn't looking at the scenery at all.

I was aware of her. Constantly, uselessly aware of her — the exact distance between her knee and mine, the small, unconscious way she kept tucking her hair behind her ear when she was nervous, which she'd been doing since we got in the car. Every time my mind drifted, it drifted straight back to that guest room, to the sound she'd made when I said her name, and I had to force myself to think about literally anything else. Quarterly reports. The Ellison account. My father's terrible taste in road trip music.

None of it worked particularly well.

By the time we pulled up the long gravel drive to the lake house, I felt like I'd run a marathon just from sitting still.

---

**LILY'S POV**

The lake house was beautiful — all exposed wood and wide windows facing the water, the kind of place that looked like it belonged in a magazine — and I might have appreciated it more if I hadn't immediately clocked the problem the second we walked inside.

"So," Richard said, setting down the bags with the pleased expression of a man who'd forgotten to mention something important. "Funny story. Turns out the renovation on the guest wing isn't finished. Contractor called this morning."

My stomach dropped before he even finished the sentence.

"Which means," my mother said, picking up where he trailed off, "there are only three usable bedrooms instead of four. Richard and I will take the master, obviously, and there's the room at the end of the hall — but the last two rooms share a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, so you two will just have to figure out the schedule between you."

"Adjoining rooms," Richard said cheerfully, like this was a minor logistical footnote and not, potentially, the end of both of our sanity. "You'll barely notice the door's there."

I did not dare look at Aiden. I could feel the silence radiating off him from three feet away, thick enough to touch.

"Sounds fine," I said, in a voice that came out several octaves higher than intended.

"Great," Aiden said, equally strangled, and grabbed his bag off the floor with more force than the situation required.

We both went out of our way to act like adults about it after that — polite nods in the hallway, careful distance at dinner, the kind of exaggerated normalcy that fools absolutely no one who's actually paying attention. I told myself I was handling it fine. I told myself the same thing at least a dozen times an hour, which should have been the first sign that I wasn't.

It didn't stop anything. If anything, it made it worse — every accidental brush of his arm reaching past me for a plate at dinner, every time I heard him moving around in his room through the thin wall we now shared, sent the same restless heat rushing back through me, unbidden and completely unhelpful. I caught myself replaying that night more than I wanted to admit, wide awake, staring at a ceiling I didn't recognize, wanting things I had absolutely no business wanting from the person sleeping twenty feet away.

I had a feeling, lying there in the dark, that pretending to be mature about this was going to be a lot harder than either of us expected.

---

**AIDEN'S POV**

Through the wall, I could hear her shifting under the sheets, restless in a way that matched exactly how I felt lying on my own side of that thin, useless drywall.

I told myself I was fine with the arrangement. Two adjoining rooms, one shared bathroom, easy enough to navigate if we both just acted like the responsible adults we were supposed to be. I'd said as much to myself at dinner, twice, while very deliberately not watching the way she'd licked butter off her thumb like it was nothing, like it wasn't doing something completely unreasonable to my concentration.

It didn't help. If anything, the thin wall made it worse — every small sound from her side, every creak of the floor when she got up for water, kept my mind exactly where it had no business being. I lay there running through every argument for why this was a terrible idea, and every single one of them lost, quietly and completely, to the simple, unhelpful fact that I wanted more of what we'd ha

d that night, and no amount of pretending otherwise was going to change it.