I could have beat around the bush, but I need advice and want to get this conversation over as quickly as possible. I’m not one to sit around and talk about my feelings. Plus, I’ve been the guy on the other end of this conversation, and I know how carried away we can get with personal topics. The fact we all write romance only adds fuel to the discussion.
“What about her?” Beck asks.
“Did she do something wrong?” Tobias asks. “Is Grey okay?”
I nod. “Everything is good. She’s great with Grey. Too great, maybe. I don’t know. Fuck.” I sit up straighter. “I kissed her last night while she was lying in the spare room bed.”
As expected, silence follows from everyone except…
“I knew it!” Beck cheers. “Yes. Oh, Calla is going to be so excited. She called this. I told her she was nuts, but she knew. God, she’s right more times than I like to admit.”
He’s already reaching for his phone.
“Whoa, whoa, calm down. I don’t know if it means anything.”
Hero laughs. “Okay, try that again. You kissed her, Simon. You know it means something, otherwise you wouldn’t have done it. The real question is, what do you want it to mean?”
I let out a breath. “I… I don’t know. I—” They are all going to hate this next part. “I stopped it before we could get carried away.”
“Typical,” Tobias says, and even though others in the group have their opinion, I know his response has a different meaning.
“You know she wants to settle down, right? Willa told me,” Zane adds as his fingers find their way back to his keyboard. “Even if you wanted it to mean something, from your track record, it wouldn’t mean what she’d want it to mean.”
Beck guffaws. “But if they’re meant to be together, what it means to each of them will change within time, and it could be wonderful.”
Tobias lets out a deep chuckle. “One day he’s alloooh she gets on my nervesand the next he’s married in Vegas on a whim, a believer of fate, and the biggest romantic of the group.”
Beck punches Simon’s arm. “I had my chance, and I wasn’t about to lose it.”
“Anyway,” I say, bringing the topic back to me because I’d rather keep talking about this than my sister’s love life, “the problem is, she wasn’t even mad that I stopped it. She just saidokayand went home. Then she told me not to overthink it.”
“Which you are clearly doing.” Zane chuckles.
Graham closes his laptop with a thud. “If you like her, just ask her out. If you don’t want to date her, forget about it. Address it if she brings it up. Otherwise, do as she said and don’t overthink it.”
I nod. “Seems too easy.”
“Take it from me. Don’t avoid it. Just talk to her.”
“Make sure you know what you want first,” Zane says. “Don’t make it weird, since she works for you.”
“Huh,” Graham says. “I forgot about that part.”
“Figure it out quickly because she and Grey are about to walk through the door,” Hero says. All six of us shift.
Greer pauses just inside the door.
“Is everything okay?” she asks cautiously.
“Everything is fine,” I answer before one of these guys says something stupid.
Grey struts in, takes a seat next to Beck, and asks him what he’s working on. My attention quickly goes to the brunette beauty slowly walking toward me with a shy smile on her lips. There was nothing shy about them last night, and I’m about two seconds from reminding her of this small fact.
“Oh good,” she says. “Grey and I were just walking back to the house from his ninja warrior camp and thought we would drop off a smoothie for you. It has protein and other goodies to help with energy. I thought you might need some after last night.”
Someone near me snorts, but I refuse to look to see who it is.
Are these my friends or Grey’s friends?
