Page 49 of Rosie and the Beast Next Door

Gage: “Pretend” to date, eh?

Bret: Why does he not notice her already?

Dylan: He’s a moron.

Bret: Give me a few things to go off of. What’s she like?

Dylan: Funny. A talented artist. Witty. Unpredictable.

Gage: Is she pretty?

Dylan: Not relevant.

Dylan: But yes.

Bret: Hmmm. I’ll make a list. But start with letting her see you shirtless.

Dylan: And that will make the other guy notice her?

Bret: Sure.

I awoke to aloud crash followed by a string of muffled swearing.

A surge of protectiveness welled up in me as I propelled myself out of bed and to the door. Crime didn’t happen all that often in Winterhaven, but it did happen, or else my dad wouldn’t have a job.

The apartment door creaked as I opened it, but the sound was drowned out by something dragging at the bottom of the stairs. The sun hadn’t gone down completely, so though the lights were off, I could see a petite figure in the shadows with a huge, rectangle box at least twice her size.

My heart slowed when I realized Rosie was trying to single-handedly carry the huge box up the stairs. I folded my arms and leaned against the hallway wall, watching as she attempted to push the box up from the bottom, but then lost her footing and sprawled out on the floor as the entire box crashed down again, hitting one of her empty easels and knocking it to the ground. She kicked at the box with a frustrated huff.

“Need some help?”

She shrieked and flailed until her gaze landed on me. Was it my imagination that her eyes flickered to my bare chest? It happened so quickly, and the light was so dim, I couldn’t be sure.

“You scared me to death!” She held a hand over her heart as if trying to physically slow it down.

“How do you think I felt, waking up to crashing and cursing?” I walked down the stairs and reached out my hand to help her up. It seemed like she was debating whether or not to accept my help, but in the end, she slipped her soft hand into mine, and heat radiated out from her touch.

“I was not cursing,” she grumbled.

I merely turned to the box. “So what is this?”

Did her cheeks turn pink? “A rolled-up mattress. I would only let my worst enemy sleep on a futon.” She paused, then said very casually, “Is your sister in need of a bed?”

I snorted out a laugh, surprising both of us. Rather than meeting her gaze, I picked up the box and carried it up the stairs. It was heavy, even for me. How in the world did Rosie think she was going to get this up the stairs? Yet, somehow, I knew she would have figured it out.

Admiration rose in me once again—an experience I was having more often than not when it came to Rosie Forrester. I appreciated how she took charge, didn’t let things hold her back, got ideas and ran with them, made life feel fun again, embraced her quirkiness in a way I rarely saw in my social circle.

In some ways, she reminded me of Shiloh. He’d been patently unselfconscious even when we were kids, and he’d had a quiet wit. One that most people didn’t get, but if you did, you realized just how funny he was.

In our crash-and-bang world of hockey, most of our fans only wanted to see the sides of us that were tough and manly and competitive, yet Shiloh confronted that expectation head on, like one might face down a coming storm, and did things like gettinga tattoo of a daisy on his forearm, because they were his wife, Amelia’s favorite flower. And writing terrible, truly awful, lines of poetry for the team as we traveled on the bus to games.

“Are you okay?” Rosie’s hand rested on my forearm, a life preserver against the memories of Shiloh rising around me like the tide. We stood at the top of the stairs, squeezed into the small space with the mattress box.

“Yeah.”

She didn’t look convinced, and when she dropped her hand from my arm, I wondered if I shouldn’t have said something different. Admitted that missing my best friend felt like my lungs had been punctured, and it wasn’t long before all my oxygen ran out.

“Did the mattress just get delivered?” I asked her. It was nearly midnight.

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