Page 207 of On His Team

Mara is already screaming. Stanley stumbles backward into Aspen, who has started laughing so hard she nearly spills her drink, while Blue bends forward with one hand over his face.

I try to keep talking through my own laughter.

“He stops and goes, ‘Your boyfriend?’”

Rowan’s hand lands on my thigh. “G.”

“So I said, ‘Feels like it.’”

Melly makes a high-pitched sound from the other end of the couch.

Aspen has tears in her eyes now.

“And then—”

“No,” Rowan says.

I turn toward him with my sweetest smile. “Yes.”

He gives me a look.

I ignore it.

“He goes, ‘Okay, girlfriend.’”

Mara clutches both hands to her chest. “That is actually adorable.”

“It was.”

Stanley points at Rowan in disbelief. “That’s how you asked her?”

Rowan is bright red. “I didn’t ask her.”

The entire room turns toward him. Rowan seems to realize what he has admitted about one second too late.

Lucy looks horrified. “You didn’t ask her?”

He blinks. “No.”

I start laughing again. “Apparently I had already been his girlfriend for a while. I just didn’t know.”

Percy shakes his head slowly from his chair. “Laurens.”

Rowan looks around the room like he genuinely cannot understand why everybody is making this complicated. “What? She is.”

Something about the simplicity of it shuts me up for half a second.

There is no embarrassment in his voice. No defensiveness. He does not look like a guy trying to talk himself into a label because a room full of people pressured him into one.

His hand settles more firmly on my thigh. “She’s my girl.”

My stomach does an embarrassing little flip.

Mara makes another shrieking sound.

Stanley stares at Rowan for a second before shaking his head. “I hate how well that worked.”

I turn toward Rowan.