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“We were what?” I screeched while Darcy wiped her eyes and sent me a considering glance.
“That’s true,” she allowed. “If my past did mess him up, she’s the perfect girl to help ease him through it.”
I waved my hands trying to get them to stop saying such things. “But we’re not—”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend with us,” Izzy said kindly, her eyes full of understanding as if she knew exactly what my heart was going through. “We definitely approve of the fact that you’re growing feelings for him.”
When the other two nodded, my breath caught, and all the air in my chest vacated my lungs. I glanced toward Wick.
Longing filled the emptiness in me, hard and swift.
Oh God. What the hell was happening here?
“Hey, I’d even let you continue hogging most of the space next to him at spook houses if you keep making him as happy as he was tonight,” Charlie announced.
I laughed, only to grow sober and…and scared. Their words made me want. After everything I’d been through with Topher, I should’ve been dead to the idea of men and sex and relationships. I should’ve been too leery to ever trust again. But from the first night Wick had held me in his arms and taken away my pain with his mere presence, I had always instinctively trusted him.
What was up with that?
Glancing toward his sisters and knowing with everything inside me that he was indeed okay to give my trust to, I admitted in a small voice, “The timing’s all wrong. It’s too soon after…” I shook my head desperately. “Wick doesn’t deserve a girl with the baggage I have. Until I resolve this breakup with Topher in my head and I’m able to do something to show him just how much I despise him so he’ll know without a shadow of a doubt that we’re over, I can’t move on. He just… That son of a bitch needs to know he was wrong. He needs to pay.”
“I’m telling you,” Charlie said. “Fake used condom on his bed. That’ll show him you’re pissed and want him to suffer.”
“Or it’ll show him she’s still thinking about him and unable to move on and isn’t over him, which may just feed his ego more,” Izzy smarted back icily.
I winced over that idea. I most certainly did not want people thinking I was still hung up on Topher because I wasn’t. Glancing toward Darcy for a tiebreaker opinion, I sighed when she merely shrugged, offering up no advice at all.
“Whatever you do, just make sure my little brother doesn’t get hurt in the process,” she said.
I nodded because that was one thing I wanted too. No more pain for me or Wick.
35
Haven
I woke to Wick stretching and mumbling out a groan under me.
Burrowing deeper into his chest, I yawned and said, “Morning,” before I lifted my face to look up at him.
His facial hair looked thicker and more rugged this morning, and his eyes were rimmed in red, telling me just how tired he was.
“Good morning,” he offered, blinking sleepily and probably wondering how I’d ended up on top of him. Again.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I added. “After getting kicked I-don’t-know-how-many times down there in the dogpile, I crawled up here where it was safer.”
“It’s fine,” he answered, cupping my hair affectionately in his hand even
as he lifted his face to glance around the living room and orient himself. When he found the pile of blankets and pillows on the floor next to us empty, he frowned and glanced around again until we both heard his sisters talking in the kitchen, pots and pans clanging in the background.
“What time is it?” he asked, plopping his head back on the armrest of the couch and focusing on me again.
“No idea,” I answered, reaching up to remove his pigtails. “I assume it’s okay to take these out now.”
“Yeah,” he started to answer, only to wince after I tugged them free. “Ouch. That really leaves your noggin sore, doesn’t it?”
“I know,” I cooed sympathetically, burying my fingers in his hair so I could massage his scalp for him. “I would’ve taken them out as soon as you fell asleep last night, but Charlie wouldn’t let me.”
His lips quirked in amusement. “She’s such a little shit.”
