"You inhaled a curl."
"It went up my nose and I panicked."
Ben made a noise that was trying very hard to be a cough and was failing completely. Cole's chest shook under my cheek. I felt it before I heard it, the silent vibrations of him trying not to laugh.
"I've been standing here crying for ten minutes," I said, "and Luke Carter got taken out by my hair."
"In my defense," Luke said, with great dignity, "it was a very aggressive curl."
That was it. I laughed so hard my legs gave out, and Cole went down to the floor with me because he refused to stop holding me, and Ben collapsed after him, and Luke, who had the most legs and the least floor space, ended up sort of draped over all of us like a six-foot weighted blanket with hazel eyes.
We were four people laughing on the floor of Tessa's guesthouse kitchen in the morning light so hard that I almost felt like I might pee a little. It took a while to get back to something resembling upright.
"Okay…. Okay…," Luke said eventually, still laughing from the floor, where he had not moved, one forearm over his eyes. "I have to go grab something from the truck."
He got up and flew out the door. Cole and Ben both straightened with scandalous smirks on their faces.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing," Ben said, too easily.
"That was not a nothing face. That was very specifically a something face."
"I don't have a something face."
"Ben. You have the most expressive face of the three of you, and that one was the face you make when you already know the ending and you're enjoying watching someone else try to figure it out. TELL ME."
He looked up at the ceiling and started to whistle.
I turned to Cole. "You're not going to tell me either."
"No."
"This is outrageous. You are all supposed to be begging for my forgiveness right now. You are supposed to be on your knees. You are supposed to be groveling. Actual groveling. On the floor. Which you were, briefly, but then you ruined it with whistling and secrets and I feel like I'm losing the thread of my own narrative here."
One corner of Cole's mouth moved. The dimples were threatening to appear. Cole Ramirez's dimples were a public safety hazard and whoever had given them to him should have included a warning label because I did not have the structural fortitude for them right now. His ice-blue eyes were soft in a way that sat completely wrong with how big and still and terrifyingthe rest of him was, and I had been staring at the ceiling thinking about those eyes for two weeks.
I looked away before I did something I couldn't take back.
The front door opened and Luke came back in sideways, because whatever he was carrying did not fit through the door any other way. He angled his shoulders and turned and brought through six feet of dirty, ripped, and absolutely filthy stuffed bear, the same bear that had apparently witnessed my entire driveway meltdown, and my hand flew to my mouth.
"Oh my god. I thought the trash men had taken him away."
"We went back and saved him." Luke's voice had gone a little rough at the edges. He set the bear down against the wall and the bear slumped there like a very large toddler who had been running errands all day and was done. There was a safety pin on the bear's chest with an envelope attached.
"You kept the bear that saw it all," I said. "The bear that witnessed the whole thing. The bear that knows too much." I looked at the bear. The bear looked back at me with his dead stuffed eyes, deeply unbothered. "He's been stuck in a truck all week and he still looks better than I do."
I touched the envelope on the bear's chest. "What is this."
"Open it," Cole said.
I pulled it free and opened it. It was a real estate printout and it took me a moment to make sense of it, my address, my name, the numbers.
"This is an offer on my house," I said slowly.
"It's our offer," Luke said. "We're the buyers."
I looked up.
