“Okay, yeah… yeah, it’ll be spring before we know it, anyway. Maybe before next winter we’ll invest in something else. Any other critiques?”
The lukewarm coffee scalds its way to my stomach. Or maybe it’s the lie slowly poisoning me.
“Nope. The cabin’s beautiful.”Not a lie.“And you’ll be shocked to know I didn’t fully detest the snow.”Also not a lie.
“Did you see my brother at all?”
In an effort to prevent my eyes from becoming the size of Half-Pint’s food bowl, I act like there’s an eyelash in one, blinking rapidly and shooting my gaze down toward the floor. I’m sure I look crazy, but I wasn’t expecting to getgrilledlike this.
“Well, yeah, actually.” I think I might be having a heart attack—this chest pain and breathlessness doesn’t seem right. Would be a convenient way out of the conversation, though.
And Holly doesn’t seem the least bit phased by my caginess. “Did he seem okay? Mom’s been worried about him since we had our family conference call on Christmas. He acted extra eager to hang up, and then I guess when she called him on Boxing Day, he didn’t answer at all.”
Goddamnit, Lucas. I hope we suddenly developed telepathy, and he hears the mental cussing out I’m doing. Because he couldn’t just have a nice, healthy conversation with his mom, I’m now forced to choose between letting his family continue to worry, or admitting to my best friend that the reason her brotherwas eager to hang up the phone was so he could bind my limbs with tinsel.
“Holls…” I chew incessantly on my thumbnail. “He, um… He seemed fine.”
Can’t wait to see how hot the flames are in hell.
“I told Mom he was probably just exhausted and stressed from working so much lately.” She shrugs casually then dives into a long rant about a conversation she recently had with her wedding photographer.
And I feel like a shitty friend when my focus wanders almost immediately. I can’t help that there's a couple cozied up in the coffee line and it makes my mind drift to Lucas again.
“You hang up,” I whispered sleepily, eyes already shut and growing harder to open with each passing second.
“No, you,” he said through a yawn.
I laughed. “We’re like a couple of teenagers.”
“And our parents grounded us for fucking under the Christmas tree, so now we can’t see each other for a while.”
“Exactly.” I tucked the comforter tighter around my chin. “I love our discreet prison calls.”
Except that it was starting to feel like a life sentence.
”Me, too, Doodlebug. I’ll come see you soon.”
Mere days since I’d left the ranch, and he’d mentioned visiting me no less than twenty times. I knew his intentions were genuine, but the more I heard it, the less I believed it would ever happen.
The slam of the café’s glass door snaps my attention back to the present. Back to where Holly’s still rambling about a “first look” for their wedding.
Somehow the fact that Lucas and I will be in the wedding party together in five short months skipped our minds. Granted, it’sso far away, I suppose having a conversation about how we’ll approach that situation would be a bit premature. Who’s to say what things between us will look like by the time the wedding rolls around. I did the college spring break bullshit when I was younger—I’ve spent more than five days shacked up in a hotel room with a guy before, and it never led to anything. Maybe this won’t be any different.
Except Lucas is different.Better.
With him, I’m home.
“I guess my point is…elope.This experience so far is about a seven out of ten on the stress scale.” Holly cradles her mug in front of taupe painted lips, stopping just shy of taking a sip. “Tell me something good. Any wacky dick pics? Maybe a penis inside a sub sandwich?”
I snort. “No, thankfully. Love that size of dick in my monster smut, but I’d run for the hills in real life.”
“Yeah, nobody wants to have a man literally rearrange their organs.” She cringes. “You always have freaky dating stories, so give mesomething.”
“I always have stories because you’re usually picking the guys for me,” I point out. “And I haven’t seen you in a couple weeks.”
“Did you open the app in Fox Ridge?”
I didn’t.“Yeah… nothing but men holding up fish that were varying degrees of impressive.”
