While It Lasts (Sea Breeze #3)(65)

She walked over and sank back down onto the old faded green sofa pulling her legs up underneath her.

“Don’t worry. I’m not leaving. He’d rip apart my sister’s house searching for me and scare the bejesus out of her if I left. I’ve got enough issues where she’s concerned. I don’t intend to unleash Cage on her.”

I slowly made my way over to the only chair in the room and sat down.

“So, you’re engaged?” I asked staring down at her bare ring finger.

With a sad smile she shook her head.

“Not in a million years. Cage has crazy ideas. Just because he says them doesn’t make them true.”

She raised her eyebrows and took another drink of her soda.

“So, you aren’t going to marry Cage,” I really would love for her to clarify this because I was incredibly confused and more than a little interested in her. She bit down on her bottom lip and I noticed for the first time how full it was.

”Cage was my ‘boy next door’ growing up. He’s my best friend. I love him dearly and he really is all I have. The only person I can count on. We’ve never actually been in a relationship before because he knows I won’t have sex with him and he needs sex. He’s also real wrapped up in the whole idea that a relationship between the two of us before we get married will end badly and he’ll lose me. He has this irrational fear of losing me.”

Did she know the guy had bagged over three different girls this week and apparently was having a threesome when she’d called? She was so much better than Cage.

“Wipe that look off your face. I don’t need your pity. I know what Cage is like. I know you have probably seen the kind of girls he’s attracted to and I look absolutely nothing like them. I don’t live in a fantasy world. I’m very aware,” she tilted her head and smiled at me sweetly, “I don’t even know your name.”

“Marcus Hardy”

“Well Marcus Hardy, I’m Willow Montgomery but everyone calls me Low. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise”

“So, you’re a friend of Preston’s.”

I nodded, “Yes but don’t hold it against me.”

She laughed for the first time and the sudden pleasure from such a simple sound startled me. I liked hearing her laugh.

“I won’t. Preston isn’t all that bad. He likes to use those pretty boy looks of his to get his way but I’m safe from his attention. Cage would kill him if he decided to bat his baby blues at me.”

Was it because of Preston’s womanizing or the fact he was a guy that made Cage protective of Willow. Did he really expect her to wait around until he was ready to settle down and marry her?

“LOW,” Cage’s voice rang out as the door to the apartment swung open. His head snapped around and his eyes went straight to Willow.

“God baby I was so afraid you’d leave, come here.” This was a side of Cage I’d never seen. Apparently the sweet little red head got to him in a way no one else could. He pulled her up into his arms, reached down and grabbed the forgotten suitcase then led her back to his bedroom whispering to her the entire way. If she hadn’t informed me that she refused to have sex with him earlier I’d have been eat up with righteous fury at the idea of him touching someone so sweet after having just left the bed of not one but two girls. But instead, I was eaten up with envy because I knew he was going to get to hold her and listen to her musical voice as she spilled out all her problems. He’d be the one to fix them, not me. I’d just met her. Why the hell did that bother me?