Page 96

I dropped my fork and it fell onto the floor.

“What?” I asked, my stomach dropping along with the fork.

“Just think about it,” Reid said. “Just for a moment. It’s not going to kill you.

“It might,” I snapped, my heart suddenly racing. “Ever heard of Romeo and Juliet?”

“Hunter, they’re fictional,” Cade said gently.

“I fucking know that!” Okay, I was losing it.

Cade put a hand on my shoulder. “I just asked you to consider it. Breathe.”

I didn’t want to breathe. I wanted to run away from all the feelings crashing into each other in my head. Too many feelings for one person to have. I’d never wanted them. Never wanted this.

“Maybe I’m just high on the sex,” I said, and I knew how silly that sounded.

“I don’t think it’s just sex,” Reid said gently. They were both looking at me as if I was going to throw my salad on the floor and start screaming and tearing my hair out.

While that course of action had its appeal, I didn’t want to clean up the mess afterward.

“Well, fuck,” I said, staring into my salad. “How the hell did this happen?”

Cade and Reid shared another look.

“It just kind of happens sometimes. And before you know it, you’re in the middle of it,” Cade said. She would know.

I blew out a breath. “She did say she was going to seduce me. So I guess I should have seen this coming. She told me she was going to make me hers. I guess I thought I could resist.” Resist those dimples? I’d been a complete and utter fool.

“I shouldn’t have had sex with her.”

“But you did. Sex can change everything,” Cade said. Again, she was speaking from personal experience. A lesson I should have heeded. Why hadn’t I listened to my own rules that I’d made when I was a kid? I’d repeated them so many times to myself. I’d thought I could bend them and they wouldn’t break.

And now here I was. In love with Katrina Stacey.

Even if I threw everyone’s salads on the ground and broke every window in my apartment and screamed until my throat was raw, it wouldn’t change the fact that was definitely in love with Stace.

“I didn’t want sex to change everything,” I whined.

“Too late, kid,” Reid said and, if I didn’t know better, I would have said that she was enjoying this.

I grabbed the pillow from behind my back and screamed into it. Cade rubbed my back.

“It’s gonna be okay. Being in love isn’t that bad. Promise.”

I screamed into the pillow again.

I let myself into Stace’s apartment and dropped the bags of groceries I’d hauled up the stairs. She’d be back from work in about a half an hour and she was going to be hungry so I was making her dinner. It was just a simple chicken dinner with pasta that I’d seen online. The fact that it was called Marry Me Chicken was irrelevant. That wasn’t why I’d picked it.

I filled a pot with water to make the pasta and set it on the stove.

When I’d first come over to Stace’s, I’d said that her place was warm, and I hadn’t been lying. Her place was like her. I guess I loved it too.

“Fuck!” I yelled when I got one of my fingers too close to the burner. I quickly ran it under cold water and pulled out the first aid kit that I knew lived under the sink. Stace was the kind of woman who had first aid kits in nearly every room. I put some ointment on my finger and then a band aid. She could fuss over it later.

Stace’s key rattled in the door just as I was simmering the chicken on the stove. I’d also made a quick side salad.

“Hey, baby,” she said, beaming and making my heart pound and my knees go weak.