Page 59 of The Best Friend Power Play

He removes his hand from his face and cracks open an eye. "You can."

"What? Pills? Water? Name it."

"Another kiss."

I sit upright. "Excuse me?"

"Doctor's orders. Pills are okay and all, but she recommended starting the day with a kiss. Preferably from a beautiful woman because apparently that makes it more effective."

I move his words to my obsession box, which I'll be foraging around in later because right now, I'm worried about him. "Be serious. Do you need pills?"

"No. It's fine. Really." He stresses the word when he sees the concerned look on my face. "I'll get up in a minute and walk around. And you don't have to kiss me again."

"I don't mind kissing you again. It's just…"

"What?"

"Morning breath."

"You don't have morning breath."

"What about my hair?"

"It looks great. Also, if we do kiss again, I'd like to keep things traditional and stick to kissing your lips and not your hair."

"Well…"

He coughs into his hand, but funnily enough, his cough sounds an awful lot like, "Hotgirlsummer."

"Okay. We can kiss. For medical reasons."

He grins. "For medical reasons."

We kiss again.

It's light and tender and sweet and everything a first thing in the morning and you're slightly concerned about morning breath kiss should be.

Culver cups my face in his giant hands. "I just want to make sure—are you okay with this? And with last night's kiss?"

"Yeah. I am." I suck in a breath. "What about you?"

"I'm very okay with both instances."

"Good."

"Good."

A memory suddenly comes to mind.

When Evie was going through an issue with Fraser and we were all consoling her at Bear's diner, Beth's advice was to communicate honestly.

Admittedly, that advice was plucked straight from what she doesn't like about romance novels—miscommunication—and it applied to a very different situation than this one, and while I am very much aware that this is real life and Culver and I are not in a romance novel, her words ring true.

Culver and I need to talk. Properly.

"So I was thinking…" he says at the same time as I say, "Maybe we should…"

"You first," we say at the same time.

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