Page 67 of Colton
I want to open my thighs and let him tear my pants so he can put his mouth on me. It’s pretty damn clear he wants to, but the laughter and voices passing the truck intrude.
“We’re in the middle of a parking lot. We’re not going to get to finish this here.” I swallow the hard lump of disappointment.
“No,” Colton exhales, “we’re not. And that’s so fucking sad, Evie. Like on a scale of one to 10, it’s a thousand sad.”
I giggle again. “I know. It really is.” My laughter dies as clarity comes to me. “There’s no going back, Colt.” He pushes back, rising to look at me, eyes searching.
I wet my lips. “I know you said that if this doesn’t work out, we’ll always be friends, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be just friends after this.”
His forehead creases as he scratches his beard. His mouth tightens. “I know.”
We stare, both realizing that we just jumped off a bridge, and we better hope we’re not headed for the rapids.
A beep from my phone breaks the tension. We finish untangling ourselves and I dig it out of my purse.
Becca:This was not my idea. Promise me you won’t blame me and that you won’t take away my babysitting rights.
Me:Is Mia ok? What’s happening?
Becca:She’s fine. We’re at the penthouse. Come quick. It’s chaos.
“Oh God, Colt. We have to go home.”
“What’s happening? Is Mia ok?”
“Becca says she’s ok, but to come quick. They’re at Ransom’s.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, starting the car, “I’m on it.”
And he is. He knows as well as I do that if they’re at the penthouse, all his brothers are there. I spend the whole ride home praying that they didn’t give Mia a mohawk.
They didn’t.
But I wasn’t prepared for what I found. At all.
28
EVIE
Idon’t know where to look first. Colt and I are standing, frozen, in the penthouse’s foyer, watching absolute chaos. Suddenly, something small and furry darts across the floor towards us.
A shriek unlike anything I’ve heard before leaves Colt’s body, and he’s flying across the room, diving onto the kitchen island. I had no idea a man that big could move that fast.
I squat down, picking up the hamster as it streaks by. He’s got fur the color of milky coffee. I tuck him against my chest as I study the pandemonium in front of me.
I thought the two-hundred-and-eighty-pound man running from the two-ounce hamster would be enough to catch everyone’s attention, but he doesn’t even register in the chaos.
Becca and Holly are up in Zach’s face, yelling at him about something. He looks repentant and yet like he’s about to burst into laughter. Jonas is behind him, nodding at everything the girls say. Behind Jonas is a custom-made doll house, and Mia, surrounded by Nick, Declan, and Kade.
I take a few steps closer, trying to see what they’re doing.
“Little bastards are slick,” Kade mutters. Nick grunts and picks up…a roll of plastic wrap. He winds it around the waist-high house while Declan and Kade frantically shove something in. Another step forward and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop from laughing. It looks like a waterfall of hamsters pouring out of the dollhouse. Each time Kade pushes one back in, two more come spilling out. Mia is shrieking with laughter as the men scramble to catch them.
I catch Becca’s eye, and she and Holly break off from Zach. They rush to me, but not before Becca does the old ‘I’m watching you’ gesture, stabbing her fingers at her eyes, then towards Zach. Smart man that he is, he hides his laugh behind a cough and nods seriously.
“This is not my fault, Evie! I swear, the guys just said we should go for ice cream, but there was a pet store next door and they had hamsters in the window and Mia fell in love, and then the guys decided we should go in, and now there are hamsters everywhere, and the guys had huge cones so everyone’s all sugared up and we already lost two hamsters, and then they built an obstacle course but the hamsters just sat like lumps so the guys dug out some hot wheels but they couldn’t make them stay on the cars so they were going to glue them!” Becca’s voice rises on ‘glue,’ then she collapses forward, sucking in breaths like she just ran a marathon.
I stare at panting Becca for a minute. Turning to Holly, I ask what seems to be the most pressing question. “Glue them? Who the fuck would do that?”
