Page 70 of The Right Kind of Wrong

“Do you want some soup?” Blake asked gently, like she could see the battle playing out inside of Monroe.

It was just soup.

What was the worst that could happen?

It’s not like she’d suddenly let down all of her defenses and become a needy, simpering mess.

Right? Right?!

“Sure. I’d love some soup,” she answered, just to get the screaming in her head to stop.

“And then we can all watch a movie together?” Blake asked, upping the ante, her fingers scratching up and down Monroe’s arm now.

Monroe didn’t know what Blake was playing at, though maybe she was just a really tactile person.

Except the touching and the jokes about Monroe checking Blake out and the fact that Monroe had felt a deep swell of both pride and possessiveness at being able to inflict the smallest bit of punishment on Noah were all conspiring to make her feel so, so confused.

Still, Monroe wasn’t going to give a voice to any of that.

She couldn’t.

Instead, she turned back toward the counter so that she could get bowls down from the cabinet. “I don’t know that I’d ever hear the end of it from Maisie if we didn’t.”

The movie they’d watched had a sequel. Monroe had a sneaking suspicion that Maisie had already known that when she’d suggested it.

Because who just watched the first one?

Maisie had gamely fought her tiredness through the double feature, but she’d given in about twenty minutes ago and was now nestled between them on the sofa.

The end credits started to roll.

Night had finally descended, though Monroe was pretty sure the last wisps of sunset were still visible along the horizon.

She had a stomach full of soup that was better than anything she’d ever cooked, a sleepy five-year-old who finally seemed to be on the right medication regimen, and . . .

Monroe looked toward Blake, who was already looking at her.

Just like she had when they’d been sitting in the pickup bed last weekend, while they watched the fireworks.

Monroe wondered dimly whether Blake was silently trying to communicate with her, but if she was, Monroe had no idea what she was saying.

Because it was impossible that they were having the same thoughts. Ones where Monroe reached over and ghosted her fingers along Blake’s jaw, knowing how soft it would be.

Or that Blake felt the same sense of . . . yearning, that was the word Monroe finally settled on, thinking about how she sometimes felt when she saw beautiful works of art.

Monroe didn’t yearn over people.

Yearning implied longing, which was something she didn’t allow herself to do. She either fixed her problems or she didn’t, and no amount of wanting something badly enough had ever changed that.

So maybe she didn’t know exactly what to call the thing that was drawing her so strongly toward Blake, but she also didn’t know how to keep fighting it either.

Blake gave her a sleepy smile and dropped her head back against the sofa. “Your furniture is unbelievably comfortable.”

“Trying to angle for another invite?” Monroe shouldn’t have said that, and in the wake of the comment, she leaned her own head back in anticipatory shame, looking up toward the ceiling.

She was both surprised and relieved that Blake ignored the question. She turned her head to the side to face Monroe, who did the same. “Your impressive dunk tank skills were the talk of the garage this week.”

“Should I lay low? I’m not sure when the ‘wanted’ posters are going to be put up.”