The house was quiet. Mom and Dad had fallen asleep on the couch again, the late-night movie still playing softly. Riley lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, heart racing for reasons she refused to name.

At twenty-one, she should have been used to living with her stepbrother, but the tension between them had only grown worse over the last year. Jax, tall, broad-shouldered, with messy dark hair had become impossible to ignore. He was twenty-four, worked construction, and carried himself with that quiet, brooding confidence that made her thighs squeeze together whenever he walked into a room.

She heard her bedroom door open.

Riley sat...