It was the first time she’d ever called me her boyfriend.
“Go get dressed, you whore,” Shane said. “I’m going to interrogateyour boyfriend.”
Noelle shook her head with a grin and shut the bedroom door behind her. I stayed standing, not sure if I was even allowed to get myself a cup of coffee.
What thehell?
This wasmy house.
But…maybe it was Noelle’s house, too.
“Alright,” Shane said. “She’s not going to give me more than a couple minutes, so be straight with me.”
“Always.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You gonna break her heart?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“That the plan? Keep her here? Marry her? Build her a porch swing?”
I met his eyes. “I’m not tryin’ to trap her. But yeah. If she stays, I’d marry her in a heartbeat.”
Shane blinked. Slumped to a seat on the couch.
Then he looked genuinely unsettled for the first time since stepping foot in my house.
“…fuck,” he muttered. “You’re serious.”
I nodded. A second later, the bedroom door cracked open. I wondered if she’d heard me…if she knew just how serious I was about her.
But her smile set me at ease. If she’d heard me…she was in. She was sold.
I was hers.
“So…” she said. “Mabel’s?”
CHAPTER 15
Noelle
It was surreal,watching Shane laugh at one of Beau’s jokes like Shanehadn’tcome here to tell me off. In fact, I was starting to think he’d come here for a different reason.
To check out the eye candy…and to interrogate my boyfriend.
My boyfriend.
I hadn’t called him that until this morning, when the title had slipped out as naturally as an exhale. Now, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Beau Ward. My boyfriend.
It felt both absurd and inevitable, the kind of thing you say as a joke until you realize it’s true. In hindsight, I’d been circling it for days…thinking it, teasing it, writing it in the margins of my brain.
And Shane, of course, had immediately latched onto it.
“Boyfriend, huh?” he’d asked when Beau disappeared into the bedroom to grab a shirt. “Two weeks in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden you’re settling down with Mr. Fix-It.”
I wanted to argue with him…but yeah.
