I rolled my eyes. “It’s no one. Just a friend.”

“Uh huh.” He sat down on the sofa beside me, giving me an expectant look. He clearly wasn’t going to let this one go.

“He’s…a pen pal.”

“So, it is a man.”

“Sorta.”

“Sorta?”

“No, he’s a screen. I mean, he’s not real. Well, I guess he’s real in that there is someone typing, but he could be anyone, you know? Some loser in his mother’s basement, some creep in prison, who knows?”

“So, your pen pal is a felon?”

“No! Look, I don’t know who he is. He’s just…nice.”

He tilted his head to the side, his expression softening, going serious. “You going to meet this nice guy?”

I shook my head in the negative. “No, it’s not like that. Look, he’s just someone who…gets me. Not many people do, you know?”

He leaned in. The scent of fresh soap still clung to him. “Maybe that’s what you’d like to think.”

I pulled my eyebrows together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He smiled. “It means if you’d quit being such a hardass, you’d see there are lots of people who care about you. Who care about your well-being.” He reached out a hand and gently tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Who get you,” he said quietly.

I swallowed. Hard. My body felt frozen, my skin tingling, blood rushing to my head as I tried to read the look in his dark eyes. It was soft. Almost tender, if I thought Mr. Tough Guy did tender. His face was inches from mine, so close I could feel his breath on my lips. My tongue darted out to lick them, and I followed his eyes to my mouth.

Oh, God. He was going to kiss me.

What’s worse—I really wanted him to.

Maybe it was because I still had a warm fuzzy feeling running through me from talking to Black. Or maybe it was the emotional toll of the day. Or maybe it was just the fact that I hadn’t gotten it in long enough that I was beginning to forget what it was even all about.

But I found my mouth drifting toward his.

He leaned in a fraction closer, and his lips brushed over mine. I was surprised at how soft they were, that anything about him was this soft. They tasted like toothpaste, minty and clean. His goatee grazed against my cheek, sending shivers down my spine as I closed my eyes, drinking in the moment. I think I sighed into his mouth as his tongue touched my lips, gently parting them.

“Hello? We’re back!”

I jumped off the sofa like a jack-in-the-box, immediately putting two feet of distance between Cal and me as the aunts bustled through the front door.