Sin With Me

56

Nico doesn’t look convinced. “Yeah? So how does he make you feel?”

It falls from my tongue without even a thought, as simple and true as an exhaled breath. “Like everything bad that’s ever happened to me was worth it, because it was all leading up to him.”

After I speak those words there’s total, stunned silence.

Until a loud thunk comes from the doorway.

When I see what made the sound, my heart stops.

Barney stands there, two large suitcases clutched in his meaty fists. Brody is right behind him, staring at me with blazing eyes and two spots of color high on his cheeks. A large duffel bag sits at his feet, where he dropped it.

He dropped it because he heard me.

For a second I’m panicked. But then I decide, screw it. I’m already this far down the rabbit hole. Might as well go ahead and eat the cake.

“Your timing’s impeccable, Mr. Scott,” I say softly, meeting his eyes.

His voice thick, he replies, “And thank f**k for that.”

I glance at Barney. “Did you two kiss and make up?”

He lifts a shoulder. “Hard to stay mad at a guy who says he’s sorry ten times in a row—and means it.” He purses his lips, adding, “Not sure he’s good enough for you, though.”

Brody rasps, “I’m definitely not. No one is. She’s a f*****g goddess.”

The way he’s looking at me definitely makes me feel like one. I bet if I concentrated, I could fly.

Brody makes a beeline for me. When he’s an arm’s length away, he grabs me and throws his arms around me. He squeezes me so tight it leaves me breathless. Into my ear he whispers gruffly, “Goddamn, witch face, you sure know how to knock a guy off his feet.”

“We’ll be in the kitchen raiding your liquor cabinet,” says Nico with a chuckle. “C’mon, baby. Barney.”

Their footsteps recede. When we’re alone, I say into Brody’s neck, “Radical honesty?”

“Yes.”

I lift my head and look into his blazing eyes. “I’m totally going to use this to try to get you to have s*x with me before thirty days.”

He bursts into laughter.

“And thank you for apologizing to Barney. I know he appreciated it.”

Smiling down at me with wonderful warmth, Brody cups my face in his hands. “I didn’t do it for him, sunshine. You know I didn’t do it for him.”

When he kisses me, I’m smiling against his lips.

BRODY

Kat, Nico, and Barney stay for about an hour. We talk. We drink. We hang out like we always have, but this time it’s completely different, because this time I’m different.

No one ever told me it could be like this. Like you finally understand who you are and why you’re here, and all your broken pieces don’t even matter because there’s something so much more important to think about.

Namely, doing everything in your power to make the goddess suddenly in your life feel as amazing as she is.

And she is amazing. Way more than that. We’ve joked about my incredible vocabulary, but I don’t think there’s a word in any language that could accurately describe how balls-out fantastic this girl is.

Not girl—woman. She’s all woman, the kind who knows how to turn a boy into a man, and a man into a slave. Putty, that’s what she’s turned me into. Putty in the palms of her elegant, manicured hands.

I’m sitting next to her at the kitchen table listening to her talk and marveling at how f*****g smart she is—seriously, she gives my brain a hard-on, I didn’t even know that was a thing—when Barney says, “You think A.J.’s okay, though? Chloe seemed worried.”

My head snaps around. “A.J.? What do you mean?”

Kat fidgets in her chair. Tapping her nails against her glass of wine, she says, “When we went by Chloe and A.J.’s to pick up the clothes, A.J. was sleeping.”

Grace repeats, “Sleeping? What’s wrong with that?”

Kat and Nico share a look. “Chloe said he had another headache and had to lie down.”

A chill runs down my spine. “Another headache. Oh fuck.”

“Yeah. We managed to pry it out of her that over the past two weeks he’s been getting them every few days. This one was so bad he took two Tylenol with codeine.” Kat pauses. “And when that didn’t work, he took two more.”

We stare at each other in silence.

Grace absently reaches for my hand. I squeeze it between both of mine as she sits forward in her chair. “Has he gone to the doctor?”

Kat shakes her head. “He won’t go.”

“What?” shout Grace and I, horrified.

Nico finishes his whiskey in one swallow, and then sets the glass down with a shake of his head. “Chloe didn’t confirm this and I didn’t want to get into it with her today, but I think it has to do with what the doctors told A.J. to anticipate after his brain surgery.”

Grace’s brow furrows. “You mean these headaches are normal?”

For a moment, Nico stares down at his glass. When he raises his gaze to Grace’s, all the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“I mean that if he started to get headaches it was a symptom that the tumor had invaded the temporal lobe.”

Grace gasps. “No!”