Instead of saying it out loud, I give her a lopsided Margie Johnson grin. “What I get for listening to a podcast while I do laundry.”
And putting myself in a position where I need saving from a man who’s rapidly growing on me.
I’m finishing up a while after my shift should’ve ended, my brain already firmly back at the cabin, watching Rhys cook dinner, maybe with a glass of wine, most definitely while ogling his ass—I hope he wears jeans if he insists on cooking with clothes on—when my phone vibrates with a text message from Lucky.
Dinner plans? Jack and Decker are coming for a cookout. You should join us. Bring Chex Mix.
Dammit.
Hang with Lucky or get lucky?
I wince to myself.
Never thinking that phrase again, because now I’m thinking about my half brother getting lucky, and despite only knowing he’s my brother for a few months, and only seeing him in person for a week, he still already feels like my brother.
My phone buzzes again.
Decker’s dragging Rhys along too. Dude makes a killer apple cobbler. Like, you haven’t lived until you’ve had it. So I know it’sbeen awkward having him as a roommate, but for real, this apple cobbler will make you change your mind about him.
And now I’m smiling.
Because I still get to have dinner with Rhys without having to choose one over the other.
Even if there will definitely be more clothes involved.
Probably not a good sign, but while I’ve had the occasional fling here and there the past few years since my engagement ended, I haven’t enjoyed the feeling of my body lighting up like I touched a live electrical wire around any of my choices in dates in?—
Well.
Not since high school, when I had an irrepressible crush on a guy who was there on scholarship.
His father was a plumber, and his mother was an admin assistant somewhere.
His family wasn’t the right kind of family.
So much so that my father made sure he didn’t return for senior year.
It’s one of those things I’m not supposed to know, but I do. Overheard the wrong things at the wrong times, and there was zero question.
My father knew I had a crush. My father didn’t deem him worthy of me. My father eliminated the problem.
So at seventeen years old, I had to makethechoice for the first time in my life.
A crush or my future?
I picked my future.
And I kept picking my future through college and beyond.
Oliver was the best choice, not because of passion or desperate love, but because he was smart and kind and agreeable, and if I was going to choose someone my familyapproved of, then I wanted someone who wouldn’t make my life miserable.
And I did love him the only way I knew how to love someone.
Safely. Comfortably.
Daph’s told us both we were boring together.
She was right.
