Thick strands of searing sunlight pierced the windshield of Eli's car and kept me on the passenger side, with him firmly on the driver's side, almost like the light was a natural barrier forcing us to keep our distance.

An entire morning of drooling over him shirtless was enough to make me distracted, so after a few solid lyrics were written, I escaped to my room to pack up anything I couldn't live without from my father's house, and the end result were the pieces of jewelry my mother had gifted me before she'd passed away, a scrapbook filled with mementos of her, and the rest of my favorite clothes that I hadn't had room for before in my small dorm closet.

The pieces were in motion, and all that was left were the confirmation that I would still be able to attend the New York Conservatory the following Fall after completing my first two semesters at UCM and permission from my grandmother to live with her while I went to school in New York.

Oh yeah, and somehow figure out how to win the talent showcase money with only three months to prepare, when the rest of the entries had at least double the time to prepare because they actually knew they'd be entering when they were accepted to the school in the first place.

At least my father had actually believed that I'd been remorseful of my actions and had told me I'd be getting my recording equipment back the next weekend I came back home to visit, and while it was one week too long to go without my things, I was more than ready to stay on my father's good side...for the time being.

My phone dinged in my hand and I quickly pulled the notification down and curved my body farther out of Eli's sight, just in case it was about what I'd already asked of my two best friends.

Hazel: I'll be at a dinner until nine tonight, but I should be back around 9:30.

Bea: I'm going on a date so I probably won't be coming back at all.

Bea: Don't be silly, wrap his willy.

Bea: Use a rubber umbrella

Bea: Sex is cleaner with a packaged Weiner

Hazel: Wrap it before you tap it!

Bea: No glove, no love

Bea: It'll be sweeter if he wraps his Peter

Me: GUYS! We are NOT having sex!

Well...at least I wasn't intending on sex. If certain circumstances were to transpire which would lead to something more than-

"V? You good?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah I'm fine, but Bea and Hazel being crazy."

"Oh, okay, well we're here."

I could see that. What I couldn't see what how I was going o lure Eli into my dorm room and- no, no I was definitely overthinking. It wasn't supposed to be that hard. That had to be a sign, right?

"Awesome. Thanks for the ride. Um...I guess I'll see you later?"

I was such a chicken. Faced with his gorgeousness right up in my face, and I had totally and completely lost all of my nerve that I'd had when asking Bea and Hazel to not be at the dorms for a few hours. There was still four hours until Hazel was supposed to be back, and I was giving up on my 'mission' already.

"No problem. Hey, do you need help with that bag?"

I had totally forgotten about the giant duffel bag packed with the rest of my wardrobe and keepsakes that I'd brought from my father's house.

"Oh. Yeah, that would be great, actually."

Freshly showered and dressed casually, Eli was clearly tired from his full day of running and shooting baskets all day, every move to my father's command, but still he was willing to help me lug in a bag weighing at least fifty pounds.

He was out of the car and toting the large black duffel on his shoulder in less than thirty seconds, and I was still sat in the passenger seat like a heart pounding, nervous idiot.

Okay, so that definitely took a turn. The right turn, but still...

The walk to the dorms were silent, though loaded with pretense and words that neither of us wanted to speak aloud.

It wasn't until we had finally reached the correct dorm room and had both stepped inside the small and private space of the room that he dropped the heavy bag on the ground just as the door automatically slammed closed behind me, and then we were well and truly alone, right in front of my bed.

"Thanks for that. I've been moving all my stuff back here. I didn't say anything last night but my dad...he, um, took away my recording equipment and I don't want him taking anything else away from me the next time he gets mad at me for trying to make my own decisions."

Eli blew out a long breath like he'd been holding it for the entirety of what I'd said before breaking away from where we'd been standing in the entryway and gravitated towards the bed that was so clearly mine, my name in a cursive lettered pattern canvas above the area.

I started to ask him what he was doing, but he beat me to it when he laid his long frame out along the length of my bed, hands behind his head as he got comfortable.

