Dream Chaser (Dream Team, #2)(24)

Of course.



Gotta go. At the store.



Right. Later.



And that was it.

Though when he cut it off, I buried deep how disappointed I was that I was no longer engaged with him.

Connected to him.

It wasn’t like the texts came fast and furious. That exchange lasted hours.

But his last was definitely a shutdown.

And I wondered if he had plans with his other chick and didn’t want me texting while he was with her. If, say, he was at the store and buying the ingredients to make her dinner, or she’d sent him a list for her to make dinner for him.

Yeah, he’d told me he was taking me out that night.

But I’d again shot him down, so it would not surprise me he made alternate plans.

He was clearly all in for this friends thing.

And I was not.

But I had zero willpower to stop myself replying to him.

And right then, it could not be denied, I was scrolling through my phone, reliving our sharing, at the same time kinda hoping another text would come through.

I nearly dropped my phone when I jumped so bad because there was a knock at my door.

I stretched in order to arch over the arm of my couch to look through the doorway toward my front door, which had an oval of glass in it, a filmy curtain over it, and Boone’s long body could be seen through the curtain.

“What the hell?” I whispered, my heart beginning to rap a hard tattoo in my chest, my palms feeling funny, my skin feeling shivery.

I uncurled, put my feet to the floor and moved to the door.

I unlocked it, opened it and was assaulted with the one-two punch of deliciousness that was the sight of Boone free of a filmy curtain and the smell of fried chicken.

“What are you—?”

“I said we’re havin’ dinner,” he cut me off to announce. “So I brought dinner.”

And then I was shuffling back because he was prowling in.

I stood with one hand on the door, staring at the doorway to my living room, through which he’d disappeared.

“Lock it,” his voice ordered from the vicinity, my guess, of my kitchen.

I shut the door, locked it and hustled toward the kitchen.

Through the space, I saw he was indeed in the kitchen, standing at the counter that jutted out, facing the dining room.

I stopped on the other side.

“Uh…Boone—”

“Fried chicken, macaroni salad, potato salad, ambrosia salad, and don’t give me any shit about that, I dig the stuff. And a happy birthday cookie because whoever had the idea to put frosting on a huge-ass cookie is a saint.”

He was unearthing all of this from King Soopers bags.

And I was processing the fact zero-body-fat Boone dug ambrosia salad and huge-ass cookies with frosting on them (and seriously in danger of having the biggest orgasm he’d ever made me in danger of having in receiving this knowledge).

As ever, I managed to control this reaction, shifted my gaze from the smorgasbord of goodness he was spreading out on my counter and looked to him.

“Boone, I—” I began quietly.

His head came up and being confronted with all that green when his eyes captured mine shut my mouth, but his opened to speak.

“I ended it with her yesterday.”

I put both hands to the counter.

“It’s all you,” he finished.

It was all me.

Ohmigod.

Ohmigod!

“Boone,” I whispered.

“Baby, I want you,” he whispered back. “And if the happy birthday cookie doesn’t win you, I’ll find something that does. So tear down the walls, Ryn, I want in, I’m getting in and we’re gonna see where this goes.”

“Were you into her?” I asked.

His face got kind of hard. “She doesn’t factor.”

“She does if you eventually feel you gave up something you wished you hadn’t.”

“Babe, if she was something to me, we would have been exclusive. And that might sound harsh to you, but it isn’t. You don’t know me, so I’ll share I’m not some guy who’s gonna blow off a woman’s feelings with shit like ‘she knew the score.’ We both did. She said on our second date she wasn’t looking for anything serious. She’d just had a bad break. She was easing herself back in. And she gave no indication it was going anywhere for her with me, including when I ended it with her. She just kissed my cheek and told me if I ever wanted a booty call, I had her number.”

I suspected my face got hard at that, or something, because he went on.

“That’s not gonna happen, Ryn. It was her way of saying she dug me enough to have me again, but now that she didn’t, no hard feelings.”

“Boone, I hesitate to share this with you, but I assume you own a mirror, or if not, in your lifetime walked by one, so you gotta know you’re not hard on the eyes.”

This comment made his eyes twinkle.

This guy.

Everything about him was shit hot.

Even his eyes twinkling.

I ignored that (or attempted to, we’ll just say I powered through), and carried on.

“Though, you’re not a woman, so let me share with you how a woman feels about a breakup with a guy like you. She is either A,” I lifted my hand and grabbed my pinkie, “currently outside this house because she’s stalking you, and after you leave, she’s going to break in and attempt to murder me, or B,” I grabbed my ring finger, “working her way through her fourth huge-ass birthday cookie with each bite soaked in her tears.”