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“You’re as subtle as a Texas tornado. I could hear you doing whatever the hell it is you were doing up here, and even before that, I saw your hair through the banister.”

Fffff …

I roll over onto my back, prop myself up on my elbows, and volley it back, adding a dramatic brow arch, “Yeah, well, why are you letting Skinner think there’s something going on with us?”

He plops his ass on the end of my bed then bends down. “Yeah, you don’t win that one,” he says as he turns and hands me my phone.

“Those bitches,” I hiss when I see dozens of eggplants and fire emojis, and worse than that.

“My bad. I thought the group name was Team KOLO.”

“That’s them, not me,” I defend.

“You telling me you didn’t tell them?” he asks, back toward me.

“Hell no. Iz would have opened Blue Valley Pub just to print an announcement.”

I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pushes up to stand. “Any chance you have a phone charger I can borrow?”

I slide off the bed. “Yeah, follow me.”

I walk out the door and back toward the stairs, into the spare room. “It’s small, but the bed is apparently?—”

“Comfy?” comes from behind, with a hot breath hitting my ear in a way that makes my spine tingle.

I clear my throat, put some distance between us, and open the nightstand drawer. “Iz and Mags stay over a lot.”

“As in, team KOLO?”

I ignore him. “There are a bunch of cords in here.” I pull the one out I think will work, hand it back to him, and shut the drawer.

“Thank you,Lo.”

I don’t mean to let the way he saysLosettle as deep inside me as his voice goes, but it does, and it … pulls at something I now know can snap.

“I think you should leave before our one-night stand becomes a two-night?—”

“Why?” I turn and look up at him.

“I’m married.”

I swallow back the lump in my throat, pull from all that Jade Brooks confidence my DNA holds, and tell him the truth. “You haven’t been married since you came here.”

His lips twitch, and he says, “Sixty-eight plus one—you claimed me before I ever walked into room three twenty-four.”

“It was three twenty-three, same as my locker senior year, and I never hid that fact. You’re the one who swerved at that team party.”

“Not how I’m remembering it. I recall you took off when you heard someone coming. I’m not slow at catching cues. I was about to become a dirty little secret.”

“That’s not?—”

“Then I overheard you and Hart talking about a one-night stand you had with him, and I don’t play that game.”

I try again, “That’s not?—”

And he cuts me off … again.

“This is something that could get messy and?—”