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“If you can. I’m going to the gym with Mike later. I won’t be home. Just go in.”

“Okay. I have to get you your shirt back. I need to wash it.”

“Whenever.”

There was a tiny moment where neither of us said anything.

I wondered if he knew what Mike had just told me. Did Mike hang up with me and call his best friend and tell him? Ask him for advice?

If he did, Chris didn’t let on.

“I’ll let you go,” Chris said.

“Okay. Right. Bye.”

We hung up and I stood there, chewing on the side of my thumb.

Lexi spoke from behind me and scared the crap out of me. “Admit it, you sniffed his shirt.”

I spun with a hand on my chest. “Lexi—STOP.”

“I will not stop.”

I drew in a long, steadying breath.

“Finish your side work so we can leave,” I said, giving her my back so I could be done with my salt and pepper shakers and go home.

Thankfully she dropped it.

That information could not be tortured out of me. Also, yes. I did smell the shirt—but only because I had to breathe when I took it off. It happened on accident.

But I did like the way it smelled.

And you couldn’t torture that out of me either.

11

CHRIS

I threw my gym bag into the bed of Mike’s truck and got into the front seat. Jesse was in the back.

I looked at Mike. “I thought it was just us.”

“What, you two on a date or something?” Jesse said, hitting me on the shoulder.

Mike laughed.

I’d been trying to talk to Mike since the park thing a week ago. He was avoiding me. He texted me for the gym this morning and I assumed he was ready to explain to me why he’d been so drunk he launched Larissa and me on an eleven-mile hike, but apparently this wasn’t that.

Mike put his arm around the back of my seat to talk to Jesse. “We’re starting with cardio and we’re doing interval training. There’s gonna be all-outs, then we hit the weights.” He looked at me. “It’s leg day. You two don’t bitch out on me.”

“No bitching out,” I mumbled. “Got it.”

“I do need to be able to walk tomorrow,” Jesse said.

“No, you don’t.”

Jesse smirked.