"Just...make yourself at home," I said awkwardly, laughing a little at the end to try and cover just how nervous he made me.

"So, your dad took away your stuff because you didn't want to come home this weekend? What changed your mind?"

"He threatened to stop paying for my school, my car, my phone, everything really. I know I could probably just get a student loan but I have a financial plan to get out from under his thumb."

"Can I ask you...is he doing okay? I saw him coughing up blood today and I just wanted to make sure everything was okay there. I know you guys obviously have your differences I just--he's my coach."

I opted for a desk chair and sat across from Eli as he leaned up on one elbow to face me better, eyes calculating my reaction to how I'd respond about my father, but it was more than that. He was trying to figure out how I felt about him asking, like he wanted to make sure he wasn't overstepping.

"He's going to be okay. With the paralysis comes complications in other areas of his body that weren't damaged in the wreck but now its coming back to bite him."

Kind of like karma...

"My aunt is taking care of him, though. She's a nurse, and she's monitoring him well. She'd take him to a doctor if he was declining more."

Unless she was just biding her time and waiting for him to die, but she'd only do that if she was sure she was on the will, along with Sara, otherwise she would do everything to keep him healthy.

That was definitely not a rabbit hole I wanted to go down.

I lifted my head to meet Eli's stare head on and what I found there churning in the depths of his eyes nearly stole all the breath I had left to take.

Slowly, he sat up to face me and I didn't breathe again until his hands brushed my forearms, trailing down the length of them until his hands clasped my own within his.

"I know how complicated things are with him and the rest of your family right now. I just want you to know that I'm here for you, if you ever need anything."

"But...why? I mean, we hardly know each other and I just don't know what this is," I said, pulling a hand free to motion between the two of us to try and better get my point across.

I definitely had feelings for Eli, a blind person could probably see that, the question was why? And why so quickly?

"V--I know we've only known each other for a few weeks, but ever since I heard you singing the very first time and I didn't even know it was you singing, I felt a connection with you. And then our parents having the same favorite song and you singing it the night we met? That can't be a coincidence. I don't know if- if it's some kind of meddling from the great beyond or whatever the hell it is, but I do know that I will do whatever it takes to see where that connection will take us...if you're willing, too?"

Divine intervention? I'd toyed with the thought myself before, too. I just wasn't sure how deep Eli felt the connection went. I needed to know that he hadn't just passed it off as coincidence, and with his confirmation, I had my answer.

"I never much believed in coincidences, either," I whispered, throat thick with the unshed emotions that were about to spill over the edge of something that Eli had started, and I intended to finish.

We met in the middle, though, our lips connecting after one beat of my eyes closing and the explosion of everything said and unsaid came to a head as my hands tangled in his hair and he pulled me from the desk chair directly onto his lap.

My legs wrapped around his waist and his arms did the same with mine, tugging me back into his hard frame as our tongues danced and swirled in the deep kiss that kept us glued to the other, never coming up for air because we were all the other needed to survive in that moment.

The air tingled and sparked with electricity that had flowed from us and charged the room around us, the passion in my veins igniting along with the blood that pulsed just under my skin to the beat of our equally rapid heartbeats.

I moaned into his mouth as one of his hands traveled from my waist down to where I rested in his lap, rolling my hips for me onto him as I felt the full extent of his desire for me.

I found myself dipping my hands to tease the end of his shirt up, and he didn't waste time in helping me rid him of it.

Soon enough, I was tracing my palms up and down the sharp ridges and smooth lines of his sculpted back, pausing every few moments as I glided over spots where the skin had been scarred or dips where skin should've been.

They were old scars, not visible to the eye and only distinguished through touch, but before I could focus too long on them, his hands were guiding my own to his neck, his chest, anywhere but his back.

Lost again to the tidal waves of lust, I rocked my hips against him as he tore my shirt from my frame, and while I normally would've felt self conscious like I had every single time with Jared, with Eli I only felt confidence seeping from my pores and he pulled back from me to soak in the sight.

