She straightened, hands on her hips, looking between us like she already knew we were up to something.
Jer said, “Nothing.”
“Nah, we were talking about how Jeremy doesn’t want to come to Minnesota.”
Her brows popped up. “Minnesota?”
“My mom invited us to come during my bye week,” I explained, sitting up straighter in the water. “I was gonna ask if you wanted to come.”
“Yeah,” she said immediately, no hesitation. “Of course. Obviously Jer’s coming, too.”
Jer started laughing, shaking his head. “Oh, sure. Let me just stroll into Dirks’s little Midwestern Hallmark family dinner and announce that I’m either your platonic friend with a lot of shared nudity or your ex-boyfriend-turned-current-situationship who occasionally sleeps over.” He kept going. “Your mom, your dad, your sister, her husband, and their two angelic blonde children are going to take one look at me and assume I’m your parole officer or your biggest mistake.”
I shrugged. “Then we don’t tell them anything.”
Jer snorted. “You thinkI’mgonna be the problem? She’s gonna walk in wearing that towel, and your mom’s gonna assume we brought our stripper friend.”
“I’m not mad about that,” Luna said, grabbing a chip. “That’s a solid first impression.”
“Yeah, no. Absolutely not. I’m out. Not doing that. This—” He gestured vaguely at the steam, the snacks, the situation. “This is where I draw the fucking line and say nope. Just friends. Pulling the friend card. Cashing it in. Laminating it.”
I raised an eyebrow.
She just looked at me with a calm, wicked little glint in her eye and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
She turned to Jer and padded over to the hot tub, dropping her towel and dipping one leg in, before sinking all the way down until the water bubbled around her shoulders. Her calves glided through the heat as she leaned back, eyes locked on his.
She looked Jer dead in the eye. “If I let you bend me over the deck railing tonight, would you still want to be just friends?”
Jer didn’t laugh. He stood up slowly and walked over to where she was sitting. “I don’t need permission to look at what’s already mine.”
Luna blinked.
I blinked.
Then I grabbed a chip and leaned back against the wall of the hot tub.
“Well,” I muttered. “Guess we’re all going to Minnesota.” I waved a hand between them like I was moderating a very unsexy divorce court. “No, like—actually—I need to know what we’re doing here.”
Jer sat back down, water sloshing around him. “I need myfucking dead ex-foster dad’sestate closed, and I needher”—he jabbed a finger at Luna so aggressively I thought he might sprain something—“to sign it.”
“And I said Idon’t want toandcan’tgo there,” Luna fired back, mocking the hell out of him with her own exaggerated finger jab. “Andhe”— she pointed dramatically, nearly flicking water in his face—“said he’d give me a few months to freaking figure it out.”
My eyebrows inched higher. “But you’re not mad at her? For leaving?”
Jer leaned back and shook his head like that was the least complicated part in all this chaos. “Oh no. That I get. I know why she did it.”
“And you two have already fucked.”
“Yup,” Luna said, popping herp.
I reached for my drink, eyeing both of them. “And you’d fuck again?”
“Yup,” Jer echoed, same tone, same pop, same zero shame.
I blinked. “Great.Great.”
It was painfully obvious neither of them had any goddamn clue how deeply entangled this still was. The way they snapped at each other, then agreed in perfect sync. The matching “yups.” The fact that Luna was still pressed against the corner of the tub, tits floating, and Jer was watching her like he was one bad decision away from making it worse.
