“Never drinking ever again,” I mutter.
“Oh, don’t say that. I love when we have spiked hot chocolate at the holidays. You’re hilarious when you put your guard down.”
Yeah.
I’m hilarious.
I’m so hilarious, I texted Duncan that we could’ve been forever if he’d never told me he cared about me.
Stupid stupid stupid.
And then he showed up and cleaned half my apartment and helped me shower and hugged me and kissed my shoulder and didn’t make a single joke about what we could do while I was naked and he was pretending his boxer briefs weren’t doing their best to restrain his thick, long, hard erection.
I miss his penis.
He’s very good with his penis.
But it comes with the rest of him, including his brain and his protector streak and his heart and our history, and that means his penis is off-limits.
I blow out a breath. Fuck it. Idowant to talk about this. “What does it mean when a guy you had a casual thing with a long time ago shows back up in your life doing nice things for you but not hitting on you after you drunk-text him that if he hadn’t caught feelings, you would’ve kept having a casual thing with him forever?”
“It means I’m getting on a plane this afternoon because there is no way that’s the whole story and Iamgetting theentirestory out of you.”
“That’s it. That’s the whole story.” I stare at the freaking red light. I’m absolutely running late. Not that Tripp told me I had to be at the office by ten. I told him myself I’d be there by ten. Freaking traffic.
Freaking shoulder.
I grab my phone while I wait for the light and type out a briefcaught in traffictext to him.
“All three of your other brothers told me some variation of thatit’s nothing, it doesn’t mean anythingstory within months of proposing to theirit’s nothingflings,” Francie muses.
Some days I hate having older brothers who are all too similar to me in certain ways. “I’m too busy to have a relationship.”
“Mm-hmm,” my unfortunately still-favorite sister-in-law says.
I don’t dislike my other three sisters-in-law.
I just don’t like themas much.
Mostly because they haven’t been around as long. Francie has been in the family since I was in high school.
She’s seen things. She’s listened to me cry over shitty situations at work. She’s listened to me fume about the males of the species that I mistakenly let myself believe in. She’s listened to me rave about how much I like working for the Fireballs.
And I do.
But just because things have been good this far doesn’t mean I’ll ever let my guard down. I’ve been screwed too many times in the past to trust that good ever lasts.
And that’s my problem with Duncan too.
I grew up watching my mom fade into a shell of herself for all that she gave to the rest of us.
My first high school boyfriend dated me on a dare and told me he didn’t really like me when we broke up.
My most serious relationship ended because he didn’t like how much time I spent with male athletes.
I lost my virginity to a guy who was seeing two of my college softball teammates at the same time. That was bad on him—he didn’t expect us to stick together and confront him.
Hope he learned his lesson.
