I glare at him. “There’s nowehere, Stitch. ButI’mnot going anywhere. I said I would stay, and I will. End of story.”
“Well, I’m not leaving either.” Michaels’s tone has a petulant lilt. “You need my truck.”
“We need your truck to go to towntomorrow,” I grind out. “That’s it.” I glance around the cabin. “This place isn’t exactly the Holiday Inn, and I doubt you brought clothes for the next month.”
Michaels’s eyebrows disappear under his flop of hair. “A month? What happens after a month?”
Fi sighs. “I still want to wait out the deadline for contesting my mom’s will. If Dennis can’t serve me the papers by March thirty-first, his possible claim to my inheritance is null and void.”
“Does any of that matter if he’s on video assaulting you?”
Fi shrugs. “It’s a whole separate thing. Detective Lin said that they couldn’t see his face in the security camera footage, so even if they find him and bring him in, it’ll be a whole process before they can even charge him, and then there will still be a trial.” She wipes her hands on her jeans and shoves them under her thighs. “Dennis needs that money. He’s in debt to a lot of scary people. So I’m hoping that if I’m no longer a resource for him, he’ll leave me alone.”
Fi looks down the entire time she speaks, and it makes me feel like she’s hiding something.
I glance up at Michaels.
He looks doubtful too. “That’s a bigif, Fi.” He sighs. “I’m staying at least until the snow settles down. Otherwise, you’ll be stranded if anything happens.” I hate that he has a point.
“Don’t you have…,” Fi trails off.
“What? A job? A family? A pet?” She winces, and Michaels shakes his head. “Nope,” he says, popping theP. “I mean, the guy at the cannabis store by my apartment might miss me.” He’s joking because that’s what Michaels does. It’s what he’s always done as far as I can tell. Even when the Canucks took a loss, he had a quip waiting in the wings to soften the blow. It’s the reason he was such a media darling. But right now, he’s hunched over, like a deflated version of his former self. “I literally have nothing.”
“B, I?—”
“It’s fine, Fi,” he says dismissively, and we all fall into an awkward silence.
“Well.” I clap my hands together with mock enthusiasm, trying to cut the tension. “Let’s figure out the sleeping situation.”
Michaels stands and shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “Why don’t you guys talk about that? I need some air. I’m going outside.”
When the door closes behind him, I glance at Fi. She looks conflicted. Sighing, I take our bags up the ladder to the loft, and she follows me. The little space is small but functional with a queen bed and a little nightstand with a lamp. I toss the bags on the ground and face Fi.
My body has been on high alert ever since we had our little moment on the log earlier, and now her proximity is almost unbearable.
As if Fi can sense my discomfort, she steps closer. Her eyes are intense as she looks up at me, and I notice the dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks matches the color of her auburn hair. She reaches up and pulls the band from her hair, letting it fall in waves around her shoulders, and the smell of her shampoo fills the space between us.
“So you two are really going to stay?” she asks quietly, a little line forming between her eyebrows as she pouts.
“Seems that way.” The thought that she’s Charlie’s best friend is starting to feel irrelevant as our breaths mingle.
“You and B could be in danger.” Her voice cracks. “Realdanger.”
“Then you’re in danger too, Fi.” I take another step closer, and her breasts graze my chest. “What are you not telling us about Dennis?”
“I told you everything,” she breathes.
“You’re lying.” My cock is rock hard—so hard it aches as it strains against my jeans. Thank God my coat is covering my crotch because I have literally never been this turned on in my life.
What is happening?
I’m desperately clinging to the moral high ground when all I want to do is kiss her. Rip her clothes off. Fuck her. So fucking bad.
Fi and I have had a natural connection from the moment we met years ago, and the last couple weeks have only nurtured that unlikely bond. She’s one of the few people to affect me this way, and the more she pushes me, the more my control slips like water through my fingers.
Our lips are so close that they graze, and I close my eyes.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
