Page 97 of Offside Angel

“You are kidding, aren’t you?” I ask.

Slowly, he crawls over me, his skin scraping against mine.

“Zane…?”

He grins over the length of my body, and I forget what we were even talking about for hours and hours.

36

ZANE

“I thought you were kidding, Zane!” Mira is standing at the kitchen counter with my laptop open in front of her and her phone wedged between her cheek and her shoulder. She’s frantically scribbling things down on a yellow legal pad, but all I can really focus on is the red jersey that falls around the tops of her thighs.

I step behind her and kiss the slope of her neck. “You look good in my name.”

“We’ll see how good I look when I age three decades in one week!” She swats me away from her neck and goes back to list-making. “We can’t get married in a week. Who gets married in a week?!”

“Probably the same people who move in together after a day,” Daniel chimes in from the living room.

Mira spins around, her pen pointed at him like a weapon. “Who invited you?”

“You did!”

She frowns. “Oh, right. Then… make yourself useful! Find a florist or… or a place for the ceremony!” Mira gasps and spins towards me. “Where are we going to get married, Zane? Everything is going to be booked up, and we can’t do it in a public park or Dante could ruin it. We’d have a Red Wedding on our hands.”

“I’ll handle music,’” Daniel suggests. “My cousin plays the cello. She’s only fourteen, but she’s first chair in her school orchestra. Then again, there is no second chair, but…”

Mira whirls towards him with her pen, but I grab her shoulders and spin her into me, if only to save my best friend from another amputation. “We’ll get married at our house.”

She looks doubtfully around the condo. I know exactly what she’s thinking. It’s big, but not that big.

“Not here. Our new house.”

“What new house?” She must find the answer written on my face because her eyes go wide. She hangs up with whoever she’s been on hold with for the last twenty minutes and gapes at me. “You bought a house? Without telling me?!”

Daniel oohs from the living room like I’m a kid who just got called to the principal’s office, but I ignore him and focus on Mira. “Davis has been wanting to sell his house, and I told him to hold off for a couple weeks so I could think.”

“His sex pad?” Her top lip curls. “I do not want to live in?—”

“Not his apartment in the city; his house. The one we stayed in.” The place where we spent a perfect week cooking and playing and going for walks. It was one of the better weeks of my life. Now, it can last forever. “I texted him last night after you went to sleep and told him we wanted it.”

“You bought a house without telling me?” she snaps again, turning her pen on me. “We have been engaged less than twenty-four hours, and you’ve already made a giant decision without consulting me?”

“Do you want me to call and tell him we don’t want it?”

“No, obviously not,” she snaps. The messy knot of hair on her head wobbles and a few new pieces fall around her face. “That house was perfect, and I want us both to be buried there. I’m thrilled.”

I press my thumb to the edge of her downturned mouth. “You should let your face know.”

She tries to hold onto her frown, but it wavers when our eyes meet. She wraps her arms around my middle, her chin resting on my chest. “I’m annoyed that I’m trying to plan a wedding in a week and flailing, but you’re somehow making the exact right decisions. How do you always know what to do? Tell me your secrets.”

I swear I hear Daniel snort from the living room, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to break me out of the bubble we’re in. I grab Mira’s hand and pull her away from the kitchen counter and into the hallway.

The second we’re out of sight of the living room, I press her against the wall. “Do you want to hear my one truth for today?”

She shakes her head. “No, because you’re going to say something sweet about how much you love me?—”

“—endlessly—

---