I didn't give him long to look, however, as soon my mouth was back on his, though when his teeth lightly sank into my bottom lip and stars shot through my vision, an embarrassingly loud moan left me before I could hold it in.

"Sounds like you liked that," he remarked huskily, chuckling lightly as his lips continued a renewed path down my neck, sucking and nibbling at the skin as he did so.

I was a panting and wanton mess, clutching onto him in my fervor just to get as close to him as I possibly could, and when teeth scraped against the flesh of my neck and his tongue darted out to swirl around the area, I nearly lost all control of myself.

In one swift and stomach dropping movement, Eli's hands were under me and flipping me onto my back so that I was laying on the bed and he hovered atop me, a deviously gorgeous glint in his eyes that promised of untold pleasures and scintillating, spine tingling bliss.

Lips connected once more in a deep, sweet kiss before pulling away to gaze back down at me, Eli focused his attention on my jeans.

"Can I?"

I licked my lips while nodding, fumbling with the top button of my jeans while he tugged on the waistband once they were fully undone, sliding the denim material over my hips and down my legs, until they were completely gone and my bottom half was almost completely bare to him.

And then his weight was lowered on me, and it was a welcome weight, comforting almost, his cologne scent clogging up my senses and drugging me in its haze.

Lidded eyes watching me as he slid a hand between us, his lips worked magic on mine, tugging with teeth, nibbling--and then that glorious pressure settled between us at my center.

Pleasure shot through me like a rocket, but Eli refused to relinquish my lips even as I cried out from the sheer entirety of the intensity of it.

Over and over, his fingers swirled and mounted pressure and pleasure simultaneously together until my legs were trembling and I was nothing but what Eli could do to me and how well he did it.

One hand in my hair and the other working me over, his fingers in my hair gathered up a bundle of the strands and tugged lightly, the pain a striking difference to the other sensations he was giving me elsewhere, but it was exactly what I wanted in that moment.

The small bites and nips were nothing compared to the chill inducing and electric charged zap of lust his hair pulling had sent through me, so I pulled my head back more.

"Does that hurt? Do you want me to stop?"

I almost cried out in disappointment as he began retracting his hand from my hair, but not before my own hand could stop him.

"No, don't stop," I somehow managed to grind out, and lust drenched eyes found mine as a smirk fell onto those bruised and plump lips that needed to be kissing mine right then and there, and so as I reached up and brought his mouth back down onto mine, his hands worked magic on my hair and in between my legs.

It was the perfect trifecta, however, because as soon as a lone finger slipped inside me and his lip bit down hard on my bottom lip and that hand in my hair pulled with just the perfect amount of pressure, I completely and absolutely shattered around him.

And then it was a spine arching, thigh tingling, leg shaking, heart racing, all too much and not enough all at the same time mind blowing orgasm.

It was like I wanted to take it slow and fast at the exact same time- like I couldn't wait for the climax but wanted to stay experiencing the edge of ecstasy forever.

But then it was a throbbing numbness that invaded after the sweat cooled and the stomach unclenched, breathing returning to normal and suddenly, eyes droopy and body sedated, a lulling calmness rocked me into a perfect oblivion where I was content to both remember and forget those moments in a dull, hormone fueled daze until I could figure out how to repeat the process again and again.

I'd noticed it was more fleeting alone, where I could bask in those moments privately and actually feel my blood cooling in my veins after the act, but with someone else, the adrenaline forced the orgasm stronger, harder, and I found myself both taking my time and rushing myself simultaneously, the pleasure too great to ignore but the finish line too promising to deny.

A pleasure-pain so exquisite it was nearly impossible to discern the tether of which the two facets were intrinsically bonded.

And then Eli was there, draping himself across my body and curling me into his side as he threw the blankets over us and tucked my head underneath his chin, not even trying to continue to find a completion for himself.

I didn't have the time or sense of mind to worry about putting clothes back on or when my roommates would return, because as soon as my forehead touched the smooth warmth of Eli's chest, my eyelids closed of their own volition and I fell into one of the deepest sleeps I'd had since my nightmares had returned.