Page 148 of The Right Kind of Wrong

So, why did saying it out loud make her feel like she was on the verge of a panic attack?

“Monroe,” Blake coaxed gently, guiding her down an aisle. Once they had turned, Monroe stopped the cart. “Look at me.”

Blinking hard, she found Blake’s gaze. “I’m looking.”

It was hard to look anywhere else when Blake was staring at her like that.

Blake ran her hands soothingly down Monroe’s arms. “I want to do whatever you think is best for Maisie. I would love for her to know about us, but I am one hundred percent on board with prioritizing whatever makes sense for her.”

“She’s starting to ask questions,” Monroe said, giving voice to the other reason that telling Maisie made a lot of sense.

“Oh?” Blake said, lifting an eyebrow.

“Yesterday, she asked if you were my girlfriend.” Monroe knew that she was blushing, but she couldn’t help it.

“Well, am I?” Blake asked, leaning closer, her eyes playful.

But there was also an undercurrent of something serious flowing between them. Something that, as much as it scared Monroe, also made her want to lean in.

“Do you want to be?” she asked, a little breathless.

Getting together with Sylvia had felt like a business arrangement more than anything. It hadn’t been fraught with so much emotion and uncertainty or the butterflies that made Monroe feel like a lovesick teenager.

“Monroe,” Blake chided, bright eyes boring into her. “You know the answer to that.”

“But what if I want to hear you say it?” Monroe asked, anticipation thrumming through her veins.

Blake rolled her eyes and pushed her shoulder against her. “Yes, Monroe Lockhart. I do want to be your girlfriend.”

And even though it was the answer that she had expected from Blake, it didn’t stop the thrill that zapped her, making the hair on her arms shoot straight up.

Monroe cleared her throat, feeling more emotional than she’d expected. “Well, now that that’s settled,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, “I’d like to tell Maisie that I have a girlfriend. How do you feel about that?”

Slowly, Blake leaned forward and kissed Monroe. It was more tender than anything, their lips pressed together for a few seconds before Blake leaned back and smiled. “If you want me to be there, you just tell me when and where.”

But the smile dropped from her face as she looked past Monroe, toward the end of the aisle.

“Is everything okay?” Monroe asked, turning toward whatever had captured Blake’s attention.

A woman was in the process of turning her cart around like she was a street racer, furiously avoiding eye contact with them.

This couldn’t be good.

“A friend of yours?” she asked, watching the woman as she almost took out an end cap of boxed mac and cheese.

“That’s my former best friend, Stephanie,” Blake muttered. “With the way she acts toward me, she genuinely thinks I have cooties or something.”

Monroe tried to smile, but she knew that it didn’t reach her eyes. More than anything, she didn’t want to make Blake’s life harder.

And Monroe knew the quick skedaddle of someone who had to go report information back to everyone in their social sphere. Gossip in Texas traveled faster than prairie fire.

“Are you okay?” she asked, glad when Blake didn’t shrug away from the hand on her shoulder.

Instead, she leaned against Monroe, letting herself be held. “Let’s just say that it’s a good thing we’re telling Maisie because the news is officially out about us.”

Blake’s cell phone had started vibrating on the ride home.

“It’s okay if you want to take that,” Monroe had told her, eyeing Blake for signs of distress.