“Classy,” I remark.
“I mean, the alternative was asking you to lick it off, so…” He smirks.
Damned if that doesn’t make me want to do it all over again.
As if sensing where my thoughts went, his expression heats up and then he’s tugging me toward him. His lips briefly meet mine. “Round two?” he asks.
“Round two,” I echo before kissing him again.
8
When I open my eyes the next morning, my thoughts are just as jumbled as they’d been before I went to sleep. As I brush my teeth, wash up, get dressed, it’s impossible to concentrate on anything other than what Nick and I did last night. My flight back to Salt Lake City doesn’t leave until four o’clock, so I still have the morning and part of the afternoon to spend with everybody. Except now I don’t know how I’m supposed to behave. How to act around Nick.
Fortunately, he makes it easy for me. When I walk into the kitchen ten minutes later, I find Nick and Danny there, cooking bacon and eggs.
“Morning, Poodle,” Nick greets me, flashing his trademark grin. “You want some breakfast?” He winks at me when Danny’s not looking.
I feel myself blushing. “Thanks.” I look around. “Where’s Michelle?”
Danny doesn’t answer. His head is bent toward the stove as he scrambles eggs with a spatula.
Nick’s smile broadens. “May I do the honors?” he asks my brother.
“Fucking asshole.” But there’s a hint of a smile on Danny’s face.
“Guess who broke up last night,” Nick tells me.
I gasp. “No!”
“Yup. Didn’t I tell you it was a good riddance bang?”
“Hey,” Danny objects.
“Am I wrong?” his best friend demands.
“No.”
“Gross, Danny,” I say with a scowl. “Seriously?”
“It didn’t start off as that,” he answers, his tone defensive. “It was makeup sex at first, but after it was over, I realized it was actually goodbye sex. I just…I don’t know. I can’t deal with her anymore. This weekend really showed me her true colors.”
“This weekend?” I echo, one eyebrow raised. “That’s what revealed those colors? Not the past three years?”
“Poodle,” Nick warns.
Fine. He’s right. As long as Danny saw the light eventually, I suppose I can’t complain. “How did she handle it?” I ask curiously.
“Well, she’s not here, now is she?” Danny rolls his eyes. “She left at like six a.m. Told me she hopes I get Spanish herpes and die.”
“That was nice of her.”
Nick chuckles.
“It’s for the best,” Danny says as he shuts off the stove burner. “It would’ve ended anyways. I’m going to Spain for six months. No relationship can survive that.”
I smother a snicker. I want to argue that lots of people can be apart for six months without their relationship collapsing. But I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He and Michelle are finally broken up. That’s all that matters.
“Are you okay?” I ask my brother. Because no matter how much we hated her, he was still with her for three years.
“Honestly? I’m all good. Looking forward to getting away.” He claps Nick on the shoulder. “Sorry I’m leaving you in the lurch. But I think the team will survive without me. I was following some of the receivers Southern recruited out of high school and there’s some solid talent for you. Plus you’ll have Katie to keep you company while I’m gone.”
Nick meets my eyes over Danny’s shoulder. There’s a dirty gleam in them. “Yeah. I’ll make sure to show her around.”
“Gonna change into my trunks. You guys want to take the boat out to the cliffs before Katie needs to leave for the airport?”
“Sounds good,” I say.
Nick nods. “I’ll just feed her highness first.”
“Her highness? You’re way more high maintenance than I am,” I inform him.
“Truth,” my brother agrees.
Nick gives us the finger.
After Danny leaves, I study Nick from across the kitchen island. “So. Um. About last night…”
“About last night,” he echoes, amused.
I eye him expectantly.
“What?”
“Isn’t this the part where you say it was a mistake?”
His lips quirk. “Why would I lie?”
I can’t contain the rush of warmth that fills my chest. “You don’t think it was a mistake?”
“No, do you?”
“It didn’t feel like one,” I admit. “But I also don’t know what it means. Was this, like, a weekend fling?”
“Not to me,” he says roughly. “I know you think I’m a huge player, and, yeah, I’ve had flings in the past, but you’re not a fling, Kate. You could never be.”
I hesitate for a long beat. “I have no idea what’s going to happen now.”
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen.” He shrugs. “That’s the best part about life, Poodle. The unexpected.”
“If you and I start dating…” I chew on my bottom lip. “What about Danny?”
“What about him?”
“He might not like it.”
Nick snorts. “Yeah, well, I didn’t like Michelle. Neither of us did. But we still let him do his thing for three years.”
“Fair.” I pause. “What if it ends terribly?”
“It won’t.” Confidence shines in his expression.
“You can’t know that.”
“I have a good feeling.” Another shrug. “No matter what happens with us romantically, we have history, Kate. We’ll always be friends.”
He might be right about that. Our friendship, his friendship with Danny, gives us the kind of foundation that can’t be ignored. Even if it doesn’t work out with us, if the relationship fizzles out or dies horribly, I can’t ever see my life without Nick Carmichael in it. And that’s something I never thought I’d say. This weekend has been a whole slew of firsts.
“With that said…when do you get to Southern?” he asks, and the eagerness in his tone is unmistakable.
I smile faintly. “Three weeks.”
“Okay. Your first night there, can I take you to dinner?”
My cheeks heat up again. “Yeah, I think that could be okay.”
“Just okay?”
“It would be great,” I tell him, and when our gazes lock, my mind starts running over the idea of me and Nick dating. All the possibilities. All the ways a relationship between us could end spectacularly. But I force myself to not overthink, to shut down my brain, because right now, it’s a beautiful sunny day in July and we’re at the lake. Soon we’ll be going out on the boat, me and my brother and our oldest friend.
“All right, gonna throw on some swim trunks while you eat.” Nick walks around the counter.
I think he’s going to pass me, but he stops, gripping my chin with both his hands. Slowly, deliberately, he leans down and presses his lips to mine. It’s a sweet kiss. Sweeter than I’d expect from Nick.