Page 137 of Wild Like Us

I spin the postcard rack but look at her. “I’ve had friends who I ended up dating, but no friend has been like you. I’ve had vestedinterest in your wellbeing for so long, Sul. It’s just a different feeling. More…intense.”

Can’t live without her.

She spins the rack now. “Do you think it’d be easy for you to just go back to being friends with me?”

I tense.

Is she already breaking up with me?

And before I can respond, she says, “Because sometimes I feel like I’m waiting for you to change your mind at any time. Like you could just pull that switch and go back to how things were with us.”

My stomach plummets. I don’t want Sulli to feel like I could rip a rug out from under her. To press rewind. It devastates me even imagining myself doing that to her.

Am I capable of it?

Yeah.

To her?

No.

But I can’t blame her for feeling this way when I kept asserting how our friendship was just that. Friendship. Written in cement. Carved in marble. Etched in the center of the Earth.

“I’mnotgoing to pull that switch,” I say from my core. “I promise you, Sulli. I don’t just want to be your friend.”

Her green eyes smile before her lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “And it’s not snowing, so this can’t be a dream.”

“Have you had one of those in a while?” she wonders, looking more concerned.

“Actually, no,” I admit. Now that I think about it, the last one was the night before the cougar attack.

Her brows rise, just as surprised as I am. She opens her mouth to reply, but Chuck returns with three shopping bags filled with containers of live crickets. They’re loud as shit. He shows us the self-checkout pad, then trots to the back.

Sulli refuses to let me pay. “It’s my idea.”

I still have my wallet out. “I can put this on my business card.”

“How does this relate to your security firm?”

“It relates to you,” I remind her.

“No,” she snaps. “I have money.” From her trust fund. And she contends, “You’d never put up a fight before.”

“That’s because you weren’t my girlfriend before.” The wordgirlfriendcomes out, and I eat another bowl of Instant Regret. Because I feel bad forBanks.

What is this guilt?

I wish I didn’t care that much about his feelings in all of this, but I can’t shut it off.

Sulli looks thunderstruck.

“I meant date,” I correct. “I’m dating you, and I wouldn’t let a date pay.”

“Is this a date?” she starts to smile.

“A casual one,” I nod. Definitely not what I’d do on a normal date.Buy crickets for revenge. But Sullivan Meadows is an American princess, so I never thought this would be normal.