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Another round of laughter burst from the kitchen, Kai’s deep rumble joining the others’. Fuck how I’d missed that. I gestured for Arlo to tell me his ‘advice’. I’d listen, then I was going home. If Tristan was the one Kai wanted to be with, I needed to get on board with the idea before we lost all semblance of our friendship.
I needed to have Kai in my life, one way or another.
But not today. Today, I was going to go home and drown my sorrows in a bottle of Lagavulin.
“Number one,” Arlo began. “How you’re feeling right now…imagine that overdecades.How might that make you behave?”
I stiffened. Wait, was Arlo suggesting…
“And number two,” he went on before I could interrupt and get some clarification. “If you feel that way about Kai, are you really going to let some little upstart twink snake your man away from you?”
“I’m not about destroying relationships,” I muttered. “IfTristanis who Kai wants, I need to get on board with it. I can’t lose him entirely.”
“And you won’t. But what if Tristan isn’t who Kai wants? What if there’s still a chance that someone else has his heart?”
It was like someone had lit a match inside me. It started as a tiny ember before flaring into an almost uncontrollable flame of hope. “Then I’m going to fight for him. If I’m what Kai wants…I’m gonna make damn sure he knows I’m an option.”
“Atta boy,” Arlo said, punching me in the arm with a grin. “Think you can wait out Tristan?”
I nodded slowly. “Yep. If Kai is serious about him, I’m not going to fuck that up. I can wait for the relationship to run its course. But if this ends up with Kai walking him down the fucking aisle…well, let’s just say that you’ll be picking up the pieces.”
“If that happens, I’ll fly you to Vegas and get you so drunk you’ll forget your own name.”
“You hate Vegas.”
Arlo gestured for us to go and join the others. “That’s how confident I am that it won’t happen.”
“Hmm.” I followed Arlo out of the hall. After our little chat, I wasn’t so inclined to leave. No, I wanted to see Kai and Tristan together. To see if he really did make my best friend happy.
Because if he did…? Well. I was going to have to find a way to be okay with that.
One thing was certain, I wasn’t putting up with Kai pushing me away. He’d had sixteen painful weeks of space already.
If he wanted that space to be permanent, he would have to strap on a pair and tell me.
And ready himself for a fight. There was no fucking way I was letting him walk away from us until I’d exhausted all possible options.
I stepped into the kitchen and immediately sought him out. He was leaning against the counter, a beer in his hand. His gaze snagged on me immediately, the bottle hovering in mid-air, several inches from his lips.
I didn’t need to force a smile to my face. I looked at my best friend, and I swear, I fucking lit up. “Can’t believe you slipped past without a hug.”
Kai’s eyes cut away from mine as he put his untouched beer on the side. Tristan broke away from where he’d been chatting to Ollie, moving towards Kai.
Yeah, no. I wasn’t letting this little shit come between us. It was ahug, for fuck’s sake.
My height gave me the advantage over Tristan as I made my way around the table to Kai before he’d even taken three steps.
Kai’s solemn brown eyes met mine, and I almost faltered. There was a fear there I hadn’t seen before, an uncertainty that almost had me turning back.
But then he lifted his arms, and I knew nothing could stop me.
I crashed into his embrace, winding one arm around his middle and the other over his shoulders. My hands fisted in his shirt as I held him close.
Turning my head to the side, I breathed in his familiar scent. Being slightly shorter than him, my face was level with his neck. Suddenly, all the frustrations and confusion of the past few months faded. So long as Kai was in my arms, everything made sense.
I couldn’t lose him.
Kai’s arms were wrapped just as tightly around me. His chest expanded against my own, rising and falling rapidly.
