Page 82 of Free Agent

I wasn’t sure when it would stop striking me how damn good this man looked.

He was more dressed down than I’d ever seen him, besides when we didn’t have on any clothes. Clearly he was ready for travel, clad in sweats and a hoodie, a mirror of my clothing choice.

“Bring your pretty ass here,” Tatum drawled, pulling me into a tight embrace.

“Bring my pretty ass here, bring my pretty ass there.” I giggled as he squeezed me tightly against him, no hurry to let go. “You sure do like demanding my pretty ass around. What you gonna do if I stop listening?”

“Try it and see, I got something for that,” he quipped back, hands full of my ass, leaning into me for a quick kiss before propping a finger under my chin. “Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I replied quickly, but he shook his head.

“No, like for real,” he pressed, meeting my gaze. “Are you okay? You need me to do anything?”

Shit.

Those butterflies were a full-blown swarm now, and my stomach wasn’t the only thing aflutter.

“Nothing more than you’re already doing,” I assured him. “Thank you for the invite.”

“Thank you for accepting.”

He leaned in to kiss me again, and just as things were heating up… I heard a throat clear.

Oh!

I jerked back, remembering that Sierra was there. When I looked behind me, she was walking up, not even bothering to hide her amusement.

“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting,” she said, extending her hand to Tatum. “Sierra Ward.”

“Kev’s wife!” Tatum retorted, ignoring the handshake and pulling her into a hug, a noticeably different type from the one he had given me. “Hey, you were the one at the game with her that night. You let her be mean to me,” he teased.

Sierra shrugged, laughing. “In my defense, I tried to tell her! She was handing you her left hand and shit, I was like, Girl, don’t nobody give a fuck about Monty’s ring.”

“Bitch?!” I squealed, and she shrugged.

“Right?” she added, looking to Tatum for confirmation.

And his ass agreed. “Yeah, I wasn’t fazed by that shit.”

“Wow. Okay, fuck both of y’all,” I laughed, shaking my head. “You can get out.” I pointed at Sierra. “You can grab my suitcase,” I told Tatum.

“Aye, aye, captain,” Sierra quipped, and Tatum responded with a simple “Yes, ma’am.”

And shortly thereafter, we were on our way to the airport. After a few minutes on the road, Tatum spoke up.

“Hey,” he said, his tone serious. “How sensitive are you still feeling about the app outage thing?” he asked. “I was curious to know what actually happened. I know we haven’t really talked about it.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You want to know, like, the technical details?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Is that strange?”

“Uh, no. Not exactly. Not strange. Just… a little surprising, I guess. People who aren’t really into tech, when I start talking shop, their eyes kinda do this thing where they glaze over, and I can tell they’re not really listening anymore after about a minute.”

“Nah,” Tatum laughed. “I really want to know. I mean, don’t take me too far over the river and through the woods, because I’m not going to know what you’re talking about, but hit me with, like, the skyline view.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I can do that. To start, do you know what an authenticator is?”

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