Heavy Head, Full Heart, Empty Stomach

Sunlight sliced through the curtains like a blade.

Juniper groaned, rolling onto her side, immediately regretting the movement. Her skull throbbed like someone had stuffed a bass drum behind her eyes. Her mouth tasted like ****. Her stomach twisted.

Everything hurt.

She blinked, eyelids gummy and heavy, the brightness of the room blinding. Her limbs felt like wet sandbags, and her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. The ache behind her forehead pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

God. What the hell did I drink?

She winced, then paused—frozen.

Joey.

He was next to her, breathing softly, his chest rising and falling beneath the tangle of sheets. His mouth slightly parted, lashes resting peacefully on his cheeks.

Her brother.

Her whole body buzzed, but not from panic. Not from shame. From awe.

Last night.

It came back in pieces. Snapshots. Impressions.

Joey's voice whispering her name. His hands on her hips. The way he looked at her like she wasn't just his big sister. The way she touched him. The way he let her in.

She groaned again—but this time it wasn't from the hangover.

She couldn't remember everything. The **** had robbed her of clarity, like a thief stealing something precious while she slept. It made her sick, truly sick, that she couldn't hold onto every moment. That what should've been seared into her memory like a brand was instead soft and blurry, like fog around a sunrise.

But what she did remember? It was perfect. Better than perfect.

She'd been with guys before—sort of. A few clumsy boyfriends. A couple of guys in college. All of them were disposable, pastimes. Juniper was a woman with plans, with a future. She didn't have time to consider boys as anything other than a hobby. But this wasn't that. This was different. This was—

Real.

Even now, even curled up and clammy and smelling like sweat and tequila and sex, she knew it in her bones that last night had been important.

She had finally made love to someone who mattered.

Not just anyone. The one.

And that one... had just so happened to have been her brother.

She smiled despite the pain. Her head throbbed so hard it felt like her brain was trying to punch its way out through her temples. But the smile stayed.

She didn't feel bad about it, not one bit. Should she have? After she had first come to realize how much, how deeply, how profoundly she loved Joey, she also felt a her fair-share of shame. Brothers and sisters didn't behave that way, didn't feel that way about each other. And yet she did. There had been no denying it. Not only that, it seemed that her love would go unreturned.

But now guilt was a distant country. It was something other people might feel. Something her old self might've drowned in.

But not her now.

Not her, the girl lying beside the most incredible man she'd ever known.

God, and she used to call him a loser.

Her face crumpled as she covered her eyes with the back of her hand. Not from shame. From disbelief. How had she not seen it? All those years of mocking him, of brushing him off, of rolling her eyes and calling him names, and he had been this... this treasure.

She thought about her trophies. Debate medals. Her state championship ring. The framed scholarship offer still sitting on her desk back at college.

None of it mattered. None of it touched what had happened last night.

Joey made her feel wanted. Needed. Like she wasn't just somebody's daughter, or the golden child, or the perfect student. She had been his. She was his.

And now? Well, her body felt like trash. Her stomach was doing somersaults, and her mouth was so dry it felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. But her heart?

Her heart was so, so full.

She pushed the sheets down gently, careful not to wake him. Her legs wobbled as she sat up, and her stomach lurched in warning.

Don't puke in his bed. Don't puke in his bed.

She blinked down at herself. No top. Just a bra. Her skirt was bunched up on the end of the bed. She reached for the shirt on the floor—his shirt, she realized with a twist of pleasure—and pulled it over her head. It smelled like him. Her hands trembled as she tugged the skirt back into place.

Joey snored softly, still dead asleep.

She hesitated at the edge of the bed, biting her lip, watching him for a moment.

He looked so peaceful. So normal. You'd never guess that he'd changed her whole world. That he was, for lack of a better word, the center of her universe now.

She stood, legs unsteady, and tiptoed toward the door.

She made it two steps before her stomach flipped again, violently.

"Shit," she whispered, and picked up the pace, yanking the door open and stumbling into the hallway barefoot, one hand gripping the wall, the other clamped over her mouth.

She wasn't going to make it.

She all but ran to the bathroom.

The door shut. The light clicked on.

She dropped to her knees.

And puked.