“That sounds like a personal problem.”
“It became my personal problem when he started following me on every social site known to man ever since junior year.”
Cade nearly choked on his coffee laughing. “Oh no,” he said immediately. “The group chat is gonna be violent.”
“It already is,” Charm informed him.
Ryan’s eyes sharpened. “Wait. Why does Charm know that?”
His eyes widened slightly. “You have access to Chirp Kings?”
Aura smirked over her mug. “Women are smarter than you.”
Briggs snapped his head toward Ryan. “We have a leak.”
Ryan looked personally betrayed. “There is no way Aura has Chirp Kings screenshots.”
Aura’s smile widened. “You sure about that?”
“That’s actually terrifying,” Cade said, dropping a kiss to my lips.
“You should be scared,” I muttered, looking up at his stupid perfect face.
“Too late. I fell in love with you.”
The entire kitchen went dead silent as every molecule of oxygen left my lungs.
He said it so casually. Like breathing. Or saying the sky was blue. Like truth.
Cade himself seemed to realize what came out about half a second too late because his eyes widened slightly before locking onto mine.
Nobody moved. No jokes about his admission. Just a still silence as if we all were on pins and needles.
And then very quietly, very carefully, like he was handing me something fragile instead of detonating my entire nervous system before ten in the morning.
“Well,” he said quietly.
Aura made the most violent choking sound I had ever heard in my life as Charm slapped both hands over her mouth and I stared at him while my heartbeat tried to physically escape my body.
Briggs’s toast slipped out of his hand and landed on the counter with a sad little scrape.
Ryan whispered, “Holy fuck.”
“Easton and Rider picked one hell of a morning to run,” Briggs said.
Cade didn’t look away from me.
Not once.
Like nothing else in the room mattered now that the words were finally sitting between us.
My chest felt tight and warm and terrifyingly full all at once.
Because somehow the scariest thing Cade Mercer had ever given me wasn’t his possessiveness or his intensity or the way he touched me like he wanted to crawl beneath my skin.
It was this.
The complete certainty in his eyes when he looked at me like loving me was the easiest thing he had ever done.
