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The declaration has me spinning to look at her, a thick lump forming in my throat. “Oh, yeah?” She lets out an affirmative “mm-hmm.” “Well, what about today?”

“Today I’m back to finding you annoying as hell!”

My smile grows with each annoyed thump her feet make on the stairs as she heads to her office. Seconds later, I hear the door close. Shaking my head, I head up the same stairs to get up to the gym for my workout. When I reach the top, I have to cross through the common area to get to the gym, and she is peeking up at me out of the fringe that’s fallen in her face. Her cheeks turn bright red when I give her a wink.

Yeah, frenemies can be fun.

I laugh loudly when Katrina turns to glare at Carter. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know!” He scrambles to look at the cards laid out on the table, actively looking for some kind of clue into his own potential future actions before giving me a panicked look. “Mia, why would you tell her that?”

Laughing, I gather the cards, the offending Five of Wands the last to be picked up. “Do you think I have any say in what cards are going to show up? Besides, it doesn’t mean somethingwillhappen, just suggests there could be disagreement or tension in this situation.”

“Besides, even if it does come true, it doesn’t mean you’re the one who will mess up, dude,” Bryce comforts. “It could just as easily be Katrina.”

Kat crosses her arms over her chest with a scowl. “What makes you think it’ll be me?”

Bryce holds his hands up in defense. “See, this is why group tarot readings are dangerous. It’s bad enough when Josie does her own and ends up scowling at me but never tells me why.”

“I can’t believe any of you are taking this seriously.”

We all turn to face Ronan, who has been silently watching the whole exchange from the corner of the kitchen. It hadn’t been lost on me the way he kept his distance, with a look of uncertainty directed at the cards, like the deck could curse him from afar or something.

“What? You don’t believe in having your future read?”

“No, Katrina, I don’t.” He pushes off the counter, but then his steps falter when I start shuffling the cards. I bite back a smile. “It’s not realistic to think a deck of cards can give you any insight into what’s coming next.”

Bryce is shaking his head before Ronan even finishes his sentence. “Hey, man, I don’t know if I believe in it all, but I know Josie’s been doing this since before we got back together. And I spent enough time at her apartment back in Omaha to know that between the tarot cards and the friendly ghost who lived there, to learn there are definitely things out of our depth of understanding.”

“We don’t know if I had a friendly ghost for sure,” Josie protests.

Bryce gives her an unimpressed look. “My shoes moved overnight, babe. As I recall, we were too busy with other activities to do it ourselves. You tell me how they ended up neatly lined up by the door.”

“Your apartment was definitely haunted,” I tell Josie before turning to Ronan. “And you are being extremely closed minded.”

He gives a casual shrug, then sits at the barstool Kat just freed up across from me, eyes tracking my every movement while I shuffle the deck. “I think we’re in charge of our own destiny, and using something like tarot cards helps us make excuses for our own shortcomings.”

“Oh, shit,” Bryce mutters under his breath. “They were starting to get along.”

I tilt my head as I look at Ronan, saying, “That’s pessimistic. The cards aren’t meant to be excuses; they’re meant to help amplify the voice within that you should already be listening to.”

“What kind of voice is that?” He smirks, tone teasing. “My heart?”

“Ew, no.” I make a face. “Your intuition. Most of the questions asked in tarot readings are things you already know the answer to. The cards help you trust your gut.”

“Yet it told Kat she’d have a small spat with her boyfriend in the future. How do the cards know what to say about my future?”

“She asked for a past, present, future spread based on her love life. The goal in this kind of spread is to help sort out your priorities. It doesn’t mean they’ll fight five minutes or years from now, but it is a reminder to not let something simmer under the surface,” I explain. “The longer you let agitation simmer, the more likely it is to blow up in your face and be worse. Maybe one of them has picked up a new habit that the other finds annoying, but if they don’t talk about it soon, it could blow up.”

“Oh, my god.” Kat gasps, spinning to face Carter. “She’s right, youhavepicked up a new habit. You haven’t been closing the drawer on the dresser all the way. Dust is getting on the clothes; I keep tripping over it and getting things snagged. It’s been really annoying.”

He blinks, a small frown on his face. “I didn’t even notice I’ve been doing that. I’ll try to be better about it.”

Leaning back in my seat, I motion to our friends like they just proved my point. Mainly because they had.

Ronan, however, is not convinced. “You could have planned that or, at the very least, you put the idea in her head, and she went searching for something.”

“Okay, now I’m getting offended,” I reply, setting the cards down. “How could I have planned to pull that exact card? How could I even know something petty like that could be bothering Kat?”