Page 39 of Playing With Fire

Her eyes drop, just for a second, but I catch it.

Interesting.

“Shirt?” she asks, dragging her gaze back to mine.

I take another pull from my banana shake. “My apartment. My rules.”

She nods solemnly. “Right. Pants mandatory. Shirts optional. I’ll remember that.”

I nearly choke on my shake. “That’s not what I meant.”

Her smile turns smug.

And just like that, every thought I had about last night comes rushing back.

Bare legs. That North Pines shirt. Her standing in my bedroom, looking half asleep and—nope. Not doing that at seven in the morning. “You’re hilarious, Baby Becks.”

“Thank you.” She looks past me toward the island. “So… are we going to talk about why you’re having a standoff with my cat?”

Right. The cat. I look over at the furry asshole still watching me like he’s waiting for round two. She looks from me to Darcy.

“He started it.” I defend myself like a toddler getting caught by his mother.

Her lips twitch. “Of course he did.”

“I’m serious. Your cat has some serious boundary issues.”

Darcy chooses that moment to hop down from the island and stroll toward Laney like he hasn’t spent the last five minutes threatening me. She bends and scratches beneath his chin.

“How’s my baby boy?” She coos, and he purrs back immediately.

“Unbelievable.” I stare at the traitor.

“He’s an excellent judge of character.”

“He tried to take my hand off!”

“Exactly.” Her lips twitch.

I flip her off.

There’s a strange kind of comfort in it. It feels like the old us before things went and got complicated.

Laney stands in the kitchen, Darcy winding around her ankles, bantering back and forth over breakfast, and a rush of memories from mornings spent at the Beckett’s house comes flooding back. Her whining about peanut butter on her pancakes, Beckett stealing all the extra-crispy bacon, Mrs. B swatting our hands away from fresh-baked blueberry muffins, and Coach telling us to fuel up.

Now she’s in my kitchen, and the space feels more familiar than it has in the past few years I’ve lived here. I don’t think about that too hard. Instead, I grab a clean mug, fill it with coffee, and slide it across the island toward her.

She takes it, lifts it to her mouth, and says, “Thank you,” before taking a drink.

Her entire face changes.

She coughs, nearly spitting it back into the mug. “What in the hell is that?”

I look at her in confusion. “Uh, coffee.”

She sets the drink down and points to it like I just tried to poison her. “That is not coffee.”

“It came out of the coffeemaker.”