Page 85 of Crave Thy Neighbor

I clamp my hand over his mouth. “Stop it!” I hiss.

He laughs against me, then pulls my hand from his mouth, holding my palm open.

“I’m just saying—you better not be ashamed of us. I’d be offended.”

He presses a kiss to my palm. It’s light and sweet, very different from how he kisses me at night, and my breath gets caught in my throat for a moment.

He closes my fingers around it. “Keep that for later.”

His words feel intimate, wrapping around me like silk, and my hands tremble.

I don’t understand what’s happening, but it’s not something that’s ever happened before…and I don’t know if I like it.

He drops my hand, stepping away from me just before Sam comes around the corner.

I swallow the knot forming in my throat, looking anywhere but at Nolan.

“All right,” Sam says, his shoulders sinking. “Let’s get this day over with.”

“Are you telling me you don’t eat cornbread with chili?”

“Uh, no. I wasn’t aware I was supposed to.” Nolan’s eyes flit down the aisle. “Don’t go too far, Sam,” he calls to my son before looking back down at me like he didn’t just pull a dad move. “We’ve always had peanut butter sandwiches with it.”

“What?” I curl my lip in disgust. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am, but we also ate a lot of peanut butter in my house. They always had it at the food pantry, so we’d find anything we could eat it with. I’ve never had chili any other way.”

My heart squeezes at his words.

Given how much my life has changed in the last few years, sometimes I forget Nolan and I grew up in different worlds. Up until I was sixteen, I lived in a gorgeous house with my parents who had been married since what seemed like the dawn of time. I was a good kid who got good grades. We attended church every Sunday, and we took brownies to our neighbors on the regular. I didn’t want for anything and was even a little spoiled.

He doesn’t talk about his dad a lot, but from what he has mentioned, it’s clear they had a rough time.

“How about we try both? Sam can test each option, and he’ll be the tiebreaker.”

“I’m not sure I trust his judgment because you’ve been poisoning his mind for the last twelve years, but”—he sticks his hand out—“you’re on.”

I slide my palm against his and he yanks me into him.

We’re so close I can feel his lips ghost against my ear as he whispers, “But just so you know, if he cheats, you’ll be the one getting punished for it later.”

His words are full of sexual promises, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting “punished” no matter what.

He steps away from me like he didn’t just cause my panties to soak in the middle of the grocery store.

It’s not the first time he’s done it this trip either. It’s like he enjoys seeing me squirm in public.

Or in general.

Like the other night when we were finishing up some documentary with Sam. The moment my son got up to go to the bathroom, Nolan hauled me into him and kissed me until I couldn’t breathe.

Sam asked why I was out of breath when he came back.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here? Don’t you two look domestic as fuck.”

I whirl around to see Dean standing at the end of the aisle, eyes flitting back and forth between me and his best friend, who is halfway down the aisle with Sam.

Oh shit. Did he see us? Did hehearus?

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