Page 19 of Sunflower Persona (Classic City Romance #2)

Kori

L oud shouts and intense banter bleed into the hallway.

If I wasn’t sure which unit was James and Morgan’s, I would be now.

The words are muffled, but it’s clear things are getting heated.

It’s probably nonsense anyway; from what I saw the other night, I think bickering is their love language.

At least that diverts attention away from me.

I swallow against my growing nerves and knock before I can back out. The bickering inside stops, and after a few seconds of silence, the door opens.

“Kori, glad you could make it.” Morgan’s face is flushed, and his frazzled eyes dart between me and the scene behind him even as he greets me.

It’s a Renaissance painting come to life.

Karis and Nathan are frozen in place in a heap on the floor.

His head is trapped between her legs, and she’s reaching for something he’s holding in the air above her.

James watches it all from a perch on the back of the couch, and Evelyn is sprawled on the cushions, cuddling with a huge German shepherd.

The only person not actively involved in their chaos is Gage, which isn’t surprising, considering he seems to be the referee for their shenanigans.

He’s a few feet behind our host, leaning against the kitchen island, and unlike his friend, his attention is fully locked on me.

A ball of glowing heat forms under the intensity of his gaze.

Dragging my eyes away from him takes physical effort, leaving me with the same type of breathlessness I felt after the brutal warm-up he inflicted on me this morning.

“Looks like I missed out on the fun,” I say, ignoring the pounding in my chest.

Nathan glances in my direction, and Karis takes advantage of his distraction to roll him to his back and yank whatever he’s holding out of his hand.

“New girl, you made it,” Karis cheers as she pops up off the floor with the grace of a cat.

With that, the room comes to life again. James shoos the dog off the couch and drops onto one of the plush seats beside her friend, Karis claims the spot on Evelyn’s other side, and Morgan moves to join his girlfriend, leaving me standing uncomfortably in the doorway.

Gage gives me a half smile and beckons me inside with a tilt of his head. That look sends my heart into a fluttering tailspin. That bitch is out of control. We just decided we weren’t going to do this anymore.

“Welcome to the nuthouse,” he says as I join him near the kitchen. “If at any point you decide you’ve had enough, blink twice and I’ll get you out of here.”

“Stop trying to scare her away. We promised we would be on our best behavior,” Nathan says as he pulls himself off the floor and heads in our direction.

“If what I walked in on is your best behavior, I’m scared to see what bad looks like,” I tease.

I’m not sure where the boldness came from.

It probably has something to do with spending my afternoon being forced out of my comfort zone.

Gage snorts, and his playful friend shoots me a mischievous grin and a wink.

As he moves closer, those playful features disappear, and his eyes make a quick pass over my body in the same assessing way Gage’s did this morning.

Whatever he finds must be satisfactory, because he lets out a deep breath and his smile returns, softer than before.

“I’m really glad you could make it,” he says as he pulls me into a one-armed hug.

I stiffen under the unexpected contact, but it doesn’t last long. His arm is jerked away from me, and Gage is there, glaring at his friend.

“Hands off,” he growls.

“Sorry. My bad. Don’t need to go all caveman on me, man.”

“I’m not super big on touch,” I tell him with a grimace.

“Noted. Won’t happen again. Sentiment stands, though. It’s good to see you again.”

I give him an awkward smile and inch closer to Gage.

How do you even respond to something like that?

Say thank you? You too? Is this one of those drive-thru situations where the cashier says “Enjoy your meal” and then I say “Thanks, you too,” and then we both look at each other awkwardly until I drive away?

Because that’s what it feels like. Thankfully, Evelyn, being the saint she is, cuts in before I make a fool of myself.

“What are we playing tonight?” she asks in a soft voice.

“I won back at Cutter’s, so technically, it’s my pick, but I think Kori should get to choose,” James says.

“Pick Risk,” Nathan says with a smirk.

A pillow flies across the room and smacks into his face as he turns back toward the couch. James lets out an excited cackle as the weapon finds its mark. Morgan shakes his head, but there’s nothing but pure adoration on his face.

She turns her attention to me and, with a syrupy-sweet southern draw, says, “Pick anything but Risk.”

“Or Scrabble,” Karis adds in.

“Ignore them.” Gage’s voice rumbles in my ear.

Fuck me, I didn’t realize how close he had gotten. It’s insane how quietly a man his size can move.

