On the Rocks (Last Call #1)(48)

She lifts her face and stares at me, her lips drawn downward. “I can’t believe you’ve had feelings for my brother for a few weeks, and I never knew. I must be oblivious.”

Her voice isn’t bitter or angry, which immediately relieves me. She says it in wonder, questioning the very strength of our friendship that she didn’t see it. Which makes what I’m getting ready to tell her that much worse.

“Um… it’s actually been a bit longer than a few weeks. At least where I’m concerned.”

“What do you mean?”

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Pushing her legs aside to give me more room, I cross my legs, leaning my elbows on my knees as I face her. Then I tell her about what happened five years ago, and I catch her up on everything so she knows exactly how the concept of Hunter and I came to be.

When I finished, she just shakes her head at me. “I can’t believe you kissed him graduation night. How did I not know that?”

“Because I was mortified and so embarrassed, and I didn’t want to relive my humiliation. I only wanted to forget about it.”

“No wonder you were such a bitch to him all these years.”

“Yeah… I don’t have the best coping skills apparently.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence. Casey’s gaze drops back down to her hands while I continue to look at her, waiting to see what else she’ll want to know before I beg forgiveness again.

“I’m scared,” she finally says, and I jerk in surprise at the small sound of her voice.

“Of what?”

“I’m scared you’ll hurt him… or he’ll hurt you, and then I might lose one of you.”

Oh, my heart breaks and then fills with pain over these words. I don’t want my bestie to have these fears, even though I’ve had the same ones myself. It’s my burden to bear though, not hers, so I lean forward, crawl my way up the bed, and flop down beside her, grabbing her in a hug.

“That won’t happen, Casey. Our relationship is… um… casual, I guess. Our feelings aren’t too deep, but we have years of care and friendship in the mix. We won’t hurt each other, I promise. And even if we did, we’d never make you choose between us. You’ll always have us both.”

She looks at me like I have a neon sign hanging above my head with a bright, glowing arrow pointing down at me that says “Idiot”.

“What?” I ask, not understanding the look on her face.

“You’re sleeping with Hunter,” she points out.

Yes, yes I am, and damn, it is good.

“Your point?” I ask with one of my eyebrows cocked.

“My point is—there’s nothing casual about that.”

I snicker and then let out a burst of laughter. “Casey… I’m sorry, girl, but you sleep with men all the time and it’s casual.”

I’m not prepared for Casey’s hand when it flies forward and slaps me soundly on my forehead. “You are an idiot. Of course, it’s casual for me. That’s because I don’t have a heart when it comes to men. They’re good for two things only, and that’s an expensive dinner and an earth-shattering orgasm. But you… Hunter… you are both ruled by your hearts. Once you decided to get intimate, you both went past casual.”

Her words hit me like a freight train, because in their simplest form, they ring utterly true. I have an overwhelming sense of dread that maybe she’s actually foreshadowing a moment in time where either Hunter or I get hurt… maybe both of us.

“No, no, no, no,” she admonishes, and my eyes snap to hers. “Get that look off your face right now.”

“What look?”

“The one that just got scared over what I said. The one that said you were going to break it off with Hunter right now to avoid further hurt down the road.”

Holy shit. She got all of that with a look? That was exactly the path my thoughts had started to take when she called me on them.

I open my mouth to say something but she cuts me off, grabbing onto my hands. “Don’t you dare break it off with him because you’re scared, Gabby. I don’t want you to break his heart because you’re scared.”

I’m stunned by her words and by her absolute turnaround from being pissed at me to not wanting me to break things off with Hunter. Her hands squeeze mine painfully.

“Promise me, Gabby,” she says urgently.

“I promise,” I squeak out, fairly certain she crushed the bones in my fingers. “Does this mean you’re no longer mad at me?”

She pulls me forward and gives me a quick hug, thankfully releasing her death grip on my hands. “You know I can’t stay mad at you long. Never could.”

“And you’re not worried that I’ll… how did you say it… ‘get my claws into Hunter’?”

She snorts. “Hey… we’ve been besties for almost our entire life. I know how to push your buttons.”

“That you do,” I agree. “So, we’re cool?”

“Cool as an Eskimo’s dick when he takes a piss,” she says with a grin.

I wrinkle my nose in distaste. “All right. I’m out of here. I need to get into work.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” she says. “We need to dish about Sasha.”