“I wonder if she ever wears panties,” I mumbled out loud before I could stop myself.

Krit’s laughter startled me, and I turned to see two very distinct dimples on his face. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who would have dimples, but wow, they did things for me. “I like to believe she doesn’t,” he replied, once he was through laughing.

“Where are you from?” Krit asked.

“A small town in South Carolina. You wouldn’t have heard of it,” I replied, feeling the sick knot in my stomach forming, the one that always came with memories of my life there.

“Are they blind in that small town I wouldn’t have heard of?” he asked with a softer tone to his voice.

I swung my gaze back to his and studied his expression. Was he teasing me again? “No,” I replied.

Krit frowned then slowly ran his thumb over his bottom lip several times. It was a fascinating thing to watch. He had really nice lips. I wondered how often he used them. I would assume he was very talented with those lips.

His hand fell away, and he took a step toward me. “Will you go in there and meet everyone for me? Maybe have a beer? Just try to relax and enjoy being in a crowd?” His voice had dropped to a smooth thick drawl. It was very hard to tell him no. “I just want you to ease into being social. Here it’s safe because I’ll make sure it’s safe. I won’t let anything happen to you or hurt you.”

In a few days school was starting, and I would need to be in lots of social situations. This was my new start. I wanted to be able to walk through a crowd without having a panic attack. If Krit could help me, then maybe I should at least try.

“Okay,” I blurted before I could change my mind.

The pleased grin on his face was almost worth the fact I was going to have to face strangers who might not be as blind as he was about me. Someone was bound to see the bad in me. They always had before.

He nodded toward the door and grinned. “Let’s go.” Then he made his way to the door to walk out of the safety I had found in his room. I couldn’t seem to get my legs to follow him.

When he glanced back to see I hadn’t made a move to go with him, he chuckled and shook his head. Then he held out his hand to me and waited.

I liked holding his hand. I could do this. I took a step forward and slipped my hand in his. The warmth was back, and I was able to take a deep breath again. Okay. This was good.

“Come on, little dancer,” he said gently, then led me out of the room and down the hall.

The music was louder out there and the laughter and voices reminded me of how I didn’t fit into this world. I was a loner. I liked being a loner. As if Krit could read my mind, he squeezed my hand reassuringly. Right. He was with me. This was his crowd, and he wasn’t going to let anyone say anything to hurt me.

“Where’d you two go?” Green asked with a frown on his face, but I couldn’t hear Krit’s response over the noise.

I started to say something to Green, who was really nice and who I had felt comfortable with right away. He had a friendly smile. Before I could speak to him, Krit pulled me over to stand beside him. “Here’s a beer,” he said, handing me a red plastic cup. I took it, although I wasn’t sure I was going to drink it. I didn’t like the way alcohol smelled.

“You left me,” the blonde I had seen him with when I arrived said as she walked up to him and turned her back to me.

“A friend showed up. Sorry, babe, but I’m going to spend some time with her. I’ll find you after she leaves,” he replied with a wink, and tugged me closer before walking us toward the sofa.

The girl pouted at him then shot an angry glare at me. She was upset that I was taking her date away. She should be. I wasn’t going to make any friends by doing that.

Krit sank onto the sofa, pulling me down beside him. I could feel people staring at us. Were they all mad that he wasn’t with the blond girl? I studied the cup in my hand, unable to lift my eyes.

“Who’s this?” a curious male voice asked. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded nice.

“This”—Krit slipped his finger under my chin and lifted it so that I was now forced to look at the person speaking to him—“is my new neighbor, Blythe. Blythe, this is Matty. He’s the drummer in our band.”

Matty had bright orange hair that stuck up in all different directions. I wasn’t able to focus on much else. I had never seen hair quite like his before.

“Hello, Blythe,” Matty said, and I realized he had a warm smile and friendly brown eyes.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I croaked out. The nerves weren’t letting up. Speaking to strangers was hard.

Matty’s grin got bigger, and he shifted his gaze back to Krit. “Dude,” he replied, and shook his head. I watched him take a long drink of the beer in his hand.

“Matty can be a douche, but we overlook his lack of verbal skills,” Krit said so close to my ear that his warm breath tickled the sensitive skin there.

I shivered, and Krit went very still beside me. Before I could start worrying about my reaction, his hand tightened its hold on mine. Again the warmth calmed me.

“Dude,” Matty said a second time, now chuckling. “Shitting me,” he muttered, then turned his attention to me and smirked. “Careful with him, sweetheart.”

“Don’t,” Krit said in a hard voice that startled me.

Matty’s eyebrows shot up, then he walked off. He had seen me. He saw what everyone saw. I wanted to leave. Krit was the most accepting person I had ever met, and I didn’t want to meet anymore of his friends, because I was sure they would all react like Matty had.

“I need to go,” I told Krit as I tried to slip my hand from his.

“No,” he said, tightening his grasp. “Ignore him,” he said.

I wished I could have ignored him, but I had spent my life dealing with people not wanting to be around me. And there was a beautiful blond woman there who wanted to be with Krit. He was trying to help me fit in, and he was being so kind about it. I couldn’t do this to him.

“I am really tired. Thank you for . . . for sitting with me and talking to me,” I said. “But I really am ready to go back to my apartment.”

I managed to get my hand free, and I stood up quickly and darted for the door. I kept my head down and my attention focused on not tripping and falling. Once I was free of the apartment, I took a deep breath but kept moving.

