Page 120 of The Very Naughty List

I don’t say anything else for the entire ride back, because I don’t know where to begin or how to sort through all of my emotions. But as soon as we walk into the house and Bruno lifts his head from where he’s sprawled out in the living room, the awkward and uncomfortable feeling lingering between the four of us is more than I can bear.

“Thank you for the hospitality, and for giving me a place to say. But, um… I should probably go,” I say with a lump in my throat. “I can crash on my sister’s couch, and we can be done with all of this. I really appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, and I don’t want to keep making things any more difficult than they already are.”

Reid stares at me, his expression unreadable and his jaw tight. “Is that really it? You’re just gonna let it end like this?”

I fight back the tears that have been threatening to fall all morning, reminding myself that this is how it was always going to go. This was always going to come to an end and there’s no sense in dragging it out any longer. It’s just going to make it harder on everyone.

“This was just a fling.” I steady my voice to keep it from shaking. “But we’ll always be fr?—”

He interrupts me with a growling voice.

“Go ahead. Say friends. I’d love to put you on your knees and fuck the lies right out of that gorgeous mouth.”

My heart jolts inside my chest, and my body warms all over, heat blooming between my thighs and my breath sticking in my throat.

“What?” I whisper.

He doesn’t look away, his challenging gaze locked on mine. “You heard me.”

I want to be brave enough to say the words, to ask the question that’s been at the tip of my tongue and the front of mymind for weeks now. And even though my stomach is churning with nerves, I force myself to spit it out or risk never knowing.

“Was itmorethan just a fling?” I breathe. My heart threatens to pound out of my chest as the words pass my lips.

It takes only a second or two for Sebastian to answer me, but it feels like I’m hanging on for an eternity.

“You fucking know it was.”

I stare at him with my mouth hanging open as his words wash over me. I think a part of me always knew—or at least hoped—that they felt like this was real too, but hearing Sebastian say it makes it feel undeniable.

“Ever since the moment you first came into the garage to talk with me after school, this has been real to me.” Sebastian pauses as if he wants to make sure that I understand the gravity of what he’s saying. “Hailey, it’s always been you.”

A hiccupping sob pours from my mouth as the emotions that have been roiling inside me since yesterday finally crystallize, expanding in my chest until it feels like there’s no room for anything else.

“For me too,” Nick murmurs gruffly as he takes a step forward and sweeps a strand of hair away from my cheek. “I started falling for you the first time I met you, and that feeling only gets stronger with each passing day. Hell, I can’t breathe sometimes when you’re around me, because I crave you so badly.”

Reid is the last to speak, and I can still see the flash of anger in his eyes from earlier, although it’s tempered by something warmer and softer now.

“Trouble,” he says, tilting my chin up. “How could you ever think that none of this was real? It’s been the realest thing in my life. A once-in-a-lifetime thing that most people only dream of finding. You mean the world to me, and the thought of having you leave and losing you is the one thing that could literally hurtme the most. We should never have let the lie go on as long as it did—not the lie that we were telling everyone else, but the lie we were tellingourselveswhen we claimed this was fake. Because it’s not. It never has been. Don’t you see how much we care about you?”

I stand like a statue in the foyer, my gaze bouncing between the three of them as my mind struggles to process the declarations they just made. It feels too good to be true, and some part of me is panicking, trying to brace myself for the fall back down to earth when I wake up from this dream.

All this time, it really hasn’t been in my imagination. It hasn’t just been me being a fool and falling for three men I could never have.

The Cooper brothers have fallen for me too.

41

REID

Although Hailey’shair is mussed from being in the hospital overnight, her cheeks a bit more pale than usual in the aftermath of her accident, she’s never looked more beautiful to me than she does in this moment.

I can see the hope that rises in her eyes as she processes my words, and the words that Nick and Sebastian spoke. For a moment, her lips start to curve up in a heart-stopping smile—but then she shakes her head, her face crumbling.

“But how could this ever work?” she whispers. “Itcan’t. People will talk. If we think the gossiping and rumors are bad now, can you even imagine how much worse it could get? People will judge us. The Divas, Dylan, the town gossips. Everyone will condemn the four of us being together. They’ll say it’s scandalous and taboo and?—”

“We don’t care about any of that,” I say, and my brothers nod in agreement, their expressions serious.

“But what about Lucas?” She blinks away the tears in her eyes, still shaking her head. “You can’t say that you don’t care about your best friend. I know all three of you love Lucas. I can’t come between all of you.”

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