The three eldest Dukes took the front, a wall of huge men, with Dan and Jay at the rear.
“So I’m your best friend, and I have to find out with everyone else in The Courtesy Turn Cafe, while eating my breakfast waffles, that Blue has moved in with you.”
“Dan—”
“The definition of a friend is a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection.There is loyalty and trust involved too. Plus, often a long history.”
“I always hated arguing with him because he researches stuff like that,” Jay heard Sawyer say.
“Youngest and most annoying,” Brody added.
“I didn’t mean to exclude you, Dan. I didn’t know it was going to happen. She just appeared at my door.”Even if I did invite her, but he kept that thought to himself.
“A simple text, like, ‘I want you, my oldest and dearest friend, to know before everyone in town that Blue Jay McAllister, the mother of my child, has moved in with me.’”
The mother of my child.“I’ll do better from now on,” Jay said solemnly.
“No, you won’t, but I like the sentiment.”
“Waffles?” Sawyer shouted.
All Dukes agreed.
“Have you even trained? I mean, 5K is not in and out of Lyntacky,” Jay protested.
“We’ve been running awhile and even stopped to talk to your girl while dancing the Grapevine Twist,” Dan said.
He only just managed to swallow the words, how is she? then reformed them as “Not my girl.”
“Well, she’s carrying your child and living in your house, so maybe you should work on that?” Ryder said.
Maybe he should. One thing he’d realized having Blue in his house was how much he wanted her to stay. She fit there, and he wasn’t sure how to tell her that. Jay didn’t want to push. Not when everything was so uncertain between them.
Then there was the tension in the air. He’d felt it, and she had to have too. Whenever she was near, he wanted to lower her onto the nearest counter, table—hell, floor, he wasn’t fussy—and take her again. Sink into her body and experience what he had that night.
But she was pregnant, and Jay wasn’t sure that was okay—or that she wanted it.
“I should make you pay, seeing as you’ve been a shitty friend,” Dan muttered when they entered the waffle place.
“I have put up with your whining BS for years, so don’t you come at me about being a shitty friend. I’m the one who causes the least amount of trouble in this group.”
As they reached the Courtesy Turn café, his phone rang.
“Is that a new ring tone?” Dan asked.
Jay waved them inside, ignoring Dan’s question. His phone didn’t have just a single number. He had one for business and one for personal.
“Haddon.” He listened to the man on the other end and then said, “I’ll be ready.” Pocketing his phone, he headed inside.
Jay found the Dukes in a booth and slid in beside Dan. The interrogation then began.
“So Blue is living with you?—”
“Everyone knows that, Ryder,” Jay said.
“And what?”
“What, what, Brody?” Jay asked.
