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“Is Caroline there?” the woman yells. “Put her on now, you lumpatious asshole!”
“Happily, if it means I get to stop talking to you!” He shoves the phone at me and stalks out of the room, muttering under his breath.
“Uh… hi, Leilani. It’s me, Casey.”
“Oh, she’s with you.”
I cringe and share an awkward look with Caroline. She rolls her eyes, and I hand her the phone. She turns it off speaker and presses it to her ear.
“Hey. Everything cool?” Her face turns a bright pink as her roommate talks to her in staccato. I can hear the snappy beat from here. “Yeah, I’m sorry. My phone was in my coat pocket, so I didn’t hear any of your texts… No! We were playing video games…” Her gaze darts to me, her cheeks going redder than her hair. “Yes, that’s all we were doing… I’m safe, okay? You don’t need to freak out. You’re not my mother.” She closes her eyes with a sigh. “And I appreciate that. I really do. I’ll come back now, okay? We can have dinner together.” After a few more nods and a mumbled goodbye, Caroline hangs up. “Well, I’m gonna go.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“Actually, I might walk. I need the exercise, and it’ll give Lani a chance to cool down.” She winces.
“She seemed really riled.” I mirror her expression.
She brushers her fingers through the air as she tries to downplay it. “She was just worried. She’s really a great person once you get to know her. She can just come across as a little prickly sometimes, but I swear she’s really cool.”
“Okay.” I nod, then point my thumb at the doorway Asher disappeared through. “He can be an uptight prick as well, but he’s one of my best friends, so… you put up with shit, right?”
“Yeah.” She smiles at me, then dips her chin. “Hey, uh… thanks for a fun afternoon.”
“Anytime.” I stay where I am behind the couch, because I’m pretty sure if I go anywhere near her right now, I’m gonna want to bury my tongue inside her mouth while running my hands all over her curvaceous body, and then she’ll never get back to her stressed-out roommate.
Images of our one night together flash through me, and I have to spin away, slump onto the couch, and let her leave Hockey House without a proper goodbye.
Fuck.
I run my hands through my hair with a groan and flop back against the cushions.
I’ve heard that expression “sweet torture” before. I think this is exactly what it feels like.
CHAPTER 15
CAROLINE
I was right about the walk being good for me and Lani.
By the time I get back, she’s sitting on her bed smiling. We talk about my afternoon and hers. She checked out a large stack of books at the library. Half of them are for me, because Lani’s like that, you know? She never just thinks about herself, which is why I’m now surrounded by fantasy novels, a fluffy rom-com, and a heavy-looking historical fiction. There’s no way I’ll get through them all, so I just have to decide which one I’ll go with.
I blink my heavy eyelids.
Dinner was great, and I’m so stuffed right now. But I can never resist Huxley Hall’s spaghetti and meatballs. I gorged myself on that pasta, and now I’ve got a little food baby going on. I run my hand over the bump in my stomach and have an internal freakout that soon this could be an actual baby bump.
How long does it take before I start showing?
My brain scrambles for that tidbit, then quickly does the calculations as I work out that I’ve got a good month or so before my pants start getting too tight, and even then, I can probably hide it for a few months after that if I select my clothes carefully.
That’s if I keep the baby.
My chest spasms for a second, like someone is fisting my heart.
I can’t think about that right now.
I’ll never get to sleep if I have this shit running through my brain just before I lie down.
Lani shuffles in her bed, rolling to the side as she gets absorbed in one of her thriller novels. Her long black hair lies against the pillow, draping over the side of the bed.
