Page 59 of Love Me Tomorrow

“All your fault,” I repeat, petting him again. Pablo may be homicidal, but I like to think that we understand each other. I feed him the good stuff that costs me an arm and a leg, and I regularly bring him into the office so he can terrorize my employees. In exchange, he listens when I have a problem. We’re a perfect match. “You just had to go for the goods, huh? None of this would have happened if you hadn’t tried to castrate him. You broke mine and Owen’s ten-foot-tall boundary wall. Smashed it to smithereens.”

In response, Pablo merely flicks his tail, pounces on my keyboard like it’s a trampoline, and promptly closes me out of the video chat app.

Rolling my eyes, I concede the point. “Fine, the blame isn’t all on you.”

It’s on me too. I kissed Owen. I begged for his dominant touch and his possessive mouth. And, so long as this conversation with Amelie goes well, I plan to do it all over again. As many times as Owen will have me.

Because what I want from the inked tattoo artist has no business being shown on Hallmark.

Looks like I’m going for a revised version of option one, then.

Peeling Pablo off the laptop before he can do any further damage, I set him on the floor. Promptly, he reclines on his side, hikes up his front right paw, and starts to go to town cleaning his genitals.

If that’s not the cat form of flashing me the middle finger, then I don’t know what is.

I nudge his furry butt with my foot. “Live your best life, Pabs. One of us has to.”

Logging back into the app, I move the mouse over Amelie’s contact name and find myself hesitating. For as long as I can remember, I’ve treated my sister with kid gloves, acting more like an aunt or a motherly figure than an older sibling. With eight years between us, we’ve always been in two different phases of our lives.

When she hit kindergarten, I was already watching my peers grind their little hearts out to Next’sToo Close.

When she got her driver’s license, I was already logging fifty-plus hours per week for ERRG.

This conversation has the possibility to tear the fabric of our current relationship in two, if we let it.Which I won’t.I’m fully prepared for it to be uncomfortable. Sure, she and Owen may not have had some blown out, dramatic breakup, but she stilled cared about him. And I care too much about her to even consider keeping Owen a secret.

Honesty. Loyalty. Love.

That’s the Rose way—or, at least, it’smyway.

With a click of the mouse, the little green telephone bobs up and down on the screen. When the callpingsto signal that it’s been accepted, I paste a big smile on my face and ignore the anxious butterflies fluttering in my gut like tiny missiles. “Amelie! I—oh, myGod.”

I don’t know which one of us says it.

Me, my younger sister, or the person whose hairy ass is dancing on the fifteen-inch laptop screen like a Magic Mike audition gone wrong.

“Close your eyes!” shouts Amelie. There’s a loud thud, an equally loud masculine grunt when a flash of movement darts across the screen, andwaytoo much bare skin. “It’s not what it looks like!”

Correction: it’s exactly what it looks like.

Male butt cheeks the color of a White Alaskan Malamute. Hair the color of charcoal. A neon-pink G-string that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. And I meannothing. I don’t know whether to laugh hysterically or buzz Georgie in so I can ask for some bleach, ASAP.

In the end, I lower my computer screen and stare up at the ceiling. I blink, and see the G-string crawling all up in there like dental floss. I blink again, and see nothing but a very distinct banana-shaped imprint as he tried to scurry away from the scene of the crime.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

“Sav, we’re good now,” Amelie says over the sounds of distinct rustling.

With my gaze still trained on the ceiling, I demand, “What color pants is he wearing?”

“Well, technically they’re nude since he’s not wearing any . . .”

“Amelie.”

“Blue shorts,” a very non-Italian accent tells me hastily.Spanish? Greek?Doesn’t matter. All I know is that I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again. A second later he adds, “I am wearing blue shorts.”

Blue shorts are better than no shorts.

Tentatively, like I’m prepping for the worst, I lift the screen. My sister’s familiar face is grinning back at me, and, next to her sits a good-looking, olive-skinned guy wearing a black Polo shirt and a blinding white smile.

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