No strings attached was the unspoken game that was being played and what more could I expect with only two nights in town. A weekend away from home to celebrate my birthday in Myrtle Beach, that’s where it all started. That and drawing a stranger in a dive bar. My need for him grew strong with every stroke of the pencil against the page of my sketchbook. Then when his lips touched mine, it made me want to do more than mark a blank page with graphite. This weekend might have started with a sketch, but it was going to end with goodbye taillights.

Since my twenty-first birthday, I expected to be able to move on with my life. To work on my art and pretend that weekend had never happened. That I hadn’t fallen for a complete stranger. But a bump in the road put me onto a different path, one that I have no idea where it led to. At least, not until Drew walked through the door of my new house. The man I still spent hours drawing because his face was engraved into my mind, was now inserting himself into my life, with no intention of ever leaving. It seemed like this time, neither one of us was going to let this end in goodbye taillights.