Page 111 of Loathe Thy Neighbor

“For the record, I’m with her,” Lucy says. She looks at me. “Heard the good news about your apartment. You excited to get back in there?”

River freezes next to me.

Fuck.

I plaster on a false smile for Lucy. “Yep. I can’t wait.”

She nods, grinning back at me, but her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Good. That’s…good. Well, I better get to reffing. The game is about to start. I appreciate you coming out to see this old lady skate in a bunch of circles.”

She taps River’s foot again, drawing her attention.

“You’re not alone in your feelings.”

With a wink, she glides off to the center of the rink.

“What was that?” I ask.

River shrugs, staring after Lucy, face twisted in confusion. “I have no clue.”

“Huh.”

“Hey, guys,” Cooper says, sliding in between the seats. “What’d I miss?”

Caroline hitches her thumb over her shoulder. “You owe Mailbox Betty fifty bucks.”

* * *

We’ve barely saidten sentences to each other since Lucy dropped the news that my apartment is almost done.

On one hand, I’m glad River’s quiet about it. I don’t have to hear if she’s excited or not that I’m leaving

And on the other, it makes me absolutely fuckinginsane.

“You were going to tell me, right?” She rolls over to face me, peering up at me with round eyes. “About your apartment. You were going to tell me before you left?”

“No. I was just going to pack my shit and leave.”

Her jaw drops, and I laugh.

“Yes, River. Of course I was going to tell you. Why wouldn’t I?”

“It would be…I don’t know.” She lifts a shoulder. “Awkward? We said we wanted to avoid that.”

We said a lot of things, like no attachments.

I fucked that one up royally.

I’ve grown way too comfortable over here in the past month. Going back to my apartment is going to be hard, probably harder than I thought.

It’s not going to be harder than moving past this thing we’re doing and pretending nothing happened.

But if that’s what River wants…

I lift my hand to her shoulder and drag my fingertips down her arm in slow, sweet strokes. Her skin pebbles under my touch, and I can see her nipples do too. “We did say that, but I guess I’d hope you know me better by now. After…everything.”

“Everything,” she repeats quietly.

I’ve been with River for over a month now, seen parts of her I only dreamed of seeing.

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