Best Kind of Broken

54 Levi

I watch TV and try not to think about what the girl next door is wearing as she paints away—which I know she’s doing because Florence + the Machine is blasting through the wall, and that is most definitely her painting music.

Three pounds sound on my wall.

“Turn it down!” she yells.

I turn the volume up two notches.

More pounding. “Turn it down!”

“Shh! I can’t hear my show over all your pounding!” I shout.

“Aaaagh!”

Victory is mine.

As I go back to my show, the wind howls outside and I frown at my window. I just know my day is going to be full of yard cleanup tomorrow.

The power suddenly goes out and I clench my jaw.

Pixie.

In a storm? Really?

Stomping out of my room, I go down the hall and throw open her door, more amused than angry, but still.

Two things surprise me.

One—the innocent look on Pixie’s face in the gray light from the mostly hidden moon outside.

Two—she’s wearing nothing.

Well, not nothing exactly. She has on a see-through tank top and a pair of panties that leave little to the imagination. But she may as well be wearing nothing because all I see standing before me is a naked Pixie, covered in paint.

“What the HELL are you doing?” She’s pissed, and manages to look a little embarrassed by her outfit, which confuses me. “What makes you think you can just keep barging in here?”

I scoff. “Maybe the same thing that makes you think you can just blow the fuse whenever the hell you please.”

“I didn’t blow the fuse!”

“Next time, just threaten the fuse thing and I’ll turn the goddamn TV down to save myself a trip outside.”

She takes a step forward so now she’s standing right in front of me. “I didn’t. Blow. The fuse.”

Lightning flashes into the room, and a loud clap of thunder shakes the window. That’s when I realize the storm knocked out the power. Not Pixie.

Well, shit. Now I feel like an idiot.

She stares at me in the foggy light, and her expression slips into one of… well, want.

I should leave. Right now. I really should.

But Pixie’s eyes are on mine, and she’s so damn close to my body that I can’t seem to do anything other than stare at her with want and need and desire and every other hell-born pleasure known to man.

But I’m not going to kiss her.

I’m not.

If I kiss her, there’s no going back. If I kiss her, I’ll touch her. And if I touch her, then I’ll forever kill any other guy who tries to touch her and then I’ll be royally screwed.

But my head and my heart and my body all want the same thing—and when the hell has that ever happened before?

This is Pixie.

I shouldn’t want her. I don’t deserve her. I shouldn’t… I don’t…