Page 33 of Winter Glam in Amsterdam

"And well, from the looks of it, Summer might not be your girlfriend, but you sure wish she were," Reed points out, and my eyes dart back to him. "Oh, come on.” He rolls his eyes at me. “I'm not dumb. You've had your eyes on her the whole day. Even when that pretty chick was basically attaching herself to you."

I grimace, thinking back to the day trip to Haarlem Jackson convinced us to go on today. One girl in the group, Clara, clearly took a liking to me and proceeded to follow me around for the whole day, attaching herself to me like a barnacle to a turtle shell, not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Thank God I managed to shake her off once we returned.

Reed found the whole thing funny as fuck, but I didn't quite share his sentiment.

"Seems like a funny fellow, that guy," I grumble when Summer throws her head back and laughs loudly.

"And handsome," Reed points out, then he flinches when I kick him under the table. "What? I'm right.” He leans down to rub the spot where I hit him, glaring at me. “Why do you care? You just said she wasn't your girlfriend."

I don’t dignify that with an answer apart from a narrow-eyed glare.

"See? I’m just saying, the sooner you admit to yourself that you want more from her, the sooner I can help you come up with a plan." He takes another sip of his beer, and I reach for my whiskey as well. "Just don't fuck it up. I like Luca and would very much like to stay friends with him. So if this is only about sex, leave it."

"It isn't," I admit through gritted teeth, turning the glass in my hands.

I don't know how she did it, but Summer crawled right under my skin. The way she acts tough, yet reveals a sliver of her vulnerability when nobody is looking. The way she longingly watches all the couples on this trip yet acts like a one night stand is all that she wants.

I want to know everything about her. What makes her tick? What’s her favorite color? I’ve never cared about that with other women; the only color I cared about was that of their underwear.

But Summer is different.

"So you promise to not break her heart?" Reed asks, and I shake my head.

"How the fuck could I promise that?” A sad chuckle escapes me as I take a sip of my whiskey, sighing as it burns in my throat. “I promise I won't go out of my way to do it, but who knows what the future brings."

"Okay," Reed says, then turns around to look at the bar again. "I guess that’s good enough.” I roll my eyes at him. Since when can he be the judge of that? “So, phase one of the plan—what you're not going to do is barge into that little date they have," he says and makes a vague gesture in their direction.

"Why not, though?" I frown. It’s not like I intend to jump between them like a wrecking ball, but I’d still very much like to whisk her away.

"Because that would be hypocritical as fuck," he points out, narrowing his eyes at me. "Just think of it. She's seen you flirting with a woman the whole day.”

“Nope, I didn’t flirt back,” I point out, but Reed shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter. You didn’t exactly physically push her away either. So now that she's doing the same, you want to jump in? Hell no."

I grimace. Maybe he’s right. I know the other way around I would be really fucking pissed. "So, what do I do?"

"You woo her," he says with a grin and wiggles his eyebrows.

"Woo her? What are we, some strange rom-com? How would I ‘woo’ her?"

"Please." He rolls his eyes. "I know ‘wooing’ wasn’t exactly your approach when it came to prior women, but didn’t you narrate enough romance audiobooks by now to know how that works?"

"That’s not the kind of audiobooks I'm narrating," I chuckle, swirling my glass and making the ice cubes clink against each other. "If I’d be going off those, I'd kidnap her and keep her chained up in a basement." Reed’s eyes widen. “Or leave the severed heads of her enemies on her doorstep as a token of my affection.”

"What the hell kind of stuff do you narrate?"

"Don't knock it till you've read it," I tease him with a shrug. "Now, pray tell, how exactly would I woo her? Send her flowers?"

"Well, if you want to be boring, you'd do that." Reed nods, the corners of his mouth twitching. That fucker is having way too much fun at my misery. "That would be a safe play."

"But I don't want safe." I sigh, my eyes darting to the window but all I can see is darkness and my reflection. "I want to sweep her off her feet—the kind of thing you tell your grandchildren about, you know?"

"Don't you think that would be a little too intense, a little too soon?" He looks at me like I'm an idiot. "One step after the next. Maybe you should start with the flowers after all."

"Right," I mumble and lean back in my seat, knowing exactly what I'm not going to do. “Maybe.”

We only stay for a few more minutes, after finishing our drinks, but just as we’re about to leave, something tells me to check on Summer. Not in an ‘is she sick of him by now’ kind of way, but a wave of dread suddenly washing over me as I freeze in my tracks at the bar’s exit, turning around slowly.

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