Page 103 of Hot Shot

I chuckle, setting the pitcher on the window ledge to get her shampoo. I lather it up while she talks.

“I wasn’t completely honest with even myself though—ohhh,” she moans when I slip my fingers into her hair, massaging her scalp. “Oh, that’s nice.”

“What weren’t you honest about?”

“About how…how close we’ve gotten since all this started. It felt like it used to, but more. Stronger. Maybe because I wouldn’t admit it to myself, I don’t know. But you’ve become my best friend again. Don’t tell Jessa I said that,” she adds with an amused air of warning.

“I’d never.” My heart is in my throat, but my lips are smiling softly. Cass’s hair is a pile of bubbles slashed with crimson sitting on top of her crown.

“But it didn’t really hit me until we started talking about Davis.”

My smile disappears and I find myself growling. “Fuck Davis.”

“Because—let me finish—because I didn’t love him.”

Smug satisfaction vanquishes the vague impulse for violence.

“I mean, I loved him in my way, in some way. But the problem was always going to be that I chose you. I didn’t know I had, but once I realized, it was easy. I’ve always been yours Wilder, since before I even knew what it meant.”

My soapy hands abandon her hair for her shoulders, and I pull her to recline against my arm so I can kiss her with relief whirling around in my chest.

She didn’t love him, not like she loved me. And if she doesn’t love me now, I hope someday she will again.

Mine.

She already knows I’m hers.

When our lips part, we smile at each other. But then a drip of soap heads for her brow, and I swipe it away with a curse and sit her back up.

“Anyway,” she continues as I rinse out her hair, “the hardest part was waiting to tell you.”

“You should have come to the station.”

“So you could take me where? Because God knows you were going totakeme.”

“I’d have figured it out.” I watch the bubbles slide out of the sheet of her hair, pitcher by pitcher. “Another wash?”

“No, thank you.”

I switch for the conditioner, working it into her ends. “I wouldn’t have been mad at a call.”

“Liar,” she says on a laugh. “You barely made it through today. You didn’t come home this morning?—”

“I would have.”

She pauses. “I didn’t think of that. Dammit! I really thought youhadto go set up.”

“I did. But I would have been home so fucking fast.Lickity-split, as they say.”

“Anyway,” she says on a chuckle, “I wanted to wait until tonight when we were alone.”

“How come you didn’t?”

She thinks about it for a second. “It wasn’t one thing, really. You were doing the relay and just threw yourself into it. Tookcharge. It was so hot, by the way. And I just…I waited all this time, and I realized I didn’t want to wait anymore.”

I fill up the pitcher, noting, “I’m glad you didn’t wait until tonight.”

“Me too,” she says to the ceiling as I rinse. “You got on your knees and worshipped my pussy in a bathroom at The Horseshoe, shredded my tights like a fucking animal. Waiting all day made you ruin one of my favorite dresses like a savage. It was basically the best day ever.”

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