“Wait, shouldn’t you tell me your plan first?”
“Oh, red Jello. Just be ready to introduce your boyfriend to your parents at lunch tomorrow like you had planned. It’ll be great! Bro. I got two desserts, noice!”
“What? Caden? I don’t understand…how—” My phone beeps, telling me the call is over and my phone returns to the home screen.
Right. Well.
Trusting Caden with this feels like trusting someone who is the embodiment of the “Could a depressed person do this?” meme, but my only other option is to come clean to my parents.
So, against my better judgement, and my gut screaming that Caden is high on painkillers, I choose to trust him.
Besides when has Caden Sinclair ever let me down?
CHAPTER
FOUR
Natalie
Caden Sinclair, have you lost your freaking mind?
Cole
Don’t be mad at me. I’m in the hospital.
Natalie
Don’t you dare try to guilt-trip me. It’s not my fault you didn’t stick the dismount.
Cole
RUDE!
Natalie
YOU DON’T GET TO TALK ABOUT RUDE WHEN YOU TRIED TO PULL THIS ON ME.
My fingers fly furiously over the keys illuminated on my screen as I continue to chew Caden out via caps lock. With each keystroke, my jaw clenches and teeth grind. I will send my dentist bill to Caden later, too. How dare he. Seriously, how could he possibly think this was a good idea sending?—
Above me, a throat angrily clears.
“Just give me a sec,” I say, holding a finger up to the figure looming over me in the threshold of my apartment. “I’m busy Googling hitmen for hire in Michigan. It shouldn’t cost too much where he’s stationary.”
I’m too committed to this cyber-assault to look up.
Well that, and honestly, it’s too early to deal with Beelzebub in all his freshly showered glory, and he’s far too close for me not to notice that I might like the smell of his soap better than Caden’s. My insides lurch and twist. I’d kill to be this close to Caden. With his forearm resting on my doorframe, his other behind his back. His head angled down, inches from mine.
In fairness, Cole here also makes me want to kill someone, but for much different reasons.
“So, I take it Caden didn’t tell you his plan?” Cole asks. Fresh mint brushes my cheek.
I opened the door at the same moment he seemed ready to knock, to “pick me up for lunch,” and that’s how we ended up so close. Caden and I never meet at my door, so I didn’t expect anyone to be waiting on the other side—let alone Cole.
I could take a step back, but that feels like losing an unspoken game.
So I don’t cede my ground, instead shaking my head and continuing my verbal assault of his brother on my phone. “No, Caden only told me he had a plan, not that it was…this.”
“Fucking Cade,” he groans. “Of course he left me to clean up his mess, too.”
