It must have taken someone hours to ink them—and it must have been a long, painful experience for Brody.

I bet he didn’t even flinch.

Why is that so unbelievably hot to imagine? Brody, grim-faced and stoic under the needle.

Why, Rachel? Why are you having underpants feelings for a man who doesn’t speak complete sentences to you?

Long, long habit.

Brody and Connor have been friends practically since birth, and I don’t think I can actually remember the first time I realized I had an all-consuming, brain-melting crush on Brody.

What I do know is that Brody bought his first motorcycle while I was still in high school, which meant I got to watch him ride it in town, denim-clad thighs securely gripping it.

That fueled lots of fantasies, not that, in a million years, I ever would have indulged even one of them. If he’d shown up at my doorstep on that thing—assuming Connor didn’t kill him first—I would have told him no thank you. Motorcycles are dangerous. I was too busy doing my schoolwork ahead of time and offering to help my parents with absolutely everything, strategies that let me carve out my own place, different from my brother’s with his wild-child antics.

I was not too busy to lust after Brody though.

“You know what you should bring on the boat, Brody?” Amanda says. “Rachel’s mom’s girls’ nights out. That would be a kick.”

Brody’s head snaps up and, wait, this cannot be, but yes, he is looking at me. Full-on blazing green eye contact for a fraction of a second. Then he looks away again, and thank God, because I was in danger of going up in flames like an ant caught in a magnified sunbeam.

“Yeah. Connor said something about that.” He fidgets with an object in his hand. It looks like a miniature rabbit’s foot, small, black, and fuzzy.

I feel a sudden blaze of sympathy for Brody, who has always struck me as desperately wanting to do right without knowing quite how to. I present as evidence the time it started to pour and he stopped his truck and gave me and my bike a ride home. And the time he bought me a new lunch after I dropped my tray in the cafeteria. And the time he drove me home from the one—literally only—party I have ever gotten drunk at, and didn’t tell Connor or my parents.

He didn’t say a word to me in any of those cases, except “You’re welcome,” when I said, “Thank you.”

That’s how I know that under that gruff, bad boy exterior, a kind heart beats.

I say, “Brody?”

He looks surprised that I’ve addressed him by name, but then, if our situations were reversed, I would be, too, right?

“Yeah?”