Page 104 of Hard to Score

Hell, we both do.

So I run my hands up and down the length of his back. I allow him to regain some of his pride I know admitting all of that to me took from him. I urge him with my actions to feel surrounded by my love for him.

I can’t be angry at him. Sure he said shit that was hurtful, but if I were in his shoes . . . if my father had lied to me for this long over something so life-altering, I would be devastated. I would be hurt. I’d lash out at anyone and everything trying to tell me otherwise. I can’t imagine how hard this is hitting him.

I want to be his safe space. The place he can turn to when he needs solace from it all. The arms that will hold him when uncertainty owns him. The heart that will love him above all else.

“Sometimes, I just want to go back to before,” he murmurs. “To when you were Bratty Brex and I was Dreadful Drew and everything was normal.”

I press a kiss to the side of his head. “But then it would have been a single kiss from a spin-the-bottle dare instead of what we’ve found between us.”

He leans back and looks at me with a clarity that makes me feel like we can figure this out. And when he moves forward and kisses me, it’s so haunting and slow that it steals my breath.

When it ends, I keep my eyes closed as he rests his forehead against mine, his thumbs brushing back and forth over the line of my jaw.

“I’ll figure this out. I promise.”

I nod to reinforce his words with a soft smile. “Mildred was right.”

“What?” His head startles.

“Hate fucks are the best.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “I wouldn’t exactly call that a hate fuck. No one said anything about hate.”

“Well, let’s make sure that’s the closest we get to the hate part, okay?”

He presses a kiss to the tip of my nose. “It’s a deal.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

BREXTON

“DEKKER, I THINK YOU GOT flowers again from that sickeningly sweet man of yours,” Chase calls through the office with a dramatic roll of her eyes, as she carries in a gorgeous arrangement of anemones from the reception desk.

“Really?” Dekker asks as she jumps up like a giddy teenager and takes them from Chase. But it’s after she sets them down and looks at the envelope buried in the arrangement that she laughs out loud.

“I don’t want to hear about what Hunter wrote that he wants to do to you. Or”—Chase holds up her finger to stop Dekker—“what it is you did to him to earn those.”

“If they were mine, I’d make sure to tell you so you could be madly jealous, but they’re not for me.” Chase and I look at each other as Dekker continues. “You’ll have to ask Brex what she did and to whom, because this card is addressed to her.”

It feels like all eyes in the office of my sisters and our staff shift to look at me. “For me?” I ask.

“For you.” Dekker dangles the card by her two fingers as I walk over to the bouquet on the table.

I hold my hand out. “May I have the card, please?”

“Only if you tell us who they’re from.” She quirks her brow as Chase steps up beside her to form a unified front.

“I can’t exactly tell you if I don’t get to open the card, now can I?” I snatch it from her fingers and take a few steps away so I can open it without their prying eyes.

And when I open it, I can’t help the giddy feeling and the grin that forms on my lips.

You’re the only one I want to spin the bottle with.

ILYB.

—DD