Page 44 of My Brother's Best Friend

“What’re you gonna call it?” I giggled. “The Smut Shoppe?”

“Um, excuse me!” Vera said, her hand over her heart, as if she were offended. A smile crossed her face, and then she continued typing on her laptop. “You know, maybe. That’s a good one.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, loading into the game Raid of Durnbone with my half-succubus, half-wolf avatar. “Now, I’d like fifty-one percent of the business for coming up with such a stellar name for you.”

“How about no?” Vera said, laughing. “But I’m serious though. I would love to open a bookstore and write all day long. I just don’t think I would be able to do it alone. Do you think Sakura would want to join me?”

I paused my game and scoffed. “What about me?”

She waved dismissively in my direction. “You’ll be off in new cities every night with your future husband, Mads. You won’t have time to run an entire bookshop with me. I was thinking of Sakura because she likes literature and is probably going to stay in the New England area because … Mr. Avery works here.”

“Yeah, but does she like smut though?” I asked.

“Who doesn’t?”

“True.”

“You know, it’s funny that you didn’t comment on the fact that you’re going to marry Alec.”

“What?”

She giggled. “I said that you’ll be at hockey games with your future husband, and it completely passed over your head, like you expect that to be in your future too, Miss Maddie Weber-Wolfe. MWW.”

I rolled my eyes, cheeks tinting red, and returned to my game. “I just misheard you.”

I didn’t even want anyone to know about Alec and me. How the hell would we ever marry? Besides, I liked him, but this was more of a high school crush, a fling that probably wouldn’t last through college. Not many relationships did.

But the mere thought of that made my stomach turn.

Once Vera turned on her music and continued typing out her latest smutty novel on her laptop, I invited Alec to join my party in Raid of Durnbone,hoping that I didn’t looktoodesperate. I hadn’t talked to him much today, mainly because I didn’t want anyone to become suspicious that I liked him after my episode at hockey practice.

He sent me an invite to join his Discord call.

“Hey,” he said, his deep voice drifting through my headset.

“Hi,” I said softly so Vera wouldn’t hear me.

Because if she did … God, I wouldn’t hear the end of it. She’d be gushing to me all damn night about how I was now playing video games with Alec Wolfe. How I was destined to marry him and have his babies.

“Uh, I just wanted to let you know that my test results came back a couple of hours ago,” he said, nervousness building in his voice. “And I’m negative for everything that they tested me for. So …”

“So we can have sex.” I giggled. “Is that why you called me?”

“No, it wasn’t. I was just …” He paused. “I thought you might want to know.”

“Well, thank you.”

“And I wanted to ask you something else … about hockey.”

“What is it?” I asked, running around the map with my avatar.

“You coming to the game tomorrow night?”

“I don’t think I’ve missed a hockey game for the past five years, Wolfe. I’ll be there.” I followed his avatar through the creature-filled town to the trinket shop to buy goods. “Are you going to play?”

“Probably.”

I paused. “Are you okay enough to play?”

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