Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(66)

I freeze.

Because that might be hitting too close to home.

“Go. Away.”

“Wyatt’s a good dude, Ellie. And he likes you despite you.”

“And he flies in airplanes for his day job and we can’t even kiss without dishwashers leaking and towels catching on fire and Tucker deserves to grow up with a good dad.”

Beck heaves a loud, annoyed sigh and climbs off me. “Fine. Have your pity party. But if you don’t get up, I’m calling Monica, and you know she’ll skip her honeymoon to be here.”

“Dick move. And you’d put her on a private jet and upgrade her to the fanciest cruise in the world to make it up to her.”

“Yeah, but she won’t know that when she comes running.”

Which is why she’s my best friend.

My best girl friend.

My best friend friend might be—dammit.

“And I’ll send Mom,” he adds. “Oh, and by the way, Wyatt was pissed when he found out Cooper lives so close. Dude thought he was bicycling up the mountain to deliver you donuts because he’s angling to get into your pants. Isn’t that a hoot? Ten minutes, Ell. And then I’m singing again too.”

He heads out the door whistling like he has fucking sunshine in his sparkly bright soul, and I realize I’m naked.

I’m naked, with a healing black eye, a sore hip and thigh, and a big ol’ pile of ash in my chest.

But that’s how it has to be.

Because I’ve hurt enough people in my life.

I won’t put Wyatt in danger. He deserves better.





Twenty-Nine





Ellie



I’d planned to stay in Shipwreck through the weekend for recovery time, but with Beck back, the odds of having a minute of peace are nil. Not because he’s always as annoying as he was this morning, but because he’ll be calling anyone he can to hang out while he’s in town, which will undoubtedly be three days or less.

And I don’t want to be in the house when he sees the new high score on Frogger.

Too many memories.

So I convince my dad to ride with me back to Copper Valley before lunch.

When we hit the 256 loop around the city, my eyes sting, because we’re officially now out of the country and out of the mountains. It’s back to the hustle and bustle. Traffic. Billboards. Skyscrapers.

Dad’s quiet the entire ninety-minute drive. When I pull into the driveway of the red brick colonial in the middle-class neighborhood where I grew up, with the old basketball hoop still over the garage door, my eyes burn again.

Dad squeezes my knee. “Been through a lot this year.”

He doesn’t tell me I’m overreacting. Or that it’s okay to be scared, but not okay to let fear rule my life, or any of the other things I logically know.

That’s not how Dad works.

Probably because all the rest of us finally talked him into silence over the years.

But he does offer me a scoop of homemade peach cobbler if I want to stay a few hours.

So that’s how I find myself curled up on my parents’ couch, watching the Fireballs get creamed in high definition, while my dad cuts and sugars early season peaches for our late lunch of peach cobbler.

I don’t realize I’ve drifted off to sleep until the doorbell rings, and when I wake up, I’m disoriented and confused, and it takes me a minute to remember why my heart hurts.

Wyatt.

He probably hates me.

I hope he does. That’ll make it easier for him to move on.

I curl tighter into a ball. The game’s over, and now an old Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie is on.

“Ellie, I’m going for a walk,” Dad calls from the front door.

“’Kay,” I answer, frog voice and all.

I haven’t had any peach cobbler yet, but I should go home. I don’t have any food. I need to do laundry. And catch up on work email.

Plus, I could stop at a pet shelter on the way and ask to play with the dogs for a few hours. Guaranteed pick-me-up.

Since Beck sometimes shares my social media posts about dogs that haven’t found their forever homes—always with a caption like Sharing for my sister, who wishes she’d been born a dog so it would be socially acceptable for her to lick my face—I’m undeservedly welcome at all the shelters in the metro area.

I’m staring blindly at Meg Ryan’s profile on the television when the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and the pile of ashes in my chest gives a big ol’ whomp.

There’s a shadow in the doorway.

A Wyatt-size shadow. Or possibly more than a shadow.

That whomp turns into a staccato beat of whomp after whomp after whomp.

“Please,” I whisper, and I don’t know if I’m asking him to stay or leave. I just know it hurts.

It hurts to think about hurting him.

It hurts to think about losing him.

And it hurts to be terrified that disaster is waiting around every corner if I reject both of my first two options.

He steps slowly into the room, eyes trained on me, searching, asking.

I don’t even have to look him in the eye to know.

He’s not afraid.

He’s not afraid of anything.

“You okay?” he asks, and that voice.

God, I love his voice. Rich and smooth and warm, like hot chocolate after a day playing in the snow.