“Blythe.” Green’s voice called out to me, and I wanted to ignore him and get to the safety of my apartment. But he had been nice to me.

I stopped and looked back at him. He was walking out of the apartment and headed toward me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and forced a smile. “Yeah, just tired.”

He didn’t look like he believed me. “You sure?”

Krit was moving through the crowd now. His eyes were on me, and he was headed my way. I had to go. “Really, I’m fine. I just want to go back to my place.”

“Blythe.” Krit’s demanding voice stopped me from running. He sounded angry. I hadn’t meant to make him angry.

“What did you do?” Green asked him as he scowled at Krit.

“Fuck off,” he growled at Green. “I didn’t do shit. I need to talk to her, so go,” he replied, but his eyes were locked on me.

“She’s not one of—” Green started, but Krit was in his face immediately.

“I fucking know that. Not what this is about. Now, go.”

Green let out a defeated sigh and nodded before turning to walk back into the party.

“What happened in there?” he asked me.

He still didn’t get it, and I couldn’t bring myself to break the news to him that I was tainted. “I’m just tired,” I told him.

He ran a hand through his blond locks and sighed. “Okay. I get that. If it’s the real reason you’re leaving.” He pointed back at his door. “But if this is about what Matty said, then ignore his stupid ass. He thinks I’m trying to make a move on you.” He stopped and grinned at me like he had made a private joke. “He saw you and assumed the wrong thing. I’m not blind, Blythe. I know you’re not my kind. He was worried about it. I’m not a bad guy. I would never go there with you. I see you. I get it. I was just trying to be friendly. You seemed like you needed someone to help you deal with shit, and I wanted to help.”

Oh. So he did see me. He knew. I was going to be sick. My head started pounding, and the small amount of comfort I had taken from him was ripped away. I had to go. I managed a nod before I took off running. I had to get to my apartment before I threw up. The sick knot in my stomach had exploded.

KRIT

I stood at the window overlooking the gulf as I drank my second cup of coffee. It was fifteen minutes to eleven, but I hadn’t been up very long. Britt’s snuggling had woken me up. I didn’t like it when Britt passed out and stayed the night after sex. She touched me when she slept, and I hated being touched.

It had taken me getting trashed to fuck Britt after my sexy little shy-as-hell neighbor went running off like the bats of hell were chasing her. Shit, that girl was fucked up. It was the only explanation. The girl had head issues. Sure, she was gorgeous, and damn, those eyes were hard not to get lost in. But the head issues were more than I could handle.

Britt was easy. I liked easy.

But Britt didn’t have the sweetest smile I’d ever seen. Shit. Shaking my head, I slammed my cup down and turned around to see Green standing in the living room, glaring at me.

“What?” I snarled. I hated it when he had that judgmental look on his face.

“You know what,” he replied, annoyed. “You couldn’t just leave it alone. I had it under control. She liked me. She was getting comfortable with me. But you had to fucking prove you could get her attention. She isn’t like that. She’s innocent, Krit. Motherfucking innocent. Stay away from her.”

It had been a long time since we had fought about a female.

“I know she’s innocent. I was being friendly. She was freaking the fuck out, and I was trying to help her. She’s shy.”

Green threw his hands up into the air. “What the hell did you think I was doing?”

He had been looking at that sweet ass body of hers, was what he had been doing. “I was just trying to help her,” I explained. “Not get her to let me in her pants. I was protecting her from you too. You stay the fuck away from her,” I warned him.

“Unbelievable. You are a selfish shit. That isn’t what you were doing. She liked me. I could see it in her eyes. But you came and snatched her away and sent her running off.”

“Something is off with her. I don’t know what, but she has some issues. She isn’t up for getting to know you any more than a friend. You want a helluva lot more than to be her friend. My last warning, Green. Stay the fuck away from her. She’s not like that.”

“What are y’all going on about?” Britt asked as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She was wearing the sheet off my bed. I hated it when she went walking around with my damn sheets.

“Go get clothed and leave,” I ordered before heading for the bathroom to take a shower.

“I don’t know why you always treat me like shit the next morning. We had a good time last night,” she snapped at me as I walked by her.

“Throw that sheet in with the dirty clothes before you leave” was my only reply. Then I closed the bathroom door and locked it.

“You’re an ass!” Britt yelled loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Yet you keep fucking him,” Green replied. “Told you before, he’ll never treat you like he did Jess. She was different for him. No one else is gonna get that Krit.”

Jess. She had been the only woman I had ever let get close enough to me to get me. But we had grown up together. It was easy with Jess. And damn, she was smoking hot. The things she could do with her body. Fuck, I missed her. I reached into the shower and turned on the faucet.

I had put Jess behind me. She was in love and living up north with her Harvard trust-fund boyfriend. She was getting that fairytale she had always wanted, and I had to admit I was happy for her. A life like that didn’t come around for people like Jess and me. If I couldn’t have Jess, I was glad the man she wanted adored her. And that fucker worshiped the ground she walked on. It was the only reason I had been able to handle watching her go.

I knew I’d never be what Jess needed. I had addictions, and women was one of them. Lots of women. I loved the way they smelled and how soft they were. I loved how warm and tight they felt when I sank into them. I loved everything about them. When Jess had put a halt to our relationship, I’d run off that night and had a threesome. No problem.