Page 44 of I Choose You

Brooke: What’s up?

I bit my lip as I typed. On my walk here, I’d rehearsed how to word it, but I still went on the fly, thinking it up as I went.

Kaden: Save me from going alone to dinner.

Brooke: Is this a pickup line?

Kaden: From dinner with my old man and his fiancée.

She replied with a thinking emoji.

Brooke: Tell me more.

Brooke: Are we having scrumptious seafood?

Kaden: No clue

Brooke: Will there be live entertainment?

I paused and thought about it.

Kaden: Likely not. Just my company.

Brooke: I have become fond of that.

“Thanks,” I quipped. Nice dig to imply she hadn’t enjoyed my presence before. Again, can’t blame you.

Kaden: Please?

Brooke: Oh, now you’re playing hardball.

Kaden: PLEASE

I never begged a woman. It was always the other way around. But I sat there smiling like an idiot at her replies.

Brooke: One more time

Kaden: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

Brooke: I have a condition

I cringed. Of course, she would.

Kaden: Okay.

Please don’t say something impossible. Banter was fun and all, but a nagging thought in the back of my mind warned me not to be swayed by her. She had every reason to hate me. I clung to the slight worry that she might be messing with me, no matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise.

Maybe that was why I couldn’t get her out of my mind.

She was forbidden. Untouchable because we should be enemies.

Brooke: Well is it a family dinner?

Kaden: Yeah

Brooke: Will your brother be there?

Fuck. I swallowed and typed.