Page 58 of Mr. Broody

I flip them off behind my back, and their laughter fills the room.

“Hey, Ky,” Rowan says from behind me as I’m about to approach.

She puts her finger in the air as she continues to listen to whatever Jade is saying.

“Ky!” Conor says louder and more urgently.

Smooth, guys. Thanks.

“Sorry, excuse me for a second, Jade.” She gets up from the table, sees me with the drinks, and fails miserably at hiding her smile, scurrying over to Rowan.

Jade moves to turn, but I go around her back and sit at the other side of the table so she’s not staring at my buddies.

“Water or apple juice?” I hold them up.

Her head tilts left and right, then she points at one and then the other. “Eeny, meeny, miney, moe.” Her finger stops on the water. “I kind of wanted the apple juice.”

I hand the apple juice to her and keep the water for myself.

“Kyleigh’s really nice,” she says, breaking the silence because that’s the Jade I love, always uncomfortable with silence.

“She is. What did you guys talk about?”

She shrugs, putting her straw in the juice box without the liquid squirting out of the top. “Eloise, how she got into making wedding dresses, her and Rowan.”

“All of that in such a short time?”

She laughs. “It’s an inherent female talent. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Yeah, well, if you were a man, you’d barely have to talk. You’d be surprised what you can get across with a grunt.”

She covers her mouth, almost spitting out her apple juice from laughing but swallowing it down at the last minute. My chest feels buoyant from the sound of her laughter.

“Don’t do that.” She playfully smacks my shoulder. “How many times do you have to be sprayed by my drinks to learn not to make me laugh when I take a sip?”

“Nothing beats the Mountain Dew time.” I shake my head, remembering how sticky my face and arms felt for the entire concert because we couldn’t find anything to wipe me off with.

“If I remember correctly, you shared it with me by rubbing your face all over mine.”

“Thank god for the rain.” A shiver runs up my spine as I remember her all muddy and having to undress in the car, then sitting next to me on the long drive home from the concert in only her panties and a shirt. Fuck, how did I ever have the willpower to keep my hands off her?

Her cheeks pinken, and I’m pretty sure she’s remembering the same thing I am. “You think the rain was a good thing, but you weren’t the one who slipped down a muddy hill on her ass.”

“It looked fun.”

“I had more fun when we got home that night.”

My dick twitches. Jade is leading me down a road I shouldn’t go down right now. Especially at my son’s birthday party. But I’ve never forgotten the shower we took when we got back to her apartment. Thankfully, her roommate had gone home for the weekend because we never made it to the actual bed.

“We should talk about something else,” I say, resituating myself on the bench.

“Yeah, sorry, um…”

We sit there, both trying to think of something to talk about that doesn’t include our past.

“This all looks amazing,” she says, glancing around the room.

“It’s all Mack’s doing.”

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