Page 76 of Getting Over You

I know what he means when he saysthis.The grueling push-and-pull game we’ve been playing since we got here. I hate nicknames, and I letprincessroll off his tongue all summer long, without consequence. He doesn’t like to be challenged, and he let me push him to become a gentleman.

Maybe just for me.

My own product of effort and love, loving me back tenfold. Being in love with me.

“I need this,” I tell him. My tongue softly toys with his thumb, still caressing my lip.

“Fuck.” Cade abruptly winds that hand into my hair, tightening his grasp as his lips hover painfully over mine. “Promise me you won’t get your feelings hurt, princess.” He uses his other arm to pull me in, push our bodies into each other.

“What feelings?” I moan. “There aren’t any to hurt to begin with.”

“That’s my girl,” he whispers, so quietly that I’m positive he thinks I didn’t hear it.

I’m a terrible liar. But I’d say anything if his response was that. Forever.

Later, when we’re both ragged, our skin sticky with sweat and everything else about us basking in post-sex bliss, I say, “I don’t have a boyfriend. I mean, so you don’t think I used you as a side piece or something.”

Cade’s laughter reverberates through my skull as he presses his face into my hair. “Gigi, baby, I know.”

I sit up, feeling cold already from where he once kept me close and warm. “How? I didn’t tell anyone.”

He laughs. “You told—”

“Belinda,” I realize. My eyes go wide. “Cade. When did she tell you? How? At work?”

“Roy’s Grocery,” he explains through chuckles. “But she also told me that now would be a good time to swoop in on you, since you’re freshly single.”

“I am freshly single.” I nod, smirking.

Cade reaches for me, smiling coyly. “Too bad I’m not looking for anything, then. Someone else is gonna take you from me, aren’t they?”

“Sure will,” I lie as I allow him to pull me back down into the sheets.

Into the mess that we’re created together. That I don’t know if I can free myself from now that I’ve gotten myself immersed in it.

“It should be illegal to work today,” EJ says the next morning. “Actually,” he rubs a hand over his face, “it should be illegal to make anyone work a morning shift today.”

Cade and I are traipsing into Beach Brew later than we wanted, and I’ll admit I’m as tired as EJ.

Cade dropped me off at Belinda’s late last night. I knew he would. Once he sobered himself and we both showered off sand and sweat, he was ready to take me back to where I belonged and get me out of his room.

Ultimately, we decide on two options:

If no one asks, great! Cade and I know. No one else knows. All is well.

If someone asks, or hints that they know, we fess up, but tell them we were drunk. So, so inebriated that sleeping together was the only logical choice for us at that moment. Who knows how it happened—we sure don’t remember!

The latter was Cade’s idea. It slipped from his mouth too quickly for comfort, to erase last night if need be and chalk it up to alcohol.

It’s fine. That’s what a casual fling does. Casually forgets about it.

“I had fun last night,” Cade says. We’re seated in a corner, as far away as we can get from EJ. “We should make that a thing.”

“Regularly?” I ask. “Really?”

“I enjoy fucking you, Gigi,” he says. Simple and to the point. So very Cade Deans.

“I enjoy… spending time with you, too,” I say.

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