Page 95

Me:Sure.

Ezra:Good. I’m outside your door.

I sit up straight to eye my closed apartment door, gaping at it for only a second before scrambling off my couch and rushing across the room to wrench it open. And he’s there, just like he said, dressed in jeans and a heathered Yankees T-shirt and leaning on my doorframe with his phone still in his hand.

“What if I’d said I was busy?”

He shrugs one shoulder, his mouth quirking. “Then I would have left.”

“This is all very Joe fromYou.”

“I don’t need to stalk you,” he teases, his eyes glinting. “You like having me around too much.”

I roll my eyes, but I can’t help the flicker of a grin that forms. “Whatever. Come in then.”

He steps past me as I close and lock the door behind him; he moves in my space as if it belongs to him. He plops down on my couch with a sigh, turning his head to look at me from over the back and patting the cushion beside him. “Come on. I won’t bite.”

I move to join him slowly, sinking down into the couch cushion a good distance away from where he gestured, only for him to reach and pull me into his side.

“Nope,” he says. “None of that. We’re cuddling tonight.”

I frown even as I surreptitiously breathe in the scent of his cologne, which clings to his shirt. “Are we?”

“Yep.” His arm curls around my shoulders. “You’re going to tell me about your day.”

“You know about my day. I saw you five hours ago.”

“Well, tell me everything else.”

Seems like a silly exercise to me, but his thumb that has begun to trace the soft skin of my upper arm is distracting, and I find myself leaning further into him, getting comfortable.

“Nate and Vera cornered me in my office this morning,” I tell him.

“And how did that go?”

“About as well as I expected,” I snort. “Nate is already planning the wedding.”

“Wow, your friends must really want the best for you then.”

I poke him in the side, and he chuckles as he squirms away. “Vera thinks it’s a bad idea, I can tell.”

“Doyouthink it’s a bad idea?”

I hesitate, thinking. His thumb pauses in its slow back-and-forth on my skin, only resuming its path when I speak again.

“I think that Ishouldthink it’s a bad idea,” I admit.

He releases a breath. “But you don’t?”

“No.” My brow furrows. “Or maybe I do, but I’m just too tired to keep pretending I don’t want it anyway.”

“ ‘It’ being me, yeah?”

I can hear the smile in his voice without even looking at him. “I’m not feeding your ego. It’s already as huge as your cat.”

“Big as other things too,” he says slyly.

“That was awful,” I groan.