Our parents didn’t try to keep us separated after that, and it hadn’t mattered, because a week later I ended up with mono, anyway. But she had been so happy when I finally got my dumb ass in her bedroom. Even as sick as she’d been, when she saw me her smile lit up her face and her blue eyes sparkled and shit.

I’d always been a sucker for her eyes.

And it had always been like that. Year after year, when she saw me, she always smiled and her eyes would get so bright and so blue, I couldn’t help but find them beautiful. So seeing her look disappointed when some random girl stumbled out of my apartment was killer.

Man, I’d fucked up this morning. One fuck-up among hundreds, if not thousands, and each time I was scared shitless that it would be the last time. That she would get fed up with me—with the girls, the partying, the whatever—discover that she was a thousand times better off without me, and walk out of my life.

And it was going to happen eventually. I knew it.

Circling the park, I picked up speed as I avoided the patches of ice. Sydney was perfect—the actual embodiment of the perfect woman. She was practically pristine and fresh. She was untouchable.

She was everything to me.

I’d spent the better part of my life trying not to fuck up for Syd, and yet somehow failing miserably. I’d seen the look in Syd’s eyes when Mindy came out of the bathroom this morning and I knew she thought I’d slept with the chick last night. Which didn’t take a huge leap in logic, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have standards or a moral code, for fuck sakes.

I was pretty sure I hadn’t invited Mindy back, but she’d ended up in my place, anyway. I’d deposited her drunk ass on my couch and locked my bedroom door, and that was that. I didn’t blame Syd for thinking the worst, and there was really no point in correcting her assumption.

It didn’t change anything.

Sydney Bell had always been, and would always be, a few pedestals too high for me.

Sydney

About an hour later, Kyler was freshly showered and wearing clothes. A shame to cover up that body, but he still managed to look good in worn jeans and an old U of M hoodie with his damp hair falling across his forehead.

He slung a black guitar case over his shoulder, and I couldn’t help but get excited—the boy could play. And those fingers? The way he strummed them over the strings had my imagination skipping through the gutter gleefully every time he played.

There was nothing sexier than a guy playing the guitar. Okay. Maybe a guy on a motorcycle. That was pretty hot, too.