“It’s kind of insane,” Tyler replies with a shrug, and he walks toward me with some more clothes, which he packs into the suitcase. “Car’s getting shipped tomorrow, and then that’s everything.”
“It’s going to be so weird not seeing you for an entire year.” I’m so proud of him for everything he’s done and everything he’s about to do, but at the same time it hurts knowing he’s not going to be here. No matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise, he’s so, so much more than just my stepbrother. How am I supposed to cope without seeing the person I love every day? Somewhere within me, I know that it might help. Maybe being separated for a year will do us good. Give us some time to get over each other.
“That’s the worst part,” he murmurs. Reaching forward, he closes one of the suitcases and zips it up, and then he turns back to me. His eyes are still as gorgeous as they’ve always been, but I try not to think about it. “Have you thought anymore about next summer?”
Last week, Tyler invited me out to New York next summer. The events wrap up in June, but he won’t be coming home until August, so he’s spending his summer vacation in the city and he wants me to do the same. But that’s a dangerous idea.
“Just us two,” he reminds me, his eyes smoldering as he tries to suppress a smile. He takes a step closer to me, and it gets my pulse racing and my heart throbbing the same way they always do whenever he gets too close. All the air in my lungs rushes out. He stretches out an arm and pushes his bedroom door shut with a soft click.
Over the year, we’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring the attraction between us, and an even better job of ensuring no one finds out that there ever was one. Besides, I have Dean now. I should be focusing on him. But sometimes, just sometimes, Tyler and I forget to pretend. Like right now.
He takes another step toward me and draws me into his arms, hugging me tight against his body as I inhale his cologne. The Bentley cologne, his favorite. I already miss him and he hasn’t even left yet, and as I rest my chin on his shoulder, he drops his hands to my waist. And so I’m hugging him and he’s hugging me back, and there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it, because I’m still allowed to hug my stepbrother, but there is something wrong. There’s sexual tension, and there shouldn’t be.
His breath feels hot against my neck as he exhales, his cheek brushing mine. He grips my waist tighter as he moves his lips slowly along my jaw, planting a sharp kiss on the corner of my mouth. I feel him smile against my lips, and he dares himself to whisper, “I’ll see you next summer, Eden.”
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in the Did I Mention I Love You series
Did I Mention I Need You?
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to my readers who’ve been with me since the start and watched this book grow. Thank you for making the writing process so enjoyable, and thank you for sticking with me for so long. Thanks to everyone at Black & White Publishing for believing in this book as much as I do, and also to the team at Sourcebooks Fire. I’m forever grateful to Janne, for wishing to take over the world; Karyn, for all your comments and your expertise; and Laura, for always looking after me. Thanks to my family for their endless support and encouragement, especially my mom, Fenella, for always taking me to the library when I was younger so that I could fall in love with books; my dad, Stuart, for always encouraging me to be a writer; and finally my grandad, George West, for believing in me from day one. Thank you Heather Allen and Shannon Kinnear for listening to my ideas and allowing me to ramble on about this book, without ever telling me to be quiet, despite however much my excitement most likely drove you both insane. Thank you Neil Drysdale for helping me get to where I am. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And finally, thank you to Danica Proe, my teacher back when I was eleven, for being the first person to tell me that I wrote like a real author, and for making me realize that an author was exactly what I wanted to be.
EDEN AND TYLER’S SAGA CONTINUES IN THE DID I MENTION I LOVE YOU TRILOGY:
Did I Mention I Need You? March 2016
Did I Mention I Miss You? June 2016
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK...
Chapter 1
Three hundred and fifty-nine days.
That’s how long I’ve been waiting for this.
That’s how many days I’ve counted down.
It’s been three hundred and fifty-nine days since I last saw him.