Tease (Cloverleigh Farms #8)(6)

Did she still love sci-fi? Did she still hate thunderstorms? Was she still close to her family? Did she still cut her hair when she was stressed? Would things still feel easy between us, or was she so different that I wouldn’t feel okay around her anymore? What if she felt like a stranger?

Thankfully, the moment I saw her enter the room and smile at me, I knew everything would be fine. She raced over to give me one of those hugs I’d never quite known how to return, and even the way she smelled was familiar—like summer at home. She still wore glasses. Her brown hair still looked like she might recently have trimmed it herself. I could still make her laugh.

And my heart still did that strange quickening thing when she got close to me, the thing that tied my tongue and heated my insides and put troubling questions in my head, like, What would it be like to kiss her? What would she do if I took her hand? Should I tell her I want to be more than friends? But my nerves had always been stronger than my attraction. I was positive she’d think I was crazy and look at me differently if I acted on those urges or spoke those words aloud.

See, I might not be magical anymore, but I have a horrible superpower that, when combined with my mathematical talent, allows me to enumerate any number of catastrophic outcomes for a given situation. And my brain loved listing all the possible ways things could veer off track if I made the wrong move with Felicity.

But I was hoping that night in Chicago would be different.

After all, I was older. I was more mature. I’d had some dating experience. I’d had sex with three different women in college, and one of them even said I was “surprisingly great” in bed for someone so quiet. (It wasn’t all that surprising to me, since I’d done extensive online research on how to please a woman. I was excellent at research.) I’d also been seeing a therapist for my anxiety, and he’d noticed how often I mentioned Felicity . . . was there something there? He’d challenged me to find out.

But I hadn’t gotten the chance. Felicity had some kind of blood vessel disorder that had always given her these fuck-awful bloody noses, and it was clear about thirty minutes into our dinner that she hadn’t outgrown them. We’d spent the rest of the evening in the Emergency Room.

I took it as a sign that reaching across the table would have been a disaster. That the universe had saved me from catastrophe while also protecting my friendship with Felicity. That was something I did not want to mess with.

And when I got home, I ghosted the therapist. Fuck that guy.

“Yeah, that was a bad one, sorry,” she said. “Hope they got the stains out of the tablecloth. But this doesn’t involve blood, I promise. It doesn’t even involve talking on the phone!”

I switched the call to Bluetooth and backed out of the garage. “What does it involve?”

“Doing me a favor.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay, but before I tell you what it is, you have to promise to at least consider what I have to say.”

“You’re not really nailing this sales pitch, MacAllister.” I headed down the driveway, which wound its way through birch and evergreens and sloped down the hillside toward the highway.

“Sorry, let me try again.” She cleared her throat. “Hey, Hutton! How are you?”

I smiled. “Okay, considering I’m on the phone.”

“Did you run in the park this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Were the Prancin’ Grannies out and about?”

“In full force. They just got matching T-shirts, which they were very excited to show me.”

Felicity laughed. “Oh yeah? What color?”

“I’d call it Pepto Bismol Pink. And they’re bedazzled—which is a new word I learned today.”

“I’m sure that addition to your vocabulary will come in handy in your line of work. So what are you up to?”

“I’m going over to my sister’s house to watch the kids so she can get a haircut. Neil is working today.” Allie’s husband was a cop who worked twelve-hour shifts. I’d offered him a job working security for HFX, but neither he nor my sister had wanted to move—their oldest was in elementary school, my sister was a child therapist with a growing practice, and my parents lived right around the block.

“That sounds like fun.” Felicity paused. “What about tonight? Do you have plans?”

“Why?” I asked, even though I had a hunch about what was coming.

“Because I’m going somewhere really fun, and I was thinking maybe you’d like to go with me!” she said with exaggerated excitement.

“You’re not talking about the reunion, are you?”

“There will be food and drinks and music,” she went on, like I hadn’t spoken, “lots of people we haven’t seen in ten years—”

“I’d gladly go another ten without seeing ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them.”

“—and I’m making zucchini fritters!”

“Felicity, you already asked me if I’d go to this thing, and I said sorry, but no.”

“Don’t you like zucchini?”

“I like zucchini just fine. But I didn’t like high school that much, I don’t like social events at all, and the thought of having to make small talk with any of those people makes me want to eat rat poison.”