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desperate. Not to mention high-maintenance."
    Blaine pressed his lips together. "Sure thing, Kade. You're the real relationship expert here. Since I've known you, all you've ever had are one-night stands. Never a girlfriend." Blaine pulled ahead of me, taking the stairs of the dorm two at a time.
    I didn't move. I just stared at his back.
    No, Blaine. I had a girlfriend once. A long time ago.
    But she taught me the truth about relationships.
    Or rather, the lie.
    I guess I owed my ex because her actions made me who I was today. But I couldn't feel indebted to her. She broke up with me and married another dude. I'm not sure what hurt more: the fact that she took my son away from me or that I wasn't good enough. I still felt the pain even five years later. Five years .
    At the top of the stairs, Blaine turned around. "You coming?"
    Suddenly, I felt extremely tired and it was all I could do to labor up those damn stairs.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ash
     
     
    Eighteen months earlier...
     
    It was a perfect day.
    I just got home from five-o'clock Christmas mass and had to rush upstairs because I still had presents to finish wrapping. My folks liked to do the present opening thing on Christmas Eve. The plan was to celebrate Christmas at my house tonight and then Devon's tomorrow.
    Devon spent a few minutes downstairs chatting with my folks and then he joined me in my room. I'd wisely chosen to wrap his present first, and I was just putting the finishing touches on the ribbon. Gosh, ribbons could be such finicky things. I had to retie the thing three times. I wanted it to be perfect.
    "Hey," Devon said, whispering in my ear. His warm breath ran down my lobe to the nape of my neck, where he planted a tender kiss. "You look amazing tonight, as always."
    "Mmm," I said, pushing my head into him.
    "Miss me for the long time we were apart?"
    It had been a whole twenty minutes. "You know it."
    We kissed. It wasn't a light peck. It was a long kiss that spoke of the years we'd known each other. The years of trust, friendship and mutual sexual discovery. I'd almost say it felt like a comfortable kiss, but it was far too arousing for that.
    He started to unbutton my blouse. I stopped him.
    Both our folks knew we were having sex. Still, I refused to let him seduce me while my parents were downstairs. It made me feel dirty, somehow.
    "You know I won't have sex when my folks are home," I said.
    "Come on." He tried for my blouse again. "It's not like they'll barge in on us or anything."
    There was a knock at the door.
    I gave him a self-satisfied look. "You were saying?"
    My stepdad Bill poked his head in the doorway. "I'm not interrupting anything I shouldn't be, am I?" He was looking right at me.
    "Well, if you were," I said. "You'd be staring at a pair of naked butts rocking it out right now."
    Bill frowned. "Thanks for that image, Asha." He always called me by my full name, I guess to annoy me. "I meant seeing any presents I wasn't supposed to be seeing." He was already starting to close the door again. "I came up to tell you dinner is ready. Mario's really outdone himself this time." Bill had hired Mario away from a local Italian bistro to head our kitchen. His food was outstanding. "Wait until you taste his turkey souffle. You're gonna love it."
    When he closed the door, Devon and I exchanged a disbelieving glance.
    "Turkey souffle?" Devon said.
    "Sounds really bad."
    He gave me a light peck on the cheek and got up. "The weirdness that goes on at your house..."
    "Tell me about it," I said, laughing.
    The souffle was surprisingly good, and after dinner we sat down in the living room to open presents. Devon and I had decorated the tree, which was a freshly cut blue spruce about seven feet tall. Different colored lights spiraled near the trunk like glowing birds, while Tennessee-themed ornaments such as bears and mountains hung from the outer branches. We'd slathered the whole thing in shiny red and blue icicles so that altogether the tree looked a