Jake nods. “Nice accent.” He turns back to me. “You mixing with the posh people now, girl?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, something like that. Izzy’s great though, trust me.”
Jake nods, and he gestures in greeting with his head to Izzy. “Now I have someone who I know will want to see you. Come on.” Keeping his arms around us, he guides us inside and through the kitchen to a second lounge area.
“Hey Ty, look who I found.”
My heart flips a little when my eyes meet those of Tyler Kingston. He’s sitting down at a large l-shaped sofa with a group of other guys and girls. Tyler Kingston was a guy I’d had a huge crush on for about three years at school. He had been in the year above me at school. God, I’d had it bad for him.
Tyler no longer looked like a boy, but a man. He is muscular and has an array of tattoos on his arms. His mid-brown hair is bleached blonde now, and it actually really suits him and gives him even more of a bad-boy aura than he’d always had. Tyler Kingston is was every inch the bad boy, always in trouble at school, and like Grayson he has this confidence and arrogance about him that draws you in.
I feel Tyler’s eyes skim me up and down, and he gives me a relaxed smile. Nothing ever fazes him, and you never can tell what he is thinking behind those blue-grey eyes of his.
“Long time no see stranger,” he says, tipping his beer bottle to me in greeting.
The girl sitting closely at his side, with her hand possessively on his leg, glares at me.
The last time I had seen Tyler it had been at a party and we’d been talking in the kitchen of whoever’s house we were at and he’d suddenly reached out and pulled me against him and kissed me. Shortly after that my mum was diagnosed with cancer and I hadn’t seen him since that night.
Tyler smirks at me and it’s almost as if he can read my mind and he knows that I’m thinking about that kiss. I doubt he’d given it a second thought since. Tyler attracts girls to him life a moth to a flame. Girls are drawn in by his bad-boy image,
“Right, we are going dancing,” Courtney announces, pulling me from my thoughts. She ducks down from under Jakes arm and takes my hand into hers. “Catch you later, Tyler,” she tells him.
“Oh you will,” he replies, his slow, sexy smile lingers on my face as I’m pulled away.
“Who was that?” Izzy asks with arched brows.
Courtney chuckles and beats me to it. “That was the guy that my friend here had a huge crush on for years.”
Izzy’s eyebrows rise even higher. “You sure have a type.”
I roll my eyes. “Come on, guys. We all have stupid crushes.”
Courtney grins. “She was obsessed. She would watch him from afar at parties and point blank refused to try to speak to him. When they were introduced, she just blushed and mumbled a barely there hello and scuttled off as quickly as she could.”
Izzy tilts her head, looking at me. “I can’t imagine you being shy around a boy. I mean the moment you met Grayson, you were in his face challenging him.”
I shrug and pick at the label on my bottle. “I was younger then, less hardened by the world.”
‘Dancing time ladies!” Courtney shouts as we weave into the lounge area that is packed with people dancing and couples dry humping each other.
After about twenty minutes of dancing, my bladder screams at me for relief and I leave the girls and take off to find the bathroom. I climb the stairs and step over a couple that are eating each other’s faces off in the middle of the stairway. As I’m heading up the stairs, Tyler is making his way down and he grins when he sees me.
“If you’re heading for the bathroom, the queue’s huge.” As he gets level with me, he snags my hand into his and guides me back downstairs. “Come on, there’s another loo down here that I don’t think anyone else has discovered.” He leads us through the hallway and the kitchen and into a small laundry room and closes the door behind us. He gestures with his head to another door in the room. “There you go, no queue.”
With a quick thank you, I head inside and empty my bladder. Is he waiting for me out there? If so, I hope I had pee’d quietly if he was out there.
When I step back out. Tyler is leaning against the washer. “So, how long are you home?”
I lean against the worktop opposite him, and our legs almost touch the room is so narrow. “Just the weekend.”
He nods, chewing on his lip, while he continues studying me. “Do you remember the last time we saw each other?”
I scoff, smiling. “I do. I’m surprised you do.”
He tilts his head and his brow wrinkles. “Why’s that?”
I shrug, darting my gaze away from him. “I imagine you kiss a lot of girls at parties.”
He lets out a deep, throaty chuckle. “I remember kissing you. Trust me.” He suddenly takes a step forward until there is no space between us and places his hands on my hips.
I put out a hand on his chest, to stop whatever it is he is thinking of doing. “I have a boyfriend now.”
He sighs, smiling. “You do, huh? That’s a mighty shame.” He reaches out and runs his thumb along my bottom lip. “Is it serious?”
I lift my head up and meet his eyes. “It is.” It’s hard to believe that I’m here turning down the one boy that I’d obsessed over for years.
He nods his head, studying me intently. “I’m not a good person, Everly Taylor. I don’t care if you have a boyfriend. I’ve wanted you for some time and I still want you now. There’s something about you that