His hand drops to hover against my back, not quite touching but close enough that my skin tingles with awareness, and he guides me over to a bookcase filled with games.

“Pick from this shelf.” He points to the one with the least number of boxes.

“What’s wrong with those?” I gesture to the shelf below it that’s overflowing.

“Those are either broken or banned.”

“Banned? Why?”

“Between James, Karis, and Nathan, things can get…intense.”

“But Twister?” I ask.

“Morgan pulled a muscle.”

“Monopoly?”

“Karis and James held us hostage until well after 2 a.m. while they battled it out.”

“That weird Arkham game?”

“Too many rules. We never even played that one.”

“Okay, that all makes sense, but what about Hungry Hungry Hippos?”

That one brings a visible cringe to Gage’s stony face.

“That’s why it became the ‘broken and banned’ shelf. Karis got too into it and broke the handle off her hippo. That plastic was wicked sharp and cut her hand pretty bad. I spent the rest of that night with her in the ER of St. Mary’s while she got it stitched up.”

“She’s lucky to have a friend like you,” I tell him, but that bit of information isn’t the least bit surprising. Not after the way he took care of me.

“I’m the lucky one. I don’t think I’d be here right now if I didn’t have her to talk me off the ledge when things get bad.

” A dark cloud rolls in, overtaking his features and twisting them with stormy despair.

The change is brief. As quickly as it came, the cloud is blown away by a sharp gust of wind, leaving a stoic, empty look in its place.

“She can be a real pain in my ass, though,” he says with an awkward chuckle that doesn’t lighten the load of his confession.

As much as I want to know more, this isn’t the time or place to push the issue.

There are too many options, so I grab our hostess’s pick and take Pictionary back to the group.

“Oh, you guys are so going down,” James says with glee when she sees the box in my hand.

“If you are so confident, we get Kori, then,” Karis says.

“Get Kori for what?” I ask.

“Our team. James, Morgan, and Evelyn vs. me, Gage, Nathan, and now you.”

“Oh.”

“Does this mean I can bring Sophie next time to even out the teams?” Nathan asks.

“Who?” Morgan asks.

“The girl I’ve been seeing.”

“Fuck no,” Karis interjects. “And don’t pretend it won’t be a different chick by the time we do this again.”

“Yes, you can bring a date,” James says, glaring at Karis. “It will even out the teams, and I don’t want y’all trying to dispute your losses due to ‘fairness.’”

Nathan and Karis continue to bicker as James removes herself from Morgan’s hold and retrieves a large pad of paper and an easel from somewhere down the hall.

“Dang, they take this seriously,” I murmur mostly to myself.

“Yes, they do,” Gage says, materializing behind me again—this time with two kitchen chairs in tow. “And James is an artist, so we are almost certainly going to get our asses kicked.”

He sets the seats down across from the others, with only a short few inches between them, and settles on a chair, arms crossed in front of his chest in a way that makes the thick bands of muscles in his forearms pop. My mouth goes dry at the sight. Goddamn, this man is on another level.

“Do you need something?” Gage asks, and I jerk my gaze away from him and drop it to the floor.

“Um…No…I’m sorry.” If the ground could open and swallow me now, that would be great.

“You sure? Not even a water? James normally offers. I think we threw her off her game.”

Oh .

The snare that wrapped itself around my lungs loosens. That was an actual question, not some dig at me checking him out.

“Water would be nice, actually,” I tell him with a tentative smile.

He makes a sound of acknowledgment and goes into the kitchen to get me a drink.

When he returns, he puts the glass of ice water on a coaster on the coffee table and sprawls out in the chair beside me.

His knee brushes against mine, and my body jolts as if I was a marionette whose strings were pulled tight by some unseen puppeteer.

Gage’s touch is gone in an instant, and his attention tilts in my direction.

The smallest hint of a frown playing at the corners of his lips.

I want to say something. Tell him he merely shocked me and that his touch was more than welcomed, but I don’t get a chance before Karis’s voice cuts through the air.

“So who’s up first?”

***

“How the fuck is that supposed to be a toothbrush,” Karis shouts at Nathan as another round passes without our team scoring any points.

“What do you mean? That part is a tooth, and this is a brush,” he shouts back as he gestures to the unintelligible scribbles as if that would give them any sort of shape.