Rolling her eyes, she types a message to her housemates, beaming with the relief she can watch over Morris and not miss out on time with her friends.
I finish my drink, just in time, since Natalie announces they’ll be over soon. Returning to the couch, my eyes shift from the clock to the door.
It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve seen Kennedy this week. Or even this day. Monday morning, when I showed up to our biology lecture after my sick week, we’d hung back after class. Met in an empty classroom, and the first thing out of my mouth had been, “This bet. What’re the terms on making out?”
“Oh, kissing is allowed,” she’d told me. “Definitely. It’s encouraged, even. Highly recommend—”
I’d kissed her to shut the hell up.
We’d resumed our meetings. Only now, instead of using her color-coded calendar to meet up for sex, we arrange makeout sessions. Study dates. Scrabble rematches.
It’s not enough. After spring break, a whole week, entire days, where it had just been me and her, our time together is never enough. Too short. Bogged down by classes and training. Determined by the schedules of our friends. Full moments and conversations and lingering kisses, all compressed to scant minutes. If I thought she was under my skin before, then now…
Now it’s like during one of those kisses where she sinks her whole body into mine, she’s managed to fuse herself to me. Become a piece of me. A phantom limb. One that I become all too aware is missing when she’s not there.
“Are you… fidgeting?” Rowe sends a troubled glance to the fingers tapping my knee.
I shift in my seat, unable to find a comfortable position, and glare at him. Just as I’m about to ask what his fucking problem is, there’s a series of jolly knocks at the door.
“Got it!” Mason and Hart both yell. Hart fumbles out of his chair when Natalie shoves him. They race each other, and when her hand touches the doorknob, he gets his revenge by lifting her and dumping her on the floor behind him.
“Ladies,” he greets the girls standing on the front porch. He braces an arm on the jamb, blocking Natalie as she tries to wedge herself around him.
Natalie finally jumps on his back. “This is why we don’t invite you to girls night!”
Gray mutters, “Definitely that. Not because he has a penis.”
“Please, come in,” Hart sweeps an arm to the living room. He ignores Natalie thumping her fist on his chest. He draws Rylie into his arms. “And you, you cute thing, can make yourself home right here.”
He puckers his lips, and Rylie dodges his kiss. “You’ve sprouted a growth.”
“I know, it’s hideous. Do you still love me?”
“I’d love if you moved,” Kennedy deadpans behind Rylie. There’s an awful lot of shuffling as Hart drops Natalie on the floor again and Rylie finally kisses him and Kennedy slips around all three of them.
Kennedy kneels by the coffee table, setting down a plastic container of food. As she arranges treats on the table—cookies and cake bars and is that seriously what these girls eat on their precious girls-only nights?—she and Gray discuss some biology homework assignment. She faces him, her back to me pointedly displaying how she overlooks my presence.
But with Natalie bitching to Hart about monopolizing his girlfriend and none of them paying attention, she gathers her hair in a ponytail, revealing the smooth expanse of her neck. When she reaches to slide Rowe a cookie on a napkin, she bends over the table, presenting black leggings stretching over that dangerously nice ass.
I know exactly what she’s fucking doing.
And I can play that game, too.
I lean forward. “What’ve we got here?”
My shoulder grazes Kennedy as I pull the container closer. She slaps my hand.
“Nothing for you.” When she turns away, her breast brushes my arm.
I pretend to growl, my breath warming her ear. She shivers. It’s small, hardly noticeable unless you look for it—which I do.
And then I want to growl again. With real frustration this time. Shift my legs and run my palms on my jeans.
“Did you know Willis-Ekbom disease affects up to ten percent of the population?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Kennedy says.
“Restless leg syndrome.”
I glare at Rowe.
“Huh,” she says. “Interesting.”
And she takes a bite of a cookie, deliberately smoothing crumbs off her lip with a thumb.
I ignore them both and pull my phone from my pocket. Tap out a message. And three more after that.
As the other three join us and we all comment on the game—Gray’s the only one left standing, as we knew he would be—Kennedy checks the notifications on her phone. Even slightly turned away from me, I see the tinge of pink on her cheeks.
I send the next series of texts.
Her face burns bright red.
She tucks her legs under her butt. Then switches to lean an arm on the floor. Decides instead to sit straight and fold her hands in her lap, thumbs twiddling over her phone.
Who’s fidgeting now?
“You okay?” Rylie asks when she sees Kennedy’s flush.
“Um, yeah, I—” Kennedy waves a hand over her face. “Do you guys still have your heat on or something?”
I cross the room to open a window, hiding my grin as the cool night air breezes inside.
She’s always starting shit.
Because this is her fault. That I’m home, on a Thursday night. Turning down invites to parties and avoiding the bar.
I’m working on this. On her trusting me. Which means no going out. Not putting myself in those places where I get into trouble. I stay home, where there are no handsy cheerleaders. No hostesses inviting me into closets, bathrooms, or bedrooms. It’s not that I don’t trust myself. Because, truthfully, I’m not interested in those things. Unless it’s her doing them, I don’t give a fuck.
But I don’t want to give her any reason to doubt me. Don’t want her to think I’m not taking our bet seriously. That I
