She frowned, taking the can from my hand and slowly approaching the wall.

“I’ll keep an eye on your backside.” I grinned.

“Clever,” she threw over her shoulder.

She bent to the wall, giving me a real view of her round ass. My fingers twitched at my sides in the same way they did before I started a new piece. I was dying to put my hands on her warm skin.

I heard the soft whoosh of spraying paint in the air, and the smell hit my nostrils a moment later as she laid her first swipes of black on the gray brick. I waited patiently, watching the sidewalk both ways as she quickly moved the paint around the wall in elegant swipes, pausing to take in her finished work less than five minutes after she’d started.

“What is it?” I tipped my head to the side, squinting in the dim light to make out whatever the fuck it was I was seeing.

“You can’t tell?” she purred, one black-tipped pointer finger stroking a line that curved to the right. “It’s a nutcracker mouse in a tutu. I know it’s silly, but your memory was so sweet. My best memory of my dad is when I was eight and performed in The Nutcracker. I had a solo I worked on for weeks in his office every night after dinner. My dad was beaming after the first performance. He brought me three dozen roses. The bouquet was so big that it covered my head in the picture.” She gnashed on her bottom lip. “That’s one of my favorite nights.”

Silence settled around us. Her eyes were on the abstract mouse with tutu, but mine were on her. Emotion sucked the air from my lungs as much as the humid summer night.

My heart hammered as I watched her wiping at tears. I was so caught up in my bullshit that I had no idea what to say to ease hers.

So I reacted.

My hand moved to the back of her head, my fingers gripped her hair, and I yanked. Her doe eyes peered up at me, placing a crack in my cement heart. I crushed my lips to hers, savoring her because I didn’t know if I would again. I wanted to burn her lips into my memory and wear her like a brand on my soul. They said there was a thin line between love and hate, and until that moment, while my hands were on her flesh with my mouth against hers, I didn’t understand how true that was. Because as much as I wanted to cherish Devlynn, I also wanted my hands around her throat as I squeezed the life out of her.

She whimpered, parting her lips for me, inviting me to invade her mouth further.

“Sugar.”

“What,” she murmured against my lips.