Page 49 of Me Three
“You… you also… what?” he asks. “But you never said anything.”
“Neither did you.”
“But you wanted to be friends with benefits. You never…”
I roll my eyes and sigh.
“Because I wanted to have a piece of you without losing you by telling you how I feel and having you reject me. Not after what Ian did to me.”
“Not every man is an Ian, Carter. I’ve told you that countless times,” he says. “I-I can’t believe you’ve been in love with me all this time. You didn’t say anything.”
“And neither did you,” I tell him.
“Well, yeah. We’re both idiots.”
“I think that’s a given at this stage,” I say and take one more step toward him. “Does… does that mean you want to be with me?”
“I do,” he says. He also takes a step toward me.
Before he can say anything else, I grab him by the neck and pull him to me. Our lips lock, our bodies glue to one another, and we stay there for a few moments taking in each other’s taste. Moments of bliss that feel like forever.
When we pull away, I miss a step, and my head’s all fuzzy. It’s like I’m drunk, but I’m as sober as anything.
“I guess we better cancel Valentine’s day with Tru then,” I say.
“Yeah. I guess,” Ev says, scratching his head. “But…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to. Does that sound weird? I mean, I want to be with you, but the thought of pushing them away feels wrong,” he says.
I breathe a sigh of relief and fall back into his arms.
“Thank God you said it. I didn’t want to sound like an asshole again,” I say.
“It’s inevitable,” he smiles.
“I’ll ignore that for now because it’s true. So, we’re doing this?”
Ev kisses my forehead, and my whole body melts into him.
“If by doing this you mean we’re dating Tru and each other, yeah. We are,” he says.
Sixteen
Tru
When I get to Everett and Carter’s house on Monday evening, I find a completely alien picture. If I take my few previous encounters with them into consideration.
Both of them are wearing aprons and cooking something together, and as soon as they see me, they both come on either side of me to give a warm, tight hug, hugging each other through me, too.
“You get comfortable, little cabbage. Dinner will be served soon. That is if Carter doesn’t burn the ribs.”
Carter glares at Ev and then his nostrils flare as we all smell it.
“Crap,” he says, running to the kitchen.
Everett laughs and follows Carter. I take my jacket off and hang it up and watch the two of them deal with the smoke rising from the oven.
