Page 31 of 500 First Editions (The Romantics #3)

RYAN

THE RUBBER CHICKEN INTERROGATION

“ T here’s no shame in telling them you don’t feel up to it,” I said as I slid into the bathroom at the rental and braced my hands on the sink, trapping Willow between my arms. She had left the door open, so I didn’t feel like I was intruding.

Willow looked up into the mirror with her toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, and met my gaze. But she didn’t say anything, just finished brushing her teeth.

“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked when she had finished.

After the funeral, Willow went to lunch with Wander and Whitney while I tackled some work. When she came home, she skipped dinner and went straight to bed. I joined her sometime around midnight, pulling her into my arms the way I did every night and holding her until dawn.

At some point, I had stopped trying to be right, and started trying to win. There was a vast difference between the two. I could admit that daring her to let me make her fall in love was half interest and half career preservation.

Now, I didn’t give two shits about getting her endorsement for my course, or publicly besting her.

I wanted her in my bed every night. I wanted to travel the country with her. I wanted to hold her hand through wins and losses.

And I hadn’t even kissed her.

“Last night it finally hit me that he’s gone,” she said as she ran a washcloth under the faucet to wash her face. “Sorry. I didn’t feel like staying up.”

“You never have to apologize to me.”

Her hands froze, letting the water pour and pour until the washcloth was completely drenched. But she didn’t make a move to cut it off. “It didn’t feel real until yesterday.”

“Come here,” I said as I turned the water off, took the washcloth out of her hands, and pulled her into my arms.

Willow nearly collapsed into my chest as silent sobs shook her shoulders. “I’m so tired of crying,” she whimpered between hoarse breaths.

Slowly, I lowered us to the cool tile floor and cradled her in my lap. “You don’t have to be,” I said as I brushed tear-soaked strands of hair away from her face. “Cry all you want. It doesn’t scare me. I love that you feel things so deeply.”

“I hate it,” she admitted. “I wish I was more like Whitney. She keeps it together all the time.”

“I think people who embrace their emotions have the most vibrant and full lives. And yeah—when it hurts, it hurts. But I see how deeply you love and care for people and how much you work to keep yourself open to feeling their love in return. That’s not nothing, Wills.

It takes a strong person to stay soft.” I cupped her cheek. “I really admire that about you.”

Willow’s eyelids lowered, dimming the mossy green into a deep forest. “Thank you. I’m really glad you’re here.”

“You willing to put your name on that statement?” I teased in a murmur as I kissed the top of her head.

“Jackass,” she grumbled as she wiped her eyes.

I chuckled. “Gotta keep you guessing.”

But Willow didn’t play the game. Instead, she tucked her head beneath my chin and closed her eyes.

“If you don’t feel up to the girls coming over, I can be the bad guy and make them leave so you can have some space.”

Willow shook her head. “I want to see them. I’m just . . . I’m having a moment. That’s all.”

“Can I have the rest of them?”

Seven words slipped out of my mouth before I had thought better of it. I expected fear paralysis to startle me. I expected to feel like I was going to vomit.

But my pulse stayed steady, and the urge to run was nowhere to be found. I was fairly certain if I had been strapped to a polygraph machine that the test administrator wouldn’t have even batted an eye.

Because I had told the truth.

I wasn’t entirely sure that Willow had heard me, because she didn’t make a peep.

“Have you eaten this morning?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to make sure she was aware of her own needs. It was easy to let them get buried in grief.

“I had coffee.”

“Coffee isn’t food,” I countered.

“That’s an irreconcilable difference. We’re entirely incompatible. There’s no saving this.”

I chuckled. “Finish getting ready and I’ll make you some breakfast before Wander and Whitney get here.”

Slowly, I helped Willow to her feet and made sure she was steady before heading to the kitchen.

I had just pulled down the canister of oatmeal when I heard a rustling behind me. “How do you take your oatmeal? Milk and sugar? Butter?”

I turned to get her answer, but everything went black.

Whatever was over my head smelled like a dead rodent. Had I been drugged? Why was it so muggy? The little bit of air that slipped into the heavy cloth bag over my head was laced with rancid grease.

I flexed my hands and twisted my wrists, but they were bound at my side.

What. The. Hell.

This was Kansas, not Whitney West’s dark romance books.

The moment I shifted on the unforgiving metal chair, someone ripped the cloth bag off of my head from behind.

I blinked and squinted as diffused daylight poured in from dust-covered windows on either side of me. A bright light flashed in front of me, immediately blinding me.

“Well, well, well . . . He’s awake,” the familiar voice said in a gleefully sinister tone.

My attention blearily turned to the shadowy figure sitting about four or five feet away. I blinked away the daze from having been drugged or incapacitated and tried to figure out what the fuck was going on, but a light was shining directly into my eyes, obscuring whoever had done this.

Great. I had gotten kidnapped before I made Willow breakfast. God only knows that meant she wouldn’t eat until midnight . . . or whenever I escaped. Frankly, I was more fearful of her being hangry than whatever was going on here.

I had no idea if all the movies and TV shows were telling the truth or not, but I wasn’t speaking until I absolutely had to.

“You might be wondering what you’re doing here,” the man said, intentionally trying to sound like a maniacal villain. “You might think we intend to harm you.”

We. So there was more than one of them, which made sense given the direction the kidnapper hood was yanked off my head.

“I’ll give you a hint. We don’t plan on harming you. Answer our questions, and we’ll put you right back where we found you. Simple as that.”

