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I’d been fucking around. Staying ahead. Biding my time.
But I knew I needed to act.
That was why I was trying to figure out what to text her. How to continue peeling the layers back, how to keep the progress we’d made, how to make absolutely certain that we weren’t going to go backward.
Hence me pondering text version number thirteen.
“Phone,” I said, twitching my fingers again.
His bushy beard twitched. “You’re sure,sure?”
Fuck it. I was going to start a fistfight on the bus.
I didn’t give a damn.
But before I could launch myself at Fox and introduce my fist to that pretty boy face of his, Ryan popped out an earbud. “Fox.”
Spoken quietly.
But with authority. Confident in his ability as the most stable of all of us to get us to behave.
It worked.
Fox made a face, but he silently passed my cell over.
“I’m just saying—” he began.
“Christ almighty,” I muttered, digging my head into the seat back, hating my life right then.
Especially when Ryan said, “You sure you want to do this on your own?”
My head shot up. “Seriously?”
“You told me about her weeks ago and you’re still”—a nod at my cell, currently safely clutched in my hand—“you’re shooting blanks.”
Fox cackled.
Ry rolled his eyes. “You know he’s the text guru.” A shrug. “You might take him up on the offer of help.”
Fucking motherfucker.
“Not you too,” I gritted.
Ryan shrugged, lips turning up into a smirk. The fucker was quiet, but he had a sly sense of humor. We all had to watch him, or he’d pull one over on us. And do it quietly.
And do it with relish—like right then, the asshole.
“You’re shitting on the sidelines, man,” he said. “And this means something to you.”
I inhaled, ground my teeth, forced myself to hold his eyes. “Yeah.”
The amusement bled out of his face, and I knew then he got exactly where I was. Billie Rose and I had been circling each other for years now, always taking snarking and snapping and teasing.
Even knowing we’d fucked, he wouldn’t understand that it had changed for me (and hopefully for her as well).
Not until right then, until he understood exactly why I’d struggled for way too long to send a damned text.
To his credit, Ryan did what he always did—he was a good teammate, and more importantly, he was a good friend. “Right then,” he said, tone completely neutral. “So, I’m thinking thatyou’vebeen thinking about that text to the mayor for about a hundred miles and you’re clearly not getting anywhere.”
