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I know you are. You’re all over the internet!
My bottom lip suffers as I weigh up my options. I really wanted to have this conversation face-to-face, so I go the avoidance route.
Me
Don’t believe everything you read.
The reply is instantaneous.
Jesse
You’re being GROPED by Caden North! What the actual fuck?
I grit my teeth, refusing to rise to the bait.
Me
I will explain all when I get back to New York. It’s not how it looks.
The dots bounce for several long minutes until a simple thumbs-up emoji comes through as Caden enters the room. He’s dressed in a pair of tight grey Calvin’s that should be considered indecent and nothing else. His long hair has obviously been towel dried, and not very well at that, as it drips along his bare torso.
He spots my line of vision and chuckles quietly. “Well, you’ve put Bug in our bed, Bam, so it’s safe to say you cock-blocked yourself tonight.”
My face splits in an enormous smile when he climbs beneath the sheets on the far side of Bella, and I respond with the honest truth. “Being like this with you both makes me happy. There’s very little I’d change about this moment.”
Caden leans across Bella’s head to press a closed-mouth, open-heart kiss to my mouth before retreating to his own pillow. “I’d change nothing, Bam. Not a damn thing.”
I settle on my own pillow, my smile faltering for a second before I catch it and hold it in place as my heart dips at my half-truth.
There’s plenty he’d change if he knew everything.
* * *
Having only packed enough to last two days at most, I was surprised to awaken to find Caden must have organised for someone to bring an array of outfits from the racks above the recording studio back in Cambridge to our hotel.
When Bella spots a case of clothes for herself, she dances with delighted exuberance, twirling and spinning as she sings at the top of her lungs.
“She loves that ‘Perfect For Me’song fromTrolls, doesn’t she!”
Caden chuckles indulgently. “Oh, you have no idea. She likes when I sing as Branch so that she canharmoniseas Poppy.” He opens his eyes impossibly wider to deadpan behind his hand. “But like the other women in the North family, her musicalitysucks.”
I snort, knowing exactly what he meant. When we were growing up, Caden’s older sisters, Bree and Rachel, identical twin sisters five years his senior, along with Alyse and Cassidy, three and one year older, respectively, had tried their best. Singing lessons, a barrage of different musical instrument lessons, recitals at the house, anything and everything Clary could think of.
Nothing had helped their tone-deafness and sheer unmusicality.
But Sutton had put paid to their attempts when he called them a bunch of ‘screaming banshees’ and ran from the room shouting that the harbingers of death were upon us.
The rest of us laughed so hard. Even Clary hadn’t been able to help herself.
My smile is bittersweet at the memory. “She’s notthatbad, Cade.”
It’s his turn to snort. “She’s not far off. Though, in fairness, my many nieces have the same affliction, so she’s got company, at least…”
The little lady in question twirls over closer. “Do you like my singing, Summer-hero?”
“Iloveit, Curly. Sing to me again.”
Caden kicks his leg out to knock his bare foot off my shin, and the action makes me snort-laugh, though I barely manage to cover it with a cough when Bella side-eyes me.