I could feel a looming presence behind me, but didn’t want to turn and take my eyes off the guy behind the light.

“But I’m sure you have questions of your own, so I’ll let you go first. Ask whatever you want to know.”

I thought about holding out a little longer, but I wanted to get back to Willow. “Did you drug me?”

I thought it was a reasonable question, but apparently it was ridiculous enough that the guy burst into laughter. He dropped the light—a cell phone flashlight—as he leaned back in his chair and howled.

Well, that answered my second question. The man sitting across from me was Miles Zhou, Whitney’s husband. Which meant the large human behind me was?—

“Nah. He wanted to, but I said no to drugs,” Jack said as he rounded the chair and crossed his arms.

“Who needs drugs when you have hugs?” Miles quipped as he propped a Croc-ed foot on top of his knee. “And by hugs, I mean a rear naked choke. You were a worthy opponent. Kind of.”

Willow had told me about Miles, and how he and Whitney fell in love when he was her bodyguard. But I knew him as a champion MMA fighter.

But the guy sitting in front of me wearing rubber duck swim trunks, neon Crocs, and holding a rubber chicken, was a far cry from the Octagon badass everyone knew.

At least Willow wasn’t in danger. She was probably with the girls.

I looked down at my hands and spotted the zip ties tying my wrists to the legs of the chair. “Was that really necessary?”

Miles shrugged. “Some people get punchy when they come to.”

“Well, yeah. You?—”

“All right,” he said, snapping into a stern voice. “Your time to ask questions is up. Now I get to do the asking. What are your intentions with Willow?”

Jack peered down at me and huffed. “Seriously, dude. Just answer the questions so we can get out of here.”

I looked around and realized that there was a floor to ceiling plastic playground behind me. “Where are we?”

“An abandoned Burger Palace,” Miles said.

“I’m sorry.” I huffed. “You kidnapped me and broke into an abandoned Burger Palace so you could interrogate me about my intentions with your wife’s friend?”

Before I could blink, Miles lunged forward and smacked me across the face with the rubber chicken. It let out a pathetic wheezing squawk.

“What the hell, man?” I exclaimed as I blinked away the shock. “Tell me you did not find that rubber chicken here.”

I didn’t even want to think about what had been growing on it over the twenty-something years that it looked like this place had been vacant.

Miles scoffed. “First of all, Willow is my friend. Second, don’t insult me. Of course I travel with my own rubber chicken. I’m not an amateur.”

“And we didn’t break in,” Jack said. “The door was unlocked.”

“Let’s get down to business,” Miles said as he sat back in his chair, tapping the chicken’s head on his open palm. “What are your intentions with Willow?”

I huffed and looked at the dust clouds that stretched across the playground equipment. “To get to know her.” It was as close to the truth as I could admit, and it wouldn’t scare her if Miles told her what I had said.

The chicken let out a little squeak as Miles tapped his hand exceptionally hard. “Pop quiz. Your girl is crying and you don’t know why. Do you: A—Ignore her and wait for it to pass before you talk it out? B—Ask her why she’s crying? C—Sit with her and tell her it’ll be okay?”

Relationship questions? This was my bread and butter. Easy peasy. “C. Sit with her and tell her?—”

That fucking chicken smacked me in the face again with an insulting squawk.

“Wrong,” Miles barked. “The correct answer is tacos.”

I looked at Jack for help, but he just raised his hands in defense. “I’m no help. At least it’s just a rubber chicken. I got dick-slapped across the face with a dildo. I had a ball bruise.”

Small mercies.

Miles sat with the calm facade of a therapist and tapped steepled fingers together. “Next question. True or false: Whitney, Willow, and Wander are friends.”

I knew it was a trick question; I just didn’t know how.

“False?” I guessed.

He squeezed the chicken, making it bok-BOK loudly in my ear. “True. With a caveat. They’re long distance best friends, which means they share more with each other than regular in-person friends. There is no TMI with them. Your sex life will be discussed at length. Are you okay with that?”

“Considering Willow and I aren’t having sex, I’d say yeah. I’m fine with that.”

Jack chuckled. “Just because you’re not having sex doesn’t mean it’s not being discussed.”

Wait . . . Did he know something I didn’t know?

Did Willow want to have sex? She had made it pretty clear from the start that she wanted nothing to do with me and was just tolerating our proximity to undo her snafu.

Even though we had only been “together” for a month, I had been taking things slow.

I didn’t want to complicate things with sex if it was going to end in two months.

But I also didn’t want it to end in two months.

“Has Wander said something to you about Willow?—”

The chicken came out of nowhere, smacking my cheek with a wheeze. “Rule number 52 of being a friend group husband. Spousal privilege is a thing.”

“That wasn’t a question,” I said as my skin stung. “And I’m not her spouse.” Yet.

Jack’s hand landed on my shoulder. “It means the girls get together and shit talk, then come home and tell us all the gossip. But it stays between you and your partner. You get to know, but you don’t get to shit talk about it with others. Even us.”

Miles stood and started pacing in front of my chair.

“Last question. Your girl is mad at you and you don’t know why.

Option one: do you ask her what you did wrong and apologize?

Option two: ask me and the hunky firefighter what our ladies are saying.

Or option three: diffuse the tension with a date night and flowers, and address it later? ”

“The answer is tacos, isn’t it?”

Miles smacked me in the face with the chicken as it let out one last dying bok- BOK . “Wrong. The answer is tacos and margaritas.”