Page 187 of Rising Heat

“I did not⁠—”

“You didn’t even realize you did it,” she smirks, not accepting my protest for a single moment.

I pull the blanket higher over my legs and don’t argue because she’s right and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.

“Can I ask you something?” she says.

“You’re going to regardless.”

“That’s true, but I’m working on consent.” She shifts sideways against the cushions. “When’s the last time you were actually afraid of anything?”

“Define afraid.”

“The good kind.” She looks at me over the edge of her wineglass. “The kind where you want something so much it’s terrifying.”

“Currently,” I admit immediately. “As we speak.”

Bex nods slowly, like she’d expected the answer.

“What I saw this week,” she says, “was two guys who very clearly think of you as more than casual sex.” She holds my eyes. “They adore you, Darcy.”

I shake the thought out of my head before I can even follow her there.

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m serious.”

“We already agreed this isn’t anything more than⁠—”

“I’m not talking about labels.” She shakes her head. “I’m talking about the fact that I spent three days watching the three of you together.”

She shrugs.

“Nobody had to tell me anything. That’s how you know.”

Hearing someone else say it out loud makes arguing with myself a whole lot harder.

I’ve just been waiting for it to stop being true.

“I don’t know what this becomes from here,” I admit quietly. “They told me right away this was only fun. They don’t do serious with girls they share.”

“And?”

“And what if this only works because nobody’s trying to make it anything more?”

Bex doesn’t interrupt.

“What if eventually one of them wants something different?” I hear myself ask. “Or I do.”

The words come easier once they’ve started.

“What if one day this stops feeling easy?”

I swallow.

“What if they make me choose and I break whatever they had long before I showed up?”

I hadn’t even realized that was the fear until it was sitting